The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - Mark Carney Nightmare： Champagne Lies About Alto Train Conflict of Interest

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here, and welcome back to the National Telegraph YouTube channel.

00:00:06.140 This Alto high-speed rail project is turning into a massive political liability for Prime

00:00:12.200 Minister Mark Carney and his Liberal government, and they thought this thing was going to be a big

00:00:18.200 winner for them. And it turns out, nobody likes it. Quebec nationalists don't like it, Quebec and

00:00:24.540 Ontario farmers don't like it, people who care about public finance don't like the $90 to $200

00:00:29.920 billion dollar final price tag for the project, and there is a massive conflict of interest scandal

00:00:36.620 floating around the Alto train project, which Carney is now trying to diffuse to try and save

00:00:42.280 the project, which is why Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne finally testified

00:00:47.980 in front of the Ethics Committee about his conflict of interest, which is his wife became

00:00:53.700 the Vice President of Environment for Alto two months before the Liberal government hammered

00:00:59.100 through the $60 to $90 billion funding for the project, which again could balloon up to $200

00:01:05.560 billion when all is said and done. I'm disappointed in Champagne, not because I expect anything good

00:01:13.120 from him, but I expected him to be a better liar. He basically exposes himself for lying 0.61

00:01:19.500 in his own committee testimony, because the narrative he's been spinning is that he disclosed

00:01:25.740 that he had this conflict of interest. The ethics commissioner knew about it, and the ethics

00:01:30.280 commissioner cleared him. But what he is about to explain here is basically how he weaseled out

00:01:36.820 of actually doing a proper ethical disclosure of his conflict of interest. Anyways, I'm going to

00:01:43.580 get into the Senate testimony in just a second here, and then some of the questioning from the

00:01:48.040 conservative MPs on the committee. But before I get into it, I just want to remind you guys,

00:01:53.040 if you like the channel, make sure to leave a like on the video, subscribe if you are not yet

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00:02:06.480 contributing member. All my content is always going to remain free, but the members help make

00:02:11.520 the channel more sustainable and allow me to be less reliant on the YouTube algorithm. Salute to

00:02:16.620 all the members out there. But here is Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne in his

00:02:22.480 opening statement, basically exposing the whole grift that he's been doing on this conflict of

00:02:28.820 interest screening. Earlier this year, news reports suggested that someone close to me

00:02:34.000 had been hired as an employee of this Crown Corporation, which is a wholly owned subsidiary

00:02:40.700 of the Government of Canada, and reports to the Parliament of Canada through the Minister of

00:02:46.220 transport. However, the relevant facts date back well before the publication of these articles.

00:02:53.340 On July 3rd, 2025, the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner

00:02:58.700 was informed that someone close to me had received a job offer from the aforementioned

00:03:03.980 Crown Corporation. I then contacted the office directly and was told that no risk of a conflict

00:03:11.340 of interest arose from the circumstances in question several months later further exchanges

00:03:16.540 with the office confirmed this same conclusion no that you see what he did there it's a rhetorical

00:03:24.540 trick it's effectively he he disclosed his conflict of interest before it actually mattered

00:03:32.620 of course the the office of the ethics commissioner cleared him of a conflict of interest

00:03:37.900 when his wife didn't yet work there there's no conflict of interest in being offered a job the

00:03:44.300 conflict comes when you work there because obviously he wasn't really doing anything

00:03:49.740 for the train project back in july but a couple months later she is then hired by alto and then

00:03:57.340 a couple months after that he is hammering through funding for the project in fact he literally fought

00:04:04.540 to not have the alto train funding removed from the greater budget basically what conservative

00:04:11.340 mps and i believe the bloc quebecois also wanted to do was take the alto funding carve it off of

00:04:16.860 the main budget vote on the main budget and then vote on the alto funding separately so it can be

00:04:22.380 properly debated because it's really hard to debate the alto funding when you're trying to also

00:04:28.140 tackle other things in the budget it's such a big monster of an issue we should be having a

