Why Conservatives supported the Liberals Bill C-5？
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Summary
Bill C-5 passed the House of Commons with the support of the Conservative Party of Canada. Many were confused as to why the Tories voted in favour of this bill. Is it a good bill? Is it bad? And why did they vote for it?
Transcript
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Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. You would rightfully assume if things are going to get passed in this
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parliament, it's mostly going to be passed with the liberals being joined with either the NDP
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or the Bloc Québécois. But a couple of days ago, a bill was actually passed with the help of the
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federal conservatives. And now we are going to break down why that is, because a lot of people
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were confused as to why Pierre Polyev's conservatives would ever vote in favor of
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something that Mark Carney's liberals put forward. And it's actually a kind of complicated situation.
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Is Bill C-5, the one we are talking about today, a very long title, An Act to An Act,
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the Free Trade and Labor Mobility in Canada Act and the Building Canada Act? Very, very fluid title
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there, just rolls right off the tongue. But a lot of people were thinking like, this is kind of strange,
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is this the unit party all coming together, showing itself to us, and they don't care about
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average Canadians? No. Is it a good bill? No. Did the conservatives vote for it for good reason?
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Yes. And that's a very strange thing for me to vocalize here. And I'm going to break it down
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in just a second. I just want to remind you guys, hey, if you like my show and you like the way I talk
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about politics, make sure to drop a like on this video, go and click that like button, subscribe to
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the channel if you are not yet a subscriber. We are trying to make it to 100,000 subscribers by
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mid-December of this year. And also leave a comment on what you think on this fairly controversial bill,
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because definitely there is going to be a lot of discussion about it in the coming days.
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So this bill, Bill C-5, I am calling it bad. At the same time, I fully understand why the
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conservatives voted for it. This is one of those things where to vote against it, you would end up
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suffering the consequences of anything good that comes from it. But if you vote for it,
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and nothing good comes of it, you don't really suffer any consequences. And that is what has
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gone on here. Do I think that what Mark Carney is going to do with this bill will start modernizing
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Canada, get pipelines built, you know, create his vaunted energy corridor, get bridges built, do all
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this stuff? No, I don't think he's going to build more ports. I don't think he's going to do
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really anything major with this bill. It's a lot of showy kind of politics that I'm passing a bill
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that says we're going to get stuff done. And so as a conservative MP, are you going to sit there and
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say, I vote against the get stuff done bill? At worst, it doesn't get stuff done. And no one's
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going to blame you for voting for it. It was called the get stuff done bill. And so that's kind of the
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game that's taking place right now. I just want to show this CBC article because I think they
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actually do a pretty good job of actually summing this thing up. They say in this article, headline
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right here, liberal majority projects bill passes, liberals major projects bill passes House of
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Commons with conservative support. Sorry for reading that wrong. I've been on flights and trips and road
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trips for like the last two and a half weeks. It's ridiculous. But this article says the liberal
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government's major projects legislation passed in the House of Commons on Friday evening as MPs wrapped up
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the spring parliamentary sitting. Bill C-5, the One Canada Economy Act, essentially gives cabinet the
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ability to pick certain projects to speed through the regulatory process with an eye to projects that
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can deliver an economic boost to Canada, help strengthen the country's autonomy and resilience,
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quote, advance the interests of indigenous people, unquote, and contribute to a, quote, clean economy.
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And those last two things are very key there as to why I'm saying that this bill may not get
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anything done. Because what Carney is doing in this bill is saying I want to get stuff done.
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At the same time, when it comes to something like pipelines, all the provinces have to agree to do
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it. And you have to do endless consultations with indigenous band councils. And you have to do it in
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like endless consultations on environmental safety, that environmental groups can hold up and slow down
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and force you to do over again. So this is one of those things where conservatives are basically
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letting the liberals have what they want, and then let them fail on their own terms. If they succeed and
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they start building tons of pipelines, well, we can't really sit here and complain. It would be a
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good thing if we started building pipelines. Would it feel a little bit raw in terms of like, this is
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sort of hypocritical that you guys held up projects forever, and now you're basically doing what the
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conservatives wanted to do? That would suck, but at least we'd be building pipelines and average
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people's lives would be getting better. I think the gamble the conservatives are making,
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and I think it's an 80% plus gamble to be making, is that the liberals are going to get maybe a couple
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things done with this. But by the next election, they're not going to talk a lot about the Major
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Projects Act. They're not going to be marketing this as a reason to reelect them because it's probably
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going to be something that doesn't really get used a lot. Cabinet can speed up projects, but Cabinet
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doesn't like a lot of projects. Do you think that they're going to start speeding up new
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mines? They're going to start speeding up oil and gas projects or pipelines? No, no. Again,
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Mark Carney is saying, okay, yeah, we'll get stuff done, but you have to go through this checklist of
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other people in order to get your project sped up, which means nothing's being sped up because in
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order to get sped up, you have to do the process, the entire process that everyone else has to go
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through. So you have to go through indigenous consultations, eco consultations. You have to go
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through the provincial legislatures to get approval if you want to build stuff across their
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jurisdiction. So it basically is Mark Carney saying, I'm serious, but not that serious. So he's going to
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pretend that he wants to get stuff done. And now he gets to outsource the blame for things not getting
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done to indigenous groups, to the provinces, to environmental regulations. So climate change is
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forcing us to slow this whole thing down. And if you're the conservatives, you vote for it. And if
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nothing gets done, you can say, see, he's worthless. He doesn't know what he's doing.
