The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - Poilievre under attack： Media and Activists trying to trip him up in Alberta byelection

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. Have you noticed the really dishonest thing the media and activists

00:00:05.980 are currently attempting to do to Federal Conservative Party leader Pierre Polyev?

00:00:11.000 Well, I'm going to break it down for you guys today. So if you didn't already know,

00:00:15.940 Pierre Polyev is currently running in the by-election for Battle River Crowfoot.

00:00:20.600 Damian Couric, a Conservative MP, stepped down so Polyev could run for the riding and get back

00:00:25.940 into Parliament after losing his own riding of Carleton during the general election.

00:00:30.780 And I'll just say right off the bat, Polyev cannot lose this riding. Damian Couric won it with 86%

00:00:37.320 of the vote during the general, so it would be nearly impossible for a candidate to actually

00:00:42.440 beat Polyev in the by-election. I know Polyev lost in Carleton, and I actually thought it was almost

00:00:48.080 impossible for him to lose in Carleton, but with 2020 hindsight, you would notice like I do now

00:00:54.400 that he only ever really won the riding with 10% of the vote. The NDP would usually get about 10%,

00:01:00.460 and that the NDP vote collapsed, and the fact the riding has become more heavily populated with

00:01:05.760 government workers and retired people who tend to vote liberal, it was a stronger possibility than I

00:01:11.860 think most people recognize that Polyev could lose. Plus, Polyev also wasn't able to doorknock at all

00:01:19.120 in Carleton because, you know, he's touring the country as a leader, and that was a riding I'd heard

00:01:24.080 over time. He'd usually doorknock the entire thing twice before Election Day, and so with him not being

00:01:30.320 able to do any work of his own on the ground and having a lot of votes consolidate behind the liberal

00:01:36.020 naturally meant he was more vulnerable than we thought. But now we're going to be talking about

00:01:40.420 Battle River Crowfoot because the median activists are trying to promote small candidates

00:01:46.660 or attack Polyev or basically create a bunch of election issues in order to undermine his vote

00:01:53.780 percentage. Because remember, Damian Couric got 86% of the vote. So in order to hurt Polyev, they don't

00:02:01.100 need Polyev to lose the by-election. If Polyev lost the by-election, his political career would basically

00:02:06.020 be over because that's insane, but it's just not going to happen. I just cannot see anyone actually

00:02:11.560 dropping and riding where the conservatives get the vast majority of the vote. And of course,

00:02:17.300 conservatives have a big campaign on the ground. But what the median activists just have to do

00:02:21.140 is have his percentage of the vote fall below 70%, which isn't even that bad. It's a by-election.

00:02:28.160 Naturally, the sort of people who show up to vote in a by-election are not always the same people who

00:02:32.760 show up in a general. You will have more motivated liberal voters showing up to try and hurt Polyev. 0.73

00:02:37.680 You will have people knowing it's a default conservative riding who vote conservative just

00:02:41.460 stay home. And so what the media wants to do is play up a narrative that it's because of pushback

00:02:47.360 Polyev is getting because he's not that popular of a guy when you really think about it. And I want to

00:02:52.180 jump into some posts in just a second here showing you what's going on right now. But first, I just want

00:02:58.160 to remind you guys, hey, if you like the channel, make sure to leave a like on this video, subscribe if

00:03:04.680 you are not yet a subscriber, and leave a comment on what you think about this whole situation.

00:03:10.660 So I want to start off with the separatists. And I'm just going to use one example of a prominent

00:03:15.760 separatist in the riding. I know separatists don't like being called separatists, pro-independence

00:03:20.040 people. It just doesn't roll off the tongue as well. I'm not throwing shade at you guys.

00:03:24.680 Do what you want. That's fine. I don't hate you. But we have had separatists attacking Polyev for

00:03:30.200 running in Battle River Crowfoot, as if this is an affront to them, because it is supposedly a very

00:03:35.640 pro-separatist part of Alberta. So why would Polyev, a federalist, be running in Battle River Crowfoot?

00:03:43.320 Forgetting the fact that Damien Couric is a federalist, and pretty much anyone who is in

00:03:47.800 federal politics is going to be a federalist. We had this post the other day, which reflects a lot of

00:03:53.780 other posts from independence people, attacking Polyev or not affirming their separatist views.