00:04:32.700 completely different discussion where we can put all of our speaking time towards that rather than

00:04:37.900 having to sort of like fraction off our budget speaking time to also tackle the alto issue he

00:04:44.300 voted to not actually slice off alto to be voted on and discussed separately because he knew the

00:04:50.780 only way that this thing was going to get through is if it was just mashed into the rest of the

00:04:55.580 budget but anyways i'll let him speak a little bit further then i want to move on to first michael

00:05:00.540 barrett's questioning and then there is another conservative mp from quebec who also went after

00:05:06.140 him for another issue that has just arisen around alto despite these repeated confirmation that no

00:05:13.100 conflict of interest existed and that no screen was required i nevertheless chose out of an

00:05:21.660 abundance of caution to implement and maintain an ethics screen to avoid any appearance of a

00:05:27.340 conflict of interest and to assure Canadians of the integrity of the decision-making process,

00:05:34.220 as evidenced by the letter dated September 10, 2025, a copy of which was duly sent to the Office

00:05:40.780 of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner. Colleagues, I have acted in the same manner in

00:05:46.780 which I have always carried out my duties as a Member of Parliament and as Minister with

00:05:51.900 rigor integrity and in accordance with my obligations i have had the honor of working

00:05:57.660 no okay french bilbo baggins here is just lying the september letter again is just reasserting

00:06:05.660 that his wife had gotten a job offer he didn't then disclose that she was a vice president i

00:06:11.260 don't even think they share the last name so it's hard to tell like it's not like someone could have

00:06:15.260 just found this out themselves it wasn't until april of 2026 i believe it was either march or

00:06:20.940 april where he finally was forced to disclose the fact that his wife is in fact a vice president of

00:06:26.680 environmental alto september july those disclosures don't matter him checking in with the ethics

00:06:34.780 commissioner saying by the way it's not a problem that my wife was offered a job and the commissioner

00:06:41.040 is like well yeah there's no problem with being offered a job people get offered jobs all the

00:06:45.560 time. That's not a conflict of interest. He never then refiled until April that his wife is a vice

00:06:52.380 president. So when he's voting on the budget, when he's fighting to not remove ALTO funding from the

00:06:57.700 budget, when he's advocating for ALTO, nobody actually knows that his wife is a VP. The ethics

00:07:03.900 commissioner only knows that his wife was once offered a job, which obviously nobody has a

00:07:09.760 problem with until she's hired. And by the way, there has already been, basically he says, well,

00:07:15.180 there's no there's no personal enrichment for my family member by voting on an entire like train

00:07:21.460 project. Yes, there is. Yes. Just because your wife doesn't like own the train project doesn't

00:07:27.440 mean that your wife is not benefiting. He's basically saying it'd only be corrupt if I

00:07:31.620 basically passed a bill saying let's give $200,000 to my wife, the vice president of environment at

00:07:37.280 Alto. No, she had on average, the bonuses that were handed out on average, the executives were

00:07:44.280 getting $68,000 in the aftermath of the Alto Train project being approved by the Liberal

00:07:50.760 government. They've already spent $260 plus million on this project since Trudeau gave it

00:07:58.280 funding back in last February. They've been burning up a storm of funds. I'd love to know

00:08:05.600 what her salary is. We already know generally in the ballpark what her bonus was. So yes, 1.00

00:08:12.900 there absolutely is a conflict here and he was covering it up but now i want to jump forward to

00:08:18.520 michael barrett asking questions to him because he points out what we all know that no he was not

00:08:25.560 actually putting up a proper ethical barrier he was in fact voting for all these things while

00:08:31.420 having not disclosed the actual role his wife had then had regarding the project that being said

00:08:38.240 You did go on to then participate in votes in the House related to ALTO, and you did go on to introduce a bill that included measures specifically related to ALTO, the implementation legislation for the High Speed Rail Network Act.

00:08:58.360 And there's no recusal publicly posted with respect to cabinet decisions or discussions.

00:09:07.080 So we're left to understand that you didn't recuse yourself there.