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He put all of his political capital together to get this thing passed in a very short period of time,
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which is actually genuinely kind of impressive. He got this whole thing done in like a month when
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usually a piece of legislation like this could take over a year potentially. But he put a lot of
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political capital into getting this thing passed. And if nothing comes of it in a year, well,
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Pierre Polyev, who is currently campaigning in for the by-election in the, I think it's, what is it?
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Profoot, the battle, not battle first. Oh my goodness. I'm just forgetting things left and
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right, but he's running for a by-election in Alberta. I just got off a flight like two hours
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ago. But he can then in a year's time, go to the Canadian public and say, see, we even backed him
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up on getting stuff done and he still won't do it. He was probably hoping that we would oppose it.
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So then he could look at us, the NDP and the block say, see, they don't want to do it. This is
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disgusting. Can't believe that they're holding this thing up. This was what was going to make
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the country better or whatever. And so that's where basically the conservatives are having to
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be very careful with this, justifying it very carefully. And I think that they're not wrong
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to have voted for it. I think I had a statement here from the NDP. Here is actually, yes, Jenny Kwan,
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an NDP MP. She's, her reacting to it, basically saying that the bill was not like in favor of
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indigenous rights enough and all this stuff. And this is demonstrating also why the opposition to
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the bill was not exactly a good side of the aisle to be on because everyone else's voices,
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the Bloc Québécois, the NDP and Elizabeth May with the Greens and the media, the way they're arguing
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against the bill is basically saying that it's not draconian enough. It doesn't put enough
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restrictions on projects. So you're kind of, you know, damned if you do and damned if you don't,
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if you're the conservatives. But she says here,
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The NDP has forced the government to split up its omnibus major projects legislation, Bill C-5,
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forcing Parliament to vote directly on its more controversial clauses. After Friday's question
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period, NDP MP Jenny Kwan, Vancouver East, raised a point of order arguing the bill's two parts were
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unrelated to one another, which the Speaker ruled in favor of. And then, so this, they're trying to turn
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this into a big, like, win. Later on, it says, NDP MP Leah Gazzan, Winnipeg Center, echoed Kwan's
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concern, saying the second half of Bill C-5 violates the government's constitutional obligation
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to obtain the free, prior, and informed consent of indigenous rights holders. Even more, it's an
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attack on health and safety standards and environmental protections that'll hurt everyone,
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especially working people. And so from a partisan conservative perspective, I hope the NDP gets
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some juice out of this. I hope that they end up, you know, seeming like progressive warriors and
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clawing away some people from the liberals. But for the most part, I think that this is going to be a
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big nothing burger in the long run. It would have hurt the conservatives in the short run if they
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voted against it, or actually it would have hurt them in the long run, because if they voted against
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it and the whole bill died because the conservatives didn't vote for it and the NDP and the bloc also
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didn't vote for it, then again, Carney gets to go around saying, I wanted to save the country,
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but these guys wouldn't let me. So the conservatives are saying, okay, go save the country. Because in
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theory, I'm not opposed to cabinet speeding up projects. I just think we should do mass deregulation,
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make it so anyone's projects can be fast-tracked. Because if it's good for that project to be fast-tracked,
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why can't that project be fast-tracked? Really, this is just indicting the whole regulatory
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system in Canada right now. Everything is hard to do. And so we had to take a bill that basically
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tries to not admit that the regulatory process is bad, but just says we should speed these few
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projects up. Regulations are fine, but just not for this project, which is all very silly and dumb.
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But anyways, that should be it for this video, guys. So Bill C-5, it's one of those weird political
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situations where it's actually smart for the conservatives to vote in favor of what is a bad
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bill. Is the bill going to violate your rights or hurt you? No, it's just not very good, and it
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doesn't deregulate in the ways that we probably want it to. But that's just how politics works
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sometimes. Anyways, so that's it for me today, guys. Make sure to like the video, subscribe to
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the channel, leave a comment, do all that fantastic stuff, and I'll see you guys later.