00:04:00.660 Jeff Rath here, who works with the Alberta Prosperity Project, a very prominent pro-independence

00:04:06.400 organization, says, every CPC voter in Battle River Crowfoot needs to stay home. Just say no to

00:04:13.500 federalism, hashtag Alberta independence. And then watch, Polyev categorically rejects Western 0.53

00:04:19.460 independence. To which I say, why wouldn't he reject it? He's the leader of a national party.

00:04:27.220 I have already broken this down in a short video I did. Jeff Rath, I think, is just completely off

00:04:33.080 the reservation with this attack. It's bad for his movement, and it's bad for conservatives in general.

00:04:38.400 It's bad for federal conservatives, and maybe he doesn't care about them. But if he cares about his

00:04:41.920 own movement, maybe don't start a stupid fight with the federal conservatives by telling people to 0.96

00:04:46.880 stay home if they support Western independence, voting for Polyev doesn't undermine your own 0.95

00:04:52.220 movement. But for some reason, they believe so. But there's lots of federal conservatives telling,

00:04:57.080 or like independent people, telling federal conservatives to stay home. You can't vote

00:05:01.240 for Polyev because it would be very non-pro-independence of you to do, even though these are two completely

00:05:06.900 different levels of government, and the federal level has nothing to do with your independence

00:05:11.760 referendo. So that's been going around. There are independence candidates running against Polyev to

00:05:16.960 try and siphon off some of the conservative vote, who I guess could be maybe shamed into voting for

00:05:22.600 them because they're the independence person and Polyev is not. But now I want to move on to some of

00:05:28.660 the other stuff that's going on. So we have, of course, the longest ballot committee also targeting

00:05:35.340 this riding. Now again, will the longest ballot committee substantially change the macro result

00:05:41.760 of the election? No. Polyev is going to win. This is not going to hurt him that bad. It's not like,

00:05:47.340 it's not going to like cause it to become close. But right now, the longest ballot committee is

00:05:52.700 attempting to get more than 120 people of their own on the ballot, combined with the candidates from

00:05:58.460 the actual parties and other independents who were legitimately wanting to run aside from what the

00:06:04.140 longest ballot committee is doing. Now again, Polyev, rightfully so, is calling this out as effectively

00:06:10.540 a scam as he should. That was his recent quote saying that the longest ballot committee, what they

00:06:15.440 are doing is an election scam. They are basically defrauding the system in order to basically do

00:06:21.600 activism. The longest ballot committee doesn't even make sense. They're apparently in favor of proportional

00:06:27.580 representation, which somehow getting a bunch of random people on a ballot is going to promote.

00:06:34.300 It doesn't. I think they're really just trying to be jokesters at this point. But they've targeted

00:06:40.120 Polyev now twice, first in Carlton, and now in Bell River Crowfoot. Did Polyev lose because of the

00:06:45.620 longest ballot committee in Carlton? No, he did not. But in a by-election where people are already not

00:06:51.720 super motivated to vote because he's going to win anyways, it's another reason for a normal

00:06:56.980 conservative voter, you know, the person who's a default conservative voter who's not like hyper-motivated 0.86

00:07:01.700 to not show up if the ballot is going to look as clownish as this. I'm just going to bring it up 0.81

00:07:08.440 on screen. This is just stupid. Is any, I can't even get the whole thing on screen. This is the 1.00

00:07:15.260 Carlton ballot. Is this normal? Is this legitimate to anybody? And they could fix this. And this is what

00:07:22.740 Polyev is calling for. They could fix this in a second. All you have to do is basically make it

00:07:29.140 that the exact same person cannot act as the official agent for an unlimited amount of candidates.

00:07:36.480 And then what you would then do as a secondary fix is that making it so that candidates cannot be

00:07:41.100 the official agents for other candidates in case they try to find a loophole where one guy is the

00:07:45.920 official candidate for one guy. And then it just keeps going down the list of everyone signing each

00:07:49.740 other's papers. This isn't real democracy. None of these people are attempting to win.