00:09:12.080 And you've said to us today that you're operating with a keen eye to follow all of the ethical rules and guidelines and to exceed them.

00:09:26.740 If that's the case, and you were of the view in September that a conflict would exist if you participated in decisions, discussions, or votes, in spite of the response from the ethics commissioner, why did you proceed to do the very thing that you had said that you believed, not the ethics commissioner, that you believed would create a conflict?

00:09:49.520 Like I said very specifically, Mr. Chair, I did that in abundance of caution, very mindful of the law.

00:09:57.260 Abundance of caution.

00:09:58.540 Apparently, you could just be corrupt now as long as you're being corrupt with an eye to caution.

00:10:03.820 I'm doing all of this.

00:10:05.460 I am giving $90 billion to a project nobody wants, that they are throwing around bonus checks like it's going out of style.

00:10:14.340 and to which even the Quebec public

00:10:18.640 doesn't really want this thing

00:10:20.180 and especially the Quebec nationalists

00:10:21.840 leading in the provincial polls don't want.

00:10:24.440 But I was doing it all out of an abundance of caution.

00:10:26.980 I was just doing it for the people.

00:10:28.880 Really, really, I am the king of ethics here.

00:10:32.040 He reminds me so much of both the guy

00:10:34.100 who plays these Bilbo Baggins in the Hobbit movies

00:10:39.520 as well as Marco Rubio.

00:10:40.880 I can't unsee it

00:10:41.680 and that's all I think about all the time.

00:10:43.080 He's like French Marco Rubio or French Baggins or like Watson from Sherlock.

00:10:49.200 I forget the actor's name.

00:10:50.220 I'm going to look it up while he rambles on.

00:10:52.380 And the exception in the law.

00:10:54.860 But I wanted to make sure that I did not participate in the decisions with respect to this project.

00:11:01.440 But I wanted to refer to the principle of general application, which I know my colleague Mr. Barrett being a solicitor and I think a barrister would know.

00:11:11.080 The principle of general application contained within the Conflict of Interest Act allowed me to participate in parliamentary debates and votes, including those which are related to the budget and the Budget Implementation Act.

00:11:23.760 I think you even received testimony in front of this committee that this is a principle that exists not only in the federal law, but in provincial law. It's widely accepted.

00:11:35.600 So not only I complied with all the rules under the act, but I went beyond to provide to Canadians that kind of transparency that they know that not only I respected the act and the letter of the act within the exception permitted under the act, but also to have a filter to make sure that I was not directly involved in decisions.

00:11:56.620 He looks like Martin Freeman. I have to cut him off just to say that because I had to look it up.

00:12:00.280 he's basically saying, well, because I have made the disclosures, that doesn't preclude me

00:12:05.620 from being able to participate as long as I was fully transparent with where the conflicts were

00:12:10.120 at so people could basically take or leave my opinions based on that. The problem is that he

00:12:17.320 didn't properly disclose it. People didn't know that his wife worked at Alto at this point. You

00:12:22.040 think that that would have been a big explosive scandal at the time when he was debating for

00:12:27.400 these things and passing them if people knew it the reason that it became such a big thing in early

00:12:32.220 2026 is that's the first time people found out she was working for alto not just that she was

00:12:38.020 offered a job but again he's trying to play fast and loose with the timeline here in order to get

00:12:43.440 away with what is very obviously unethical behavior so i i'd like to know what it is that the

00:12:49.780 precautions that you took actually prevented you from doing because you did go on to do those things

00:12:55.480 that you believe to be of a general application.

00:12:58.340 But your department went on to hire

00:13:00.940 one of the many, many Alto executives

00:13:03.680 to participate in the preparation

00:13:06.680 for your budget presentation

00:13:08.280 and preparation of your budget speech.

00:13:10.800 It, you know, it's a small world.

00:13:12.440 It's a small country

00:13:13.340 in terms of our population comparatively.

