Rebel News Podcast - January 08, 2020


Arson or global warming? Australia's brushfires turn political


Episode Stats

Length

33 minutes

Words per Minute

167.4189

Word Count

5,527

Sentence Count

396

Misogynist Sentences

5

Hate Speech Sentences

5


Summary

Did global warming cause the fires in Australia, or did 200 different arsonists? Ezra takes you through some of the cases of arson that police have arrested in Australia in the last few months, and argues that the fires are actually caused by global warming.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hey there, I'm glad you're tuning in today. I've got some news for you. I take you through
00:00:03.760 some of the 200 cases of arson that police have arrested people for in Australia in the last few
00:00:12.980 months. Did you know those wildfires are from arson? I'll prove it to you. But before I do,
00:00:21.120 let me invite you to become a premium subscriber. It's eight bucks a month. You get the video
00:00:26.080 version of this podcast, plus Sheila Gunn-Reed's show, plus David Menzies' show, plus the
00:00:30.540 satisfaction of knowing you're helping the rebel stay strong. That's premium.rebelnews.com. Okay,
00:00:37.960 here's the podcast.
00:00:43.620 You're listening to a Rebel News podcast.
00:00:46.040 Tonight, did global warming cause the fires in Australia, or did 200 different arsonists?
00:01:01.280 It's January 7th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
00:01:06.040 Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
00:01:09.600 There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
00:01:13.960 The only thing I have to say to the government about why I'm publishing it is because it's
00:01:18.340 my bloody right to do so.
00:01:25.300 Big brush fires in Australia, huge, and people have died. That happens with big fires. It used
00:01:32.220 to happen a lot more in history, though. 50, 100 years ago, we didn't have live international
00:01:39.420 24-hour TV news channels, let alone the internet and everyone with a cell phone with a camera.
00:01:45.480 The world was less economically developed, so while human disasters were far more painful
00:01:50.380 and caused many more deaths, there was less GDP carnage. Here's a graph produced by Danish
00:01:58.260 scientist Bjorn Lomborg, who calls himself the skeptical environmentalist. Deaths from climate
00:02:05.220 events were half a million people a year a century ago. Now they're one-tenth that, mainly in the
00:02:14.040 third world, of course. There are certain deaths that have nothing to do with the climate, earthquakes,
00:02:18.800 volcanoes. But the climate stuff, it's usually solved by technology and industry. Try fighting
00:02:26.760 brush fires before the age of the automobile, before pumper trucks and pipelines with water,
00:02:32.780 let alone water bombers, before evacuations could be done en masse and speedily and safely.
00:02:40.200 I was reading the shock jock coverage by CNN, and it sure did sound bad, and it is. But really,
00:02:47.980 huge fires and 24 people dead altogether, that's 24 tragedies, of course. 14.7 million acres burnt.
00:02:55.380 That's a lot of brush. But by comparison, I mean, just 30 years ago, in China, there was a bigger fire.
00:03:05.040 It was so big, they called it the Black Dragon. Hundreds of people killed, hundreds more burnt.
00:03:13.660 It was on both sides of the Russia-China border. Let me read a few lines from the New York Times
00:03:18.520 back in 1988.
00:03:19.780 The Soviet decision not to fight the huge fires east of the city of Chita was utilitarian.
00:03:28.040 There was no thought of ecological consequence. The Russians possess such vast forests they do not
00:03:33.980 plan to cut in the Amur region for 100 years. By then, they think the forest will regenerate.
00:03:39.660 Why waste men and money? Let it burn.
00:03:41.640 The Chinese thought differently. The Black Dragon constitutes China's last large timber reserve,
00:03:49.600 half the commercial timber in the country. The fire cost one-third of that reserve.
00:03:54.720 The Chinese had no water-dumping helicopters and not many bulldozers, but they put 60,000 men
00:04:01.340 on the fire lines to beat back the blaze with swatters. Swatters.
00:04:07.580 Now that fire was officially 18 million acres, so bigger than