00:00:00.000Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here, and welcome back to the National Telegraph YouTube channel.
00:00:06.140This Alto high-speed rail project is turning into a massive political liability for Prime
00:00:12.200Minister Mark Carney and his Liberal government, and they thought this thing was going to be a big
00:00:18.200winner for them. And it turns out, nobody likes it. Quebec nationalists don't like it, Quebec and
00:00:24.540Ontario farmers don't like it, people who care about public finance don't like the $90 to $200
00:00:29.920billion dollar final price tag for the project, and there is a massive conflict of interest scandal
00:00:36.620floating around the Alto train project, which Carney is now trying to diffuse to try and save
00:00:42.280the project, which is why Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne finally testified
00:00:47.980in front of the Ethics Committee about his conflict of interest, which is his wife became
00:00:53.700the Vice President of Environment for Alto two months before the Liberal government hammered
00:00:59.100through the $60 to $90 billion funding for the project, which again could balloon up to $200
00:01:05.560billion when all is said and done. I'm disappointed in Champagne, not because I expect anything good
00:01:13.120from him, but I expected him to be a better liar. He basically exposes himself for lying0.61
00:01:19.500in his own committee testimony, because the narrative he's been spinning is that he disclosed
00:01:25.740that he had this conflict of interest. The ethics commissioner knew about it, and the ethics
00:01:30.280commissioner cleared him. But what he is about to explain here is basically how he weaseled out
00:01:36.820of actually doing a proper ethical disclosure of his conflict of interest. Anyways, I'm going to
00:01:43.580get into the Senate testimony in just a second here, and then some of the questioning from the
00:01:48.040conservative MPs on the committee. But before I get into it, I just want to remind you guys,
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00:02:11.520the channel more sustainable and allow me to be less reliant on the YouTube algorithm. Salute to
00:02:16.620all the members out there. But here is Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne in his
00:02:22.480opening statement, basically exposing the whole grift that he's been doing on this conflict of
00:02:28.820interest screening. Earlier this year, news reports suggested that someone close to me
00:02:34.000had been hired as an employee of this Crown Corporation, which is a wholly owned subsidiary
00:02:40.700of the Government of Canada, and reports to the Parliament of Canada through the Minister of
00:02:46.220transport. However, the relevant facts date back well before the publication of these articles.
00:02:53.340On July 3rd, 2025, the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
00:02:58.700was informed that someone close to me had received a job offer from the aforementioned
00:03:03.980Crown Corporation. I then contacted the office directly and was told that no risk of a conflict
00:03:11.340of interest arose from the circumstances in question several months later further exchanges
00:03:16.540with the office confirmed this same conclusion no that you see what he did there it's a rhetorical
00:03:24.540trick it's effectively he he disclosed his conflict of interest before it actually mattered
00:03:32.620of course the the office of the ethics commissioner cleared him of a conflict of interest
00:03:37.900when his wife didn't yet work there there's no conflict of interest in being offered a job the
00:03:44.300conflict comes when you work there because obviously he wasn't really doing anything
00:03:49.740for the train project back in july but a couple months later she is then hired by alto and then
00:03:57.340a couple months after that he is hammering through funding for the project in fact he literally fought
00:04:04.540to not have the alto train funding removed from the greater budget basically what conservative
00:04:11.340mps and i believe the bloc quebecois also wanted to do was take the alto funding carve it off of
00:04:16.860the main budget vote on the main budget and then vote on the alto funding separately so it can be
00:04:22.380properly debated because it's really hard to debate the alto funding when you're trying to also
00:04:28.140tackle other things in the budget it's such a big monster of an issue we should be having a
00:04:32.700completely different discussion where we can put all of our speaking time towards that rather than
00:04:37.900having to sort of like fraction off our budget speaking time to also tackle the alto issue he
00:04:44.300voted to not actually slice off alto to be voted on and discussed separately because he knew the