00:13:17.260 But my goodness,

00:13:18.240 that it leaves people questioning

00:13:22.240 how it is that an Alto executive

00:13:23.920 ended up helping you prepare your budget speech in your budget presentation working for you i

00:13:29.040 couldn't imagine they could find the time even to do that while they're you know preparing this

00:13:35.360 this massive project for which these same executives are collecting massive bonuses

00:13:39.600 for without having laid an inch of track now he's going to french do you know what he's doing here

00:13:47.120 he knows that mark that uh that uh michael barrett has a great clip here and and this is

00:13:53.840 sounds very petty and meta but it really is how government works you government is like or politics

00:13:59.680 like 90 marketing when you're in parliament you want to do things that get people's attention

00:14:04.800 on issues that they might otherwise not pay attention to because michael barrett has brought

00:14:10.960 up an uncomfortable subject suddenly even though he was speaking english to michael a second ago

00:14:17.120 Michael asked the question in English.

00:14:19.280 Suddenly, Mr. Champagne is going to switch into French.

00:14:24.320 As I was saying, Chair, I followed all the rules.

00:14:27.460 And in abundance of caution, we use the screen.

00:14:30.840 And Chair, this measure is well known.

00:14:33.300 See, he's not answering the question.

00:14:35.120 So now I want to move on to the next clip I want to play

00:14:38.000 that I believe it was Sheila Gunn-Reed at Rebel News posted

00:14:40.820 of a Conservative MP from Quebec following up on this issue

00:14:46.560 of an alto executive being paid money by the finance ministry to go over the french of the

00:14:54.220 budget basically you know giving them access to massaging in french how he's going to be pitching

00:15:00.200 the alto train project so check this out i'm sorry everything's being done by translators but this is

00:15:05.680 just the this is the annoyance of canadian politics we have to have to keep switching between

00:15:09.700 languages and one day someone's probably going to require us to have indigenous languages be spoken

00:15:14.520 half the time too i'm a kinesiologist and i've been here for about a year i'm not a lawyer but

00:15:22.520 there are things that i find strange and i wanted to ask questions about it i'm happy that you talked

00:15:26.840 about the commissioner because the commissioner asked us to include the appearance of a conflict

00:15:31.240 of interest in the legislation and the appearance of a conflict of interest is what we're talking

00:15:35.000 about here so we want to include it in the report we have just asked for a document but you have

00:15:42.600 all refuse that we access this document you're saying that it's so clear why can't we have it

00:15:48.920 but all the liberals just voted against my last question is on your speech

00:15:56.840 12 000 for a speech written by somebody who works for alto perhaps my question is simple

00:16:03.480 how can you ask an employee to write a speech that has to do with promoting the company that

00:16:10.520 they work for and then having taxpayers pay for that so how do you influence

00:16:22.520 how is that going to influence the project mr hardy now in just a second here there's going to

00:16:27.400 be a little bit of back and forth where he's speaking and gabriel hardy the quebec mp is

00:16:33.320 speaking too and so the translator is having to talk for both of them so i will be kind of

00:16:37.560 of demarcating one that is sometimes happening here i have a lot of respect for you and i'm happy

00:16:41.740 that there are a lot of people like you who are coming to parliament but again you're making

00:16:47.420 allegations and i'm asking you to be prudent did you not pay twelve thousand dollars and that's

00:16:53.140 her translating that hardy is following up did you pay from your finance ministry budget twelve

00:16:58.520 thousand dollars to an alto executive to punch up the french part of your speech to help work on

00:17:04.120 your french part you made allegations that person was not an employee for a long time that's why i'm

00:17:12.780 saying it's allegations but how much time that's what's concerning i'm trying to help you because

00:17:18.340 you're making allegations for those who are watching us they've heard these allegations and

00:17:24.740 they're unfounded there would be an objection if we were in the courts because you don't have any

00:17:32.880 facts that person i like how he brings up you don't have any facts right before right before

00:17:40.480 hardy asked this new question he just brought up the fact that they have not they've been actually

00:17:45.620 voting down being able to release some of the documents related to these ethical conflict of

00:17:51.200 interest issues he's like well you know a court would have shut you down right now well a court