00:07:54.860 They aren't even really making a point. I think they're just being involved in the joke. Many of

00:08:00.200 these people don't even live in the province. Do I really care that much if someone from out of 0.98

00:08:05.480 province runs in a riding? Not really. But when you're doing it just to make election workers' lives

00:08:11.260 harder and to make it so that older people may not want to figure out how to vote. Like think about

00:08:15.940 disabled people who may have a bit of a harder time either moving or being able to see. Now having to

00:08:22.580 look through 120 names in order to find the guy that they actually want to vote for. It's stupid. 1.00

00:08:28.400 And again, if they can damage turnout, I think they are perfectly happy to see Polyev's potential vote 1.00

00:08:33.720 margin come down further. And again, being able to generate the narrative that Polyev ain't that

00:08:39.160 popular of a guy. Maybe the Conservatives should swap him out with Doug Ford. Not that Doug Ford is

00:08:43.960 behind this stuff. But if you were to find the person who benefits most from it, it's probably the red 0.99

00:08:50.160 Tories like Doug Ford who would like to see Polyev go. And this isn't even to say that I don't have 0.89

00:08:55.500 any criticisms of Polyev and the campaign. And I'm just here to basically be like, no one do anything

00:09:00.420 to Polyev. Keep him in place. He has to prove himself every single day. And I will call balls 0.91

00:09:06.000 and strikes. A really big strike was him not firing Jenny Byrne. She's apparently staying on. Really

00:09:13.940 stupid thing to do. The lady who lost the 2015 and now 2025 federal elections as the national campaign 1.00

00:09:20.940 director who just gets to stick around. Why? It's dumb. So just clarifying, I'm perfectly okay with saying

00:09:27.600 whether or not he's making mistakes or not. I thought J.J. McCullough had a really good take on this. And he

00:09:32.580 says, this continues to be the stupid trolling bad faith nonsense. And it's an outrage to the 1.00

00:09:40.200 Elections Canada that continues to put up with it. It's not a quote unquote protest. It's not quote

00:09:45.420 unquote activism. It's just dumb people trying to do what they can to sabotage a politician they don't 0.99

00:09:50.880 like. Absolutely. I think a lot of these people who are signing up just dislike pure Polyev and they 1.00

00:09:56.840 simply want to turn the entire by-election into a circus. But now I want to get to somebody that the

00:10:03.880 media is promoting in this by-election and who I have no ill will towards. I assume that she's a

00:10:10.160 genuine candidate, a genuine person wanting to put her name on the ballot in order to represent

00:10:14.700 the riding. And she doesn't like Polyev as representative. And I am not saying that because

00:10:19.480 like she has a chip on her shoulder. I'm saying that because naturally he is considered the person

00:10:23.520 to beat. She doesn't think he's the right person. So she's running herself. But when else does the

00:10:29.140 media promote small independent candidates against party leaders running for an election? They never

00:10:36.800 do. They are simply spinning against Polyev. So check out this interview with David Cochran

00:10:43.060 and the CBC with this candidate. Bonnie Critchley is running as an independent candidate in the

00:10:47.440 upcoming by-election in Battle River Crowfoot. And she joins me now. Bonnie Critchley, it's good to

00:10:51.180 meet you. Thank you for joining us on the show today. Good morning. Well, at least it's morning

00:10:56.240 here right now. So how are you doing today? I'm very good. How are you doing? Tell us why you've

00:11:00.980 decided to run in this by-election, run against the conservative leader, Pierre Polyev in seat.

00:11:06.940 It really boils down to my slogan, which isn't a slogan. It's simply the truth. It's,

00:11:14.340 this is our home. This is our riding. We just had an election and we spent all that money and we

00:11:20.740 elected the candidate of our choice who promptly turned around and said, no, I don't want that

00:11:27.080 mandate I asked you for. And we're spending another $2 million to vote in the guy from, angry guy from

00:11:33.900 Ottawa, who doesn't know jack about this area. He may have been born in Calgary, but he's from Ottawa.

00:11:44.180 Okay. Now I'm not going to be rude to her. She's a military veteran. Thank you for your service, Bonnie.