00:04:50.780only way that this thing was going to get through is if it was just mashed into the rest of the
00:04:55.580budget but anyways i'll let him speak a little bit further then i want to move on to first michael
00:05:00.540barrett's questioning and then there is another conservative mp from quebec who also went after
00:05:06.140him for another issue that has just arisen around alto despite these repeated confirmation that no
00:05:13.100conflict of interest existed and that no screen was required i nevertheless chose out of an
00:05:21.660abundance of caution to implement and maintain an ethics screen to avoid any appearance of a
00:05:27.340conflict of interest and to assure Canadians of the integrity of the decision-making process,
00:05:34.220as evidenced by the letter dated September 10, 2025, a copy of which was duly sent to the Office
00:05:40.780of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner. Colleagues, I have acted in the same manner in
00:05:46.780which I have always carried out my duties as a Member of Parliament and as Minister with
00:05:51.900rigor integrity and in accordance with my obligations i have had the honor of working
00:05:57.660no okay french bilbo baggins here is just lying the september letter again is just reasserting
00:06:05.660that his wife had gotten a job offer he didn't then disclose that she was a vice president i
00:06:11.260don't even think they share the last name so it's hard to tell like it's not like someone could have
00:06:15.260just found this out themselves it wasn't until april of 2026 i believe it was either march or
00:06:20.940april where he finally was forced to disclose the fact that his wife is in fact a vice president of
00:06:26.680environmental alto september july those disclosures don't matter him checking in with the ethics
00:06:34.780commissioner saying by the way it's not a problem that my wife was offered a job and the commissioner
00:06:41.040is like well yeah there's no problem with being offered a job people get offered jobs all the
00:06:45.560time. That's not a conflict of interest. He never then refiled until April that his wife is a vice
00:06:52.380president. So when he's voting on the budget, when he's fighting to not remove ALTO funding from the
00:06:57.700budget, when he's advocating for ALTO, nobody actually knows that his wife is a VP. The ethics
00:07:03.900commissioner only knows that his wife was once offered a job, which obviously nobody has a
00:07:09.760problem with until she's hired. And by the way, there has already been, basically he says, well,
00:07:15.180there's no there's no personal enrichment for my family member by voting on an entire like train
00:07:21.460project. Yes, there is. Yes. Just because your wife doesn't like own the train project doesn't
00:07:27.440mean that your wife is not benefiting. He's basically saying it'd only be corrupt if I
00:07:31.620basically passed a bill saying let's give $200,000 to my wife, the vice president of environment at
00:07:37.280Alto. No, she had on average, the bonuses that were handed out on average, the executives were
00:07:44.280getting $68,000 in the aftermath of the Alto Train project being approved by the Liberal
00:07:50.760government. They've already spent $260 plus million on this project since Trudeau gave it
00:07:58.280funding back in last February. They've been burning up a storm of funds. I'd love to know
00:08:05.600what her salary is. We already know generally in the ballpark what her bonus was. So yes,1.00
00:08:12.900there absolutely is a conflict here and he was covering it up but now i want to jump forward to
00:08:18.520michael barrett asking questions to him because he points out what we all know that no he was not
00:08:25.560actually putting up a proper ethical barrier he was in fact voting for all these things while
00:08:31.420having not disclosed the actual role his wife had then had regarding the project that being said
00:08:38.240You 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.
00:08:58.360And there's no recusal publicly posted with respect to cabinet decisions or discussions.
00:09:07.080So we're left to understand that you didn't recuse yourself there.
00:09:12.080And 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.
00:09:26.740If 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?
00:09:49.520Like I said very specifically, Mr. Chair, I did that in abundance of caution, very mindful of the law.
00:10:54.860But I wanted to make sure that I did not participate in the decisions with respect to this project.
00:11:01.440But 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.
00:11:11.080The 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.
00:11:23.760I 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.
00:11:35.600So 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.