00:17:55.140 would have forced them to disclose some of these some of these reports that you don't actually want

00:17:59.660 out there some of these correspondences now what is effectively going on is that he's again

00:18:05.100 using effectively technicalities to get away with the because what hardy is getting at is you know

00:18:12.860 you paid twelve thousand dollars yes or no to somebody who worked for alto or went on to work

00:18:19.680 for alto and basically champagne is like trying to answer and not answer at the same time he's

00:18:27.880 saying, well, they weren't an employee for very long. Well, of who? Alto? You? Were they still

00:18:33.960 working for Alto at the time? Because regardless, it still looks bad. Let's say even, let's say they

00:18:38.880 worked for Champagne exclusively at the time. He was working for the finance minister. He had maybe

00:18:44.780 a five-month gig helping get the budget together. He didn't work at Alto yet at all, never did

00:18:50.340 previously. Wasn't it weird that the guy helped you punch up your French speech and then right

00:18:55.540 after it is the budget is delivered and you vote to hammer through alto funding this guy then goes

00:19:02.260 and joins the executive team of alto right in time to get a 68 000 average bonus check that's kind of

00:19:10.580 a problem i don't know about you guys maybe i'm just a particularly persnickety person but i find

00:19:17.060 this to be a little bit problematic had left for months we followed all of the rules regarding

00:19:24.420 contracts the screen was in place so that's why i'm saying that you should be prudent i understand

00:19:29.540 that you have the right to ask questions so the alto executive maybe left they had they had they

00:19:36.580 had a time gap between working at alto and working for the ministry that's what i'm getting from this

00:19:42.100 but that doesn't really change does the guy work still at the ministry of finance or does he back

00:19:47.380 at alto that is the problem we're having here and the fact that he's being so avoidant is not really

00:19:53.300 you know a sign that the answer is something that we don't want to hear but i do invite you to be

00:19:58.500 cautious because you're saying things that are not that are not true well the proof is that

00:20:04.740 that person if she had just left but she worked for alto or they worked for alto and you paid

00:20:09.860 twelve thousand dollars for their speech i understand that you're saying well the legislation

00:20:15.220 allows you to do certain things but canadians are watching this and they're losing trust in

00:20:19.380 in their institutions and you said that your role is to ensure to maintain trust in institutions

00:20:23.880 but unfortunately since I've been here liberals are always putting themselves in positions

00:20:28.800 where people start to wonder you have a responsibility Mr. Minister that's your

00:20:34.800 opinion Mr. Hardy I mean a lot of Canadians who don't share your opinion and that's why we need

00:20:40.860 to make a distinction between opinions and facts that's your opinion and if you're making allegations

00:20:47.320 just make sure that you can back it up you need to share facts we have a privilege to be here at

00:20:55.920 this committee this is the ethics committee and facts need to lead did you pay $12,000 did you

00:21:02.900 pay someone $12,000 to write a speech that's a fact again that's an allegation you're talking

00:21:10.680 the department of finance and we paid for a service from someone who helped us to ensure that

00:21:19.960 the french in the speech but also in the entire budget process

00:21:28.680 so that person helped us ensure that everything was done correctly and that follows all of the

00:21:32.840 rules and it happened in previous budgets as well it was sorry is this the only person

00:21:38.040 from the hills that came down who knows how to speak french to help you on the french part of

00:21:42.280 the budget it just so happens that they used to work at alto and you paid them twelve thousand

00:21:48.840 dollars for a budget speech uh was like that their salary for like multiple months or was

00:21:54.200 that just a couple weeks of them helping and they were paid twelve thousand dollars i don't know

00:21:58.840 your wife is the vice president of environment at alto which to me sounds like a fake position

00:22:04.520 and we know it sounds fake because they only hired her for that position two months before the budget

00:22:08.840 vote happened they did they not need it before was there a previous vice president of environment

00:22:14.280 there's a lot of fake positions at alto there are 13 or 19 i forget the number of vice presidents