00:11:49.480 Not undermining that at all. I think this is just a, she's making a massive category error about what 0.77

00:11:56.500 politics are about. In a lot, or in a large sense, I don't care if the person representing my riding is

00:12:02.700 from Montreal. If they vote the right way, they're doing the right things. The thing is that people

00:12:07.640 in Battle River Crowfoot want somebody who is conservative and small government. Bonnie Critchie,

00:12:16.400 from what I've seen from her, the fact that she's going on very far left podcasts like Laura Babcock

00:12:22.100 doesn't mean she's far left, but I would assume she's a little more liberal. Now, I don't really

00:12:28.160 care if Polyev knows all the parks in my riding. If he knows he's visited every single town, although

00:12:34.680 Polyev is visiting every single place he can find. Polyev also grew up in Calgary. I'm pretty sure

00:12:39.800 he's familiar with Drumheller and a lot of these other areas that are in Battle River Crowfoot.

00:12:44.240 But the idea that like, oh, I'm running because he doesn't understand the place enough. He doesn't

00:12:48.340 know Jack and he's a guy from Ottawa. He's from Calgary. He just happened to become an MP for

00:12:52.500 Ottawa because of like, you know, just the way the history works, the course of history. He was a

00:12:57.780 staffer in Ottawa and decided to run for riding nobody else really wanted as a conservative candidate

00:13:02.380 and it ended up winning despite not being from there. But her reasoning here doesn't really strike

00:13:11.320 me as like television worthy. Probably a really nice person. Again, great military service. But why

00:13:19.460 is David Cochran having her on on power and politics to talk about her independent run based on something

00:13:26.760 that's kind of a generic reason to run as an independent? Oh, this guy's not from here. He

00:13:30.860 doesn't understand us. Well, does she understand people in her own riding if she holds very liberal

00:13:36.320 values? Again, I don't exactly know what she's running on here. But again, the people she

00:13:40.760 associates with and the show she goes on feel more center left. She is the odd woman out in her 0.98

00:13:47.060 riding. She represents potentially what is only 14% of the riding, like considering the general

00:13:54.260 election results. And so I kind of find this a little, again, I'm not trying to be rude, but it just

00:13:59.840 feels a little bit dishonest the way that this is being done from the media's perspective. This person is

00:14:05.980 being propped up as, well, they're the real, you know, the real daughter of the soil that people

00:14:11.580 should be voting for, and trying to get people to turn out to vote for Bonnie or vote for anybody

00:14:16.300 else because Polioff's not from here. Wow, who could have guessed he's not from here? He's having

00:14:20.640 to run in a by-election because he didn't win Carleton. And by the way, who cares if Damien Kirk got the

00:14:27.000 mandate? The thing is that we want Parliament to function. And to function properly, you kind of want the

00:14:32.680 leaders to be able to actually operate within Parliament, because it is really difficult to

00:14:37.700 have a leader basically playing mafia telephone by having to say something to some MP to then go

00:14:42.740 into the House of Commons to basically relay his message. And all he can do is do like a press

00:14:47.320 conference once in a while. It heavily undermines our political system to not have the leader in

00:14:52.980 Parliament. He hasn't been here. He hasn't lived here. And even if he had stayed in Calgary,

00:14:58.400 this is a very different area than the urban centres he's used to.

00:15:03.620 So you're mad. You don't like what Damien Couric has done. You don't like what Pierre

00:15:07.520 Polyev has done, even though there is a long tradition in Canadian politics of backbenchers

00:15:13.700 giving up their seat for the leader. You don't like this one bit.

00:15:17.540 Well, yeah, I would agree. Normally, yes. But this unseated leader didn't, it's not that he didn't

00:15:25.480 have a seat. It's that he didn't bother to show up for his constituents. So they fired him.