00:11:56.620He looks like Martin Freeman. I have to cut him off just to say that because I had to look it up.
00:12:00.280he's basically saying, well, because I have made the disclosures, that doesn't preclude me
00:12:05.620from being able to participate as long as I was fully transparent with where the conflicts were
00:12:10.120at so people could basically take or leave my opinions based on that. The problem is that he
00:12:17.320didn't properly disclose it. People didn't know that his wife worked at Alto at this point. You
00:12:22.040think that that would have been a big explosive scandal at the time when he was debating for
00:12:27.400these things and passing them if people knew it the reason that it became such a big thing in early
00:12:32.2202026 is that's the first time people found out she was working for alto not just that she was
00:12:38.020offered a job but again he's trying to play fast and loose with the timeline here in order to get
00:12:43.440away with what is very obviously unethical behavior so i i'd like to know what it is that the
00:12:49.780precautions that you took actually prevented you from doing because you did go on to do those things
00:12:55.480that you believe to be of a general application.
00:14:35.120So now I want to move on to the next clip I want to play
00:14:38.000that I believe it was Sheila Gunn-Reed at Rebel News posted
00:14:40.820of a Conservative MP from Quebec following up on this issue
00:14:46.560of an alto executive being paid money by the finance ministry to go over the french of the
00:14:54.220budget basically you know giving them access to massaging in french how he's going to be pitching
00:15:00.200the alto train project so check this out i'm sorry everything's being done by translators but this is
00:15:05.680just the this is the annoyance of canadian politics we have to have to keep switching between
00:15:09.700languages and one day someone's probably going to require us to have indigenous languages be spoken
00:15:14.520half the time too i'm a kinesiologist and i've been here for about a year i'm not a lawyer but
00:15:22.520there are things that i find strange and i wanted to ask questions about it i'm happy that you talked
00:15:26.840about the commissioner because the commissioner asked us to include the appearance of a conflict
00:15:31.240of interest in the legislation and the appearance of a conflict of interest is what we're talking
00:15:35.000about here so we want to include it in the report we have just asked for a document but you have
00:15:42.600all refuse that we access this document you're saying that it's so clear why can't we have it
00:15:48.920but all the liberals just voted against my last question is on your speech
00:15:56.84012 000 for a speech written by somebody who works for alto perhaps my question is simple
00:16:03.480how can you ask an employee to write a speech that has to do with promoting the company that
00:16:10.520they work for and then having taxpayers pay for that so how do you influence
00:16:22.520how is that going to influence the project mr hardy now in just a second here there's going to
00:16:27.400be a little bit of back and forth where he's speaking and gabriel hardy the quebec mp is
00:16:33.320speaking too and so the translator is having to talk for both of them so i will be kind of
00:16:37.560of demarcating one that is sometimes happening here i have a lot of respect for you and i'm happy
00:16:41.740that there are a lot of people like you who are coming to parliament but again you're making
00:16:47.420allegations and i'm asking you to be prudent did you not pay twelve thousand dollars and that's
00:16:53.140her translating that hardy is following up did you pay from your finance ministry budget twelve
00:16:58.520thousand dollars to an alto executive to punch up the french part of your speech to help work on
00:17:04.120your french part you made allegations that person was not an employee for a long time that's why i'm
00:17:12.780saying it's allegations but how much time that's what's concerning i'm trying to help you because
00:17:18.340you're making allegations for those who are watching us they've heard these allegations and
00:17:24.740they're unfounded there would be an objection if we were in the courts because you don't have any
00:17:32.880facts that person i like how he brings up you don't have any facts right before right before
00:17:40.480hardy asked this new question he just brought up the fact that they have not they've been actually
00:17:45.620voting down being able to release some of the documents related to these ethical conflict of
00:17:51.200interest issues he's like well you know a court would have shut you down right now well a court
00:17:55.140would have forced them to disclose some of these some of these reports that you don't actually want