00:22:19.880 for this project which has not actually put down an inch of track yet but has somehow spent over a

00:22:26.600 quarter billion dollars just surveying just kind of consulting i don't even think they're doing

00:22:32.920 serving that that's too much on the ground work it's coffee meetings about nothing so far it's

00:22:38.920 just meetings about with engineers talking about the feasibility and whatnot doing studies doing

00:22:45.320 advertising campaigns for the project that nobody actually likes i i love how he's just like that's

00:22:51.800 not a fact that's an allegation it's like francois philippe champagne is just sitting there with a big

00:22:56.200 sack of money this is the sack of money and he's just like is that a sack of money no well that's

00:23:02.600 an allegation that you're alleging that this with a giant money sign on it is a big sack of money

00:23:08.600 but it could be a big sack of anything well can i see it no no government backed me up here tell

00:23:15.400 them that he's not allowed to look at it you don't you can't look at it and that and ergo you don't

00:23:18.680 have facts and you don't know if this giant sack of money is a giant sack of money i mean you don't

00:23:22.680 know if the sack with a dollar sign in it is a sack of money it could be anything could be

00:23:26.520 cotton balls like my goodness this is just how cartoonishly bad they are at lying so you are

00:23:34.040 saying because of the rules you hired someone who called who cost twelve thousand dollars to verify

00:23:38.840 the french and you'll you'll see that elsewhere that's not what i said and again you're making

00:23:42.680 allegations i'm trying to understand your response if i can't understand imagine for other quebecers

00:23:49.640 people understand what you're doing people know what you're doing and people will see what you're 0.96

00:23:53.240 doing you have a right to ask questions yeah they know what he's doing he's taking your butt to the

00:23:58.680 woodshed there because that was not a good looking exchange for mr champagne again dead on the rival

00:24:05.560 a project if they do build this thing it's not going to budge their poll numbers up one inch in

00:24:11.480 fact their polling numbers are probably going to go down if they complete this project if anything

00:24:16.600 the party quebecois provincially in quebec which in a new poll is up about six six seven percent

00:24:22.280 above their next closest rival and that's a lot considering there's like five competitive parties

00:24:27.560 they oppose the project they don't want the project to happen the bloc quebecois don't

00:24:32.280 want the project yes they're a rival party of course they don't want the project but they're

00:24:36.200 the quebec party they usually want more money for quebec and even they hate the project one because

00:24:41.640 the bloc quebecois tends to be an actually fairly suburban rural party in quebec and they don't like

00:24:47.800 that this is just going to basically take a bunch of land away from farmers to build a train that

00:24:52.460 nobody's going to really use, cutting their land oftentimes in two. And it's not a bridge where you

00:24:58.660 can just pull up your truck, wait for the train to pass and keep going through. It's an electric

00:25:02.600 high-speed train. For safety reasons, it has to be fenced off. You can't cross it. You have to

00:25:07.920 cross underneath it. And you're going to have very limited amounts of crossings like that.

00:25:11.940 That's why a lot of farmers don't like the project. Not only don't they don't like just

00:25:16.260 having the government just arbitrarily say, we need your land, we're going to pay you out some

00:25:19.920 money, and then we're just going to build a train through it. But also, it's just, again,

00:25:24.440 the disruption of the land that takes place after. The Quebec people don't really like it. 56%

00:25:30.140 approval doesn't mean much. Plus, that's going to be a lot of people in Montreal who, if you ask

00:25:35.140 them, do you want to build stuff? The very socialistic Montreal voters are going to say yes.

00:25:40.800 Even the Bloc Québécois, a very socialistic party, doesn't like it. They are even saying it's going to potentially balloon to $200 billion for the total costs. And they're not a party that usually balks at money problems. They're not usually the people who are fiscal hawks. But the whole problem is that it's a lot of money for something that people in their voting base either don't like or are completely ambivalent to.