00:15:31.600 What is she talking about? He didn't show up for his constituents. He was reelected every single,

00:15:36.460 he was elected in 2004, and was reelected every single time up until 2025. Now, in a certain sense,

00:15:44.660 he lost because he wasn't able to show up because he's a party leader doing a national tour,

00:15:48.760 and wasn't able to hit every single door and is riding twice like he used to do,

00:15:53.180 in order to keep that 10% margin. That actually demonstrated he did show up. It's a very

00:15:57.680 not super safe riding over time that he made what seemingly was a safe riding by the time

00:16:03.840 he was running for prime minister in 2025. But I love David Cochran was kind of like setting her

00:16:09.360 up there like, okay, well, here's some flags on the field people may throw down on because on your

00:16:14.820 narrative that this actually happens all the time. And she's like, well, I don't care because he

00:16:19.120 already had a riding. Like, well, William Lyon McKenzie King lost twice in local ridings and

00:16:24.620 then had to run by elections. And he was like, our longest serving prime minister ever. And that

00:16:29.820 guy lost two local elections at one point. It just doesn't really matter. But again, the whole point

00:16:36.460 of this is raising the profile of an independent, so that maybe you can get a lot of locals to be

00:16:41.240 like, oh, I like the local narrative. This is a local person. Well, what are her values? If they're

00:16:46.560 not super conservative, then she actually doesn't represent the riding. And now he just assumes

00:16:51.820 we're going to vote him in when he lived in the same town as his constituents. We're 3,000

00:16:58.020 kilometers west. You think he's going to show up here ever? So you don't buy it that he's running

00:17:05.040 to represent this riding, to be the voice of Battle River Crowfoot in Parliament. Do you think

00:17:10.540 this is just a path back to the House of Commons so we can get back into question period and those

00:17:14.080 things? Absolutely. We are being used, and myself and my neighbors.

00:17:21.460 But where was Bonnie Crickley? This is where I get a little bit annoyed. Where is Bonnie Crickley 1.00

00:17:27.180 when Mark Carney was running for prime minister in a country where he didn't even have a residence?

00:17:33.980 When were the media on him? When were the media interviewing tons of people saying,

00:17:37.620 we don't even know if this guy even holds a residence within Canada still?

00:17:40.620 When were they, did they ever really go after Carney for running in Nepean and literally telling

00:17:47.600 the current MP candidate there to just basically screw off so then he could take it? That happened.

00:17:53.920 The media wasn't there. They didn't have locals showing up and being like, he hasn't lived here

00:17:57.380 for so long. He doesn't even know what's in and outside of the boundaries of the riding because he

00:18:01.300 kept messing up whether or not certain parks were in it or not that were actually like 30 kilometers

00:18:06.140 away. The thing, they're only doing this now because they want to hurt Polyev. It's about

00:18:12.400 reducing Polyev's voting margin of victory in order so that they can spin ahead of the federal

00:18:18.960 conservative AGM that he's on a downward trend and he's a loser and he can't win the next election.

00:18:24.860 So conservatives better kick him out and throw someone, even someone worse in like Doug Ford. 0.93

00:18:30.220 But now I just want to jump over to another clip. I think I have it queued up, but it's not super

00:18:34.960 important. I'm just demonstrating what I mean by having Bonnie Crickley go on left-wing media. 1.00

00:18:43.460 Again, I don't think that she genuinely is somebody who represents the views of the riding. You can

00:18:49.560 know where every fence post is in your riding, but it doesn't mean that if you're like, and I'm not

00:18:54.640 saying she is this, I'm just using hyperbolic example. If you're a communist in Battle River Crowfoot,

00:18:59.460 do you represent the riding better than Polyev would because you know the riding? Well, not

00:19:04.520 really. Your values are completely opposite to the riding. You can be a local son or daughter of the

00:19:11.100 soil, but not understand people in your riding at all. And again, I don't think she served in the

00:19:16.560 military. I'm going to keep clarifying that, but that doesn't really matter when it's partisan

00:19:21.760 electoral politics where people don't care how often you mention specific niche details about the

00:19:27.680 riding in Parliament. You really can't do anything about it. That's why you have city

00:19:31.500 councillors and provincial representatives who can actually, you know, touch on the pothole issues

00:19:36.480 and can go over a lot of the agricultural policy or and regulations and land use requirements and

00:19:43.160 whatnot that are hurting the riding potentially or helping it. That federal politics is very up in

00:19:48.740 the air. It's very, like, more abstract issues people are taking on. It's just general taxes.