00:17:59.660out there some of these correspondences now what is effectively going on is that he's again
00:18:05.100using effectively technicalities to get away with the because what hardy is getting at is you know
00:18:12.860you paid twelve thousand dollars yes or no to somebody who worked for alto or went on to work
00:18:19.680for alto and basically champagne is like trying to answer and not answer at the same time he's
00:18:27.880saying, well, they weren't an employee for very long. Well, of who? Alto? You? Were they still
00:18:33.960working for Alto at the time? Because regardless, it still looks bad. Let's say even, let's say they
00:18:38.880worked for Champagne exclusively at the time. He was working for the finance minister. He had maybe
00:18:44.780a five-month gig helping get the budget together. He didn't work at Alto yet at all, never did
00:18:50.340previously. Wasn't it weird that the guy helped you punch up your French speech and then right
00:18:55.540after it is the budget is delivered and you vote to hammer through alto funding this guy then goes
00:19:02.260and joins the executive team of alto right in time to get a 68 000 average bonus check that's kind of
00:19:10.580a problem i don't know about you guys maybe i'm just a particularly persnickety person but i find
00:19:17.060this to be a little bit problematic had left for months we followed all of the rules regarding
00:19:24.420contracts the screen was in place so that's why i'm saying that you should be prudent i understand
00:19:29.540that you have the right to ask questions so the alto executive maybe left they had they had they
00:19:36.580had a time gap between working at alto and working for the ministry that's what i'm getting from this
00:19:42.100but that doesn't really change does the guy work still at the ministry of finance or does he back
00:19:47.380at alto that is the problem we're having here and the fact that he's being so avoidant is not really
00:19:53.300you know a sign that the answer is something that we don't want to hear but i do invite you to be
00:19:58.500cautious because you're saying things that are not that are not true well the proof is that
00:20:04.740that person if she had just left but she worked for alto or they worked for alto and you paid
00:20:09.860twelve thousand dollars for their speech i understand that you're saying well the legislation
00:20:15.220allows you to do certain things but canadians are watching this and they're losing trust in
00:20:19.380in their institutions and you said that your role is to ensure to maintain trust in institutions
00:20:23.880but unfortunately since I've been here liberals are always putting themselves in positions
00:20:28.800where people start to wonder you have a responsibility Mr. Minister that's your
00:20:34.800opinion Mr. Hardy I mean a lot of Canadians who don't share your opinion and that's why we need
00:20:40.860to make a distinction between opinions and facts that's your opinion and if you're making allegations
00:20:47.320just make sure that you can back it up you need to share facts we have a privilege to be here at
00:20:55.920this committee this is the ethics committee and facts need to lead did you pay $12,000 did you
00:21:02.900pay someone $12,000 to write a speech that's a fact again that's an allegation you're talking
00:21:10.680the department of finance and we paid for a service from someone who helped us to ensure that
00:21:19.960the french in the speech but also in the entire budget process
00:21:28.680so that person helped us ensure that everything was done correctly and that follows all of the
00:21:32.840rules and it happened in previous budgets as well it was sorry is this the only person
00:21:38.040from the hills that came down who knows how to speak french to help you on the french part of
00:21:42.280the budget it just so happens that they used to work at alto and you paid them twelve thousand
00:21:48.840dollars for a budget speech uh was like that their salary for like multiple months or was
00:21:54.200that just a couple weeks of them helping and they were paid twelve thousand dollars i don't know
00:21:58.840your wife is the vice president of environment at alto which to me sounds like a fake position
00:22:04.520and we know it sounds fake because they only hired her for that position two months before the budget
00:22:08.840vote happened they did they not need it before was there a previous vice president of environment
00:22:14.280there's a lot of fake positions at alto there are 13 or 19 i forget the number of vice presidents
00:22:19.880for this project which has not actually put down an inch of track yet but has somehow spent over a
00:22:26.600quarter billion dollars just surveying just kind of consulting i don't even think they're doing