00:26:08.880 And then we get into just normal people who don't like the spending, people who don't like the

00:26:13.920 conflict of interest. This entire committee appearance by Francois Philippe Champagne

00:26:20.720 didn't help the project one bit. Before I end this video I do want to highlight one more bit

00:26:28.720 of testimony from the committee just because I like this MP so much and he is actually hammering

00:26:33.840 on a particular point that i was sort of stressing here and it's michael cooper from i believe it's

00:26:40.640 the edmonton area i always forget his riding but he does a really good job of hammering champagne

00:26:46.240 on the fact that he voted against a removal of the alto train project from budget implementation

00:26:54.960 also and i could come to i see that you're telling me to move on but

00:27:01.360 i am compliant to all of the rules

00:27:05.680 thank you mr chair minister you moved spoke on and voted on

00:27:13.520 measures to advance the alto project through the budget implementation act in various ways

00:27:19.120 and means motions now you spoke about matters of a general application i want to specifically look

00:27:26.560 at the february 25th 2026 vote in which you voted in the house of commons against motion number 44

00:27:35.120 to delete clause 191 did you you voted against that specific motion correct uh mr chow like i

00:27:44.880 said i comply with all the obligation under the act and and the answer the answer minister is you

00:27:50.480 did vote against that motion that was very specific to delete clause 191 now what was in

00:27:58.760 clause 191 the high speed rail network act to delete that from the budget implementation act

00:28:06.560 now minister just to confirm the high speed rail network act dealt exclusively with alto correct

00:28:14.080 so basically what he is saying is when the budget implementation act is every budget basically

00:28:21.760 then it gets you get you first vote on do we like the budget and then we vote on how are we actually

00:28:28.660 going to make this budget function and that's when you get into kind of line by line where is money

00:28:33.500 going to be spent and so effectively what michael cooper is saying is that when it was voted on

00:28:39.540 because the general spending was approved back in November, November, December, I believe the vote

00:28:45.800 was late November. They voted on the budget in November, but then the budget implementation is

00:28:51.900 saying, let us delete, we've already technically approved the ALTO funding in November, but let us

00:28:56.560 remove the budget implementation for ALTO in the Budget Implementation Act so that we can administer

00:29:02.940 and monitor that separately. So we can determine if the money being spent on Alto specifically

00:29:09.620 is ethical or not. We didn't do this previously in November. We're going to do this now to now

00:29:14.680 determine how we're going to be moving this money around to determine if the $90 billion makes sense

00:29:21.140 so we can study the project or determining if we actually want to put the money in the budget

00:29:26.360 that's earmarked for it actually into practice. And the fact that he started dodging on that hard

00:29:31.720 is a big tell that he knows it's a very bad look.

00:29:34.700 If he just said, yeah, I voted for that

00:29:36.020 and I followed all the ethical screens,

00:29:37.760 he could just say yes or no,

00:29:39.180 but he can't actually say yes or no

00:29:41.340 because a yes answer would be very bad for him here.

00:29:43.840 And it's not a weaselly question by Mr. Cooper.

00:29:48.760 Cooper is asking him a very obvious,

00:29:50.800 just did you vote on this or not?

00:29:52.960 Because he knows the implication

00:29:54.240 is that you are effectively not recusing yourself

00:29:57.480 from voting on something

00:29:58.240 that now directly benefits your wife.

00:30:00.520 As I said, Chair, I have always followed all of the rules.

00:30:07.080 My colleague understands as well Section 6.1 and 6.2 of the Act on Conflicts of Interest.

00:30:18.580 ...dealt specifically with the High Speed Rail Network Act, and that Act dealt exclusively

00:30:25.140 with ALTO.

00:30:26.640 you said that the ethics screen was in place by the way great tie and great shirt for our

00:30:33.360 michael cooper i gotta do i gotta do more fashion critiques as i go for it i'm gonna be less

00:30:37.280 negative one i do want your poly of to eventually wear the tie that i gifted his team it was a light

00:30:44.320 brown tie you should try wearing it because he wears too much navy all the time but this

00:30:49.040 great suit great suit and tie combo by michael cooper to prevent you from just making decisions

00:30:55.600 discussing or voting on matters related to ALTO with the caveat that that did not extend to matters

00:31:05.060 of a general application. Motion number 44 was not a matter of a general application.

00:31:11.240 It was very specific. It was specific to advancing the ALTO project. Nothing more and nothing less.

00:31:20.840 Isn't that right?

00:31:21.500 Mr. Chair, as I said, I followed all the rules, and my colleague, I believe, is a lawyer.

00:31:28.640 I would invite him to look at the different modalities of the legislation and the jurisprudence

00:31:34.340 on general application rules and conflicts of interest, and how it allows MPs to participate

00:31:39.780 in votes and debates.

00:31:41.380 This is a principle that is well established not only here in Ottawa, but is included in

00:31:46.300 provincial legislation, and it's a main best practices.

00:31:49.640 minister if that isn't specific if that doesn't relate exclusively to alto then what could be

00:31:59.100 more specific than that then a clause to delete advancing the project because what champagne is

00:32:08.940 trying to do here is pretend like general application well you know my ethical screening

00:32:13.500 doesn't prevent me from just voting on all budget matters just because there's an alto element of it

00:32:17.800 okay fair enough although he wasn't actually honest about what his conflict of interest was

00:32:22.080 back in november when he was hammering through the 90 billion dollars but then during the

00:32:26.480 implementation act he also hasn't done it his wife is still a vice president getting big bonus

00:32:31.940 checks for having helped pass having helped shepherd the project over the finish line

00:32:37.240 and he's saying well my general you know the general this general this generality about me

00:32:44.740 being able to still vote on things just because you know just because alto is a crown corporation

00:32:49.660 doesn't mean i can't do anything in government simply because it is attached to the government

00:32:53.620 but now when it's something only about alto he's just like the general application still applies

00:32:58.780 like what the heck what is as long as we're not literally voting on giving your wife two hundred

00:33:04.140 thousand dollars for fun you're allowed to vote on anything you want oh sorry i'll bring it back

00:33:09.900 up on screen now as i said chair i followed all the rules and okay he's not gonna answer but

00:33:18.860 anyways with all that being said hopefully you found this semi-educational at the very least

00:33:24.140 understanding the depths of liberal corruption right now more people should see clips of this

00:33:30.940 testimony no doubt northern perspectives uh uh like the the the davies are going to be going

00:33:37.180 over this ryan and tanya this is kind of really in their ballpark in terms of they love going over

00:33:42.140 committee testimony but i hope other creators both on youtube and other platforms cover this

00:33:47.980 because this project is already a big liability for uh for the liberals more people need to

00:33:54.860 understand just how lame the excuses are from champagne on this because this is the one area

00:34:02.220 that Carney is trying to improve the popularity the approval rating of the project is by at least

00:34:07.820 trying to get rid of the conflict of interest issues around it so at least it doesn't look

00:34:11.900 like we're passing this just because you know of more liberal insider nonsense that's going on

00:34:16.620 like with the nova scotia space launch pad like they're trying to at least make it look like

00:34:21.740 they're not doing this for corrupt reasons and it's not working there the media might probably

00:34:26.540 put out headlines about how he you know they'll probably put a very vague gray reports that make

00:34:33.500 it look like he somehow answered the questions when he hasn't so i hope more youtubers put out

00:34:38.140 content about this particular issue as it is important and we got to reach the people who are

00:34:43.980 you know will who are still present to persuadable on this matter this isn't just conservative

00:34:49.260 complaining the block hates it too the general public hates it the farmers hate it anyone who

00:34:54.060 who cares about public finance hates it, and there is a corruption element here. No matter

00:34:59.700 what the liberals say that the conservatives are just trying to naysay the project, that's not what

00:35:03.780 is happening. Anyways, with all that being said, thank you guys for watching this video. Like,

00:35:09.820 share, subscribe. Consider hitting the join button and becoming a member of the channel,

00:35:13.900 and I'll see you guys all later.

The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - June 12, 2026

Mark Carney Nightmare： Champagne Lies About Alto Train Conflict of Interest

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