00:19:55.880 It's foreign policy, stuff like that, that doesn't really require you to know Drumheller,

00:20:02.260 like frontward and backward. But here is Laura Babcock promoting her, having her on her show. Again,

00:20:08.740 Laura Babcock is this extremely left-wing liberal that Bonnie is going on the show of, which again, 1.00

00:20:15.560 kind of indicates to me she's probably not the typical Damien Kirk voter in the last general election.

00:20:21.440 We don't like being used, and that's exactly what we are. It's not about him. It is not about

00:20:27.720 Monsieur Poeliev. It's not about me. It is about my neighbors. It is about maintaining a voice for my

00:20:34.160 neighbors in Battle River Crowfoot. I was enjoying my retirement. I don't want to do this. I wanted to do

00:20:41.700 this about as much as I wanted to go to Afghanistan and get shot at every day. But I can't sit idle. It's just

00:20:49.560 not in my nature to sit idle while I see injustices. And it's just not right for a guy to not just...

00:20:57.700 Here's the thing, and this is where there's a naivete. Do you think in federal politics,

00:21:04.560 MPs just say whatever they want? They really don't. One of my least favorite things about

00:21:11.360 politics in Canada is how leader-centric it all is. If you don't agree, if the leader doesn't agree

00:21:16.440 with your opinion, you usually can't say it. You know, they usually don't want you sounding off

00:21:21.120 about your local issues because it doesn't make for great clips to play online. Yeah, a lot of times,

00:21:28.720 like MPs do, like, shout out people in their riding and they do highlight some local issues,

00:21:33.520 but it's usually attaching local issues to national issues, which everyone can already

00:21:39.140 identify. It's not like, you know, supply management for Alberta. Like, it's not like our provincial

00:21:45.580 politicians don't understand the problem unless they live in an area where those farmers have been 0.93

00:21:50.180 cut out of the system. You can understand it even if you live in, like, downtown Toronto. Even if you

00:21:54.840 live up in the Yukon, you can understand issues in other parts of the country. So I always, again,

00:21:59.900 it's silly when it's just like, oh, we need a local voice. Local voice? Go to the United States.

00:22:04.820 That's where you're actually going to have politicians who have far more of an ability

00:22:07.760 to give you a local voice. In Canadian politics, there's almost borderline no local voice because,

00:22:13.620 again, it is leader-centric and you are told what to say and what to do. And I think if a party wants

00:22:19.180 to win, actually, one day, they should become more local. They should become more like that. But what?

00:22:24.380 You're running because why didn't you run in previous elections? That's just not how Canadian 0.61

00:22:30.040 politics works. Why didn't you run because the candidates were not local enough in how they

00:22:35.360 advocated for the riding? Because it's not like, did she identify that Damien Kirk was doing a

00:22:41.320 fantastic job? I really doubt she was even voting for him. So I think this is all kind of dishonest.

00:22:47.720 It's a little bit bad faith running when all of her complaints that she is saying now could have been

00:22:52.860 made in any previous election based on the way the Canadian political system works.

00:22:58.180 This is only coming up now because it's Polly. Let's be honest. The only reason the media is 1.00

00:23:03.100 pushing her is because it's a by-election with Polly. If this was a by-election where, you know, 0.99

00:23:08.780 naturally somebody retired or someone had passed away and they were filling the seat

00:23:12.880 and a conservative was running who lived, you know, in Calgary, running in Balor over Crowfoot,

00:23:17.760 would she be stepping up? Because, oh my goodness, the conservative guys from Calgary,

00:23:20.600 no, she wouldn't. She wouldn't care. It's because it's Polly. Anyways, so that should be it for me

00:23:26.860 today, guys. Again, make sure to like this video, subscribe to the channel, leave a comment, do all

00:23:31.660 that fantastic stuff. It really helps us in the algorithm. And also, I am going to be linking

00:23:36.920 one of my videos from Juno News in the description as well as pinned at the top of the comments of this

00:23:42.920 video. If you haven't seen that, I am also now doing a show for Juno News. Make sure to go check that

00:23:48.920 out as well as just check out their other content. They do a very good job. And with that being said,

00:23:54.440 I will see you guys all later.

The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - July 19, 2025

Poilievre under attack： Media and Activists trying to trip him up in Alberta byelection

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