00:22:32.920serving that that's too much on the ground work it's coffee meetings about nothing so far it's
00:22:38.920just meetings about with engineers talking about the feasibility and whatnot doing studies doing
00:22:45.320advertising campaigns for the project that nobody actually likes i i love how he's just like that's
00:22:51.800not a fact that's an allegation it's like francois philippe champagne is just sitting there with a big
00:22:56.200sack of money this is the sack of money and he's just like is that a sack of money no well that's
00:23:02.600an allegation that you're alleging that this with a giant money sign on it is a big sack of money
00:23:08.600but it could be a big sack of anything well can i see it no no government backed me up here tell
00:23:15.400them 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
00:23:18.680have facts and you don't know if this giant sack of money is a giant sack of money i mean you don't
00:23:22.680know if the sack with a dollar sign in it is a sack of money it could be anything could be
00:23:26.520cotton balls like my goodness this is just how cartoonishly bad they are at lying so you are
00:23:34.040saying because of the rules you hired someone who called who cost twelve thousand dollars to verify
00:23:38.840the french and you'll you'll see that elsewhere that's not what i said and again you're making
00:23:42.680allegations i'm trying to understand your response if i can't understand imagine for other quebecers
00:23:49.640people understand what you're doing people know what you're doing and people will see what you're0.96
00:23:53.240doing you have a right to ask questions yeah they know what he's doing he's taking your butt to the
00:23:58.680woodshed there because that was not a good looking exchange for mr champagne again dead on the rival
00:24:05.560a project if they do build this thing it's not going to budge their poll numbers up one inch in
00:24:11.480fact their polling numbers are probably going to go down if they complete this project if anything
00:24:16.600the party quebecois provincially in quebec which in a new poll is up about six six seven percent
00:24:22.280above their next closest rival and that's a lot considering there's like five competitive parties
00:24:27.560they oppose the project they don't want the project to happen the bloc quebecois don't
00:24:32.280want the project yes they're a rival party of course they don't want the project but they're
00:24:36.200the quebec party they usually want more money for quebec and even they hate the project one because
00:24:41.640the bloc quebecois tends to be an actually fairly suburban rural party in quebec and they don't like
00:24:47.800that this is just going to basically take a bunch of land away from farmers to build a train that
00:24:52.460nobody's going to really use, cutting their land oftentimes in two. And it's not a bridge where you
00:24:58.660can just pull up your truck, wait for the train to pass and keep going through. It's an electric
00:25:02.600high-speed train. For safety reasons, it has to be fenced off. You can't cross it. You have to
00:25:07.920cross underneath it. And you're going to have very limited amounts of crossings like that.
00:25:11.940That's why a lot of farmers don't like the project. Not only don't they don't like just
00:25:16.260having the government just arbitrarily say, we need your land, we're going to pay you out some
00:25:19.920money, and then we're just going to build a train through it. But also, it's just, again,
00:25:24.440the disruption of the land that takes place after. The Quebec people don't really like it. 56%
00:25:30.140approval doesn't mean much. Plus, that's going to be a lot of people in Montreal who, if you ask
00:25:35.140them, do you want to build stuff? The very socialistic Montreal voters are going to say yes.
00:25:40.800Even 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.
00:26:08.880And then we get into just normal people who don't like the spending, people who don't like the
00:26:13.920conflict of interest. This entire committee appearance by Francois Philippe Champagne
00:26:20.720didn't help the project one bit. Before I end this video I do want to highlight one more bit
00:26:28.720of testimony from the committee just because I like this MP so much and he is actually hammering
00:26:33.840on a particular point that i was sort of stressing here and it's michael cooper from i believe it's
00:26:40.640the edmonton area i always forget his riding but he does a really good job of hammering champagne
00:26:46.240on the fact that he voted against a removal of the alto train project from budget implementation
00:26:54.960also and i could come to i see that you're telling me to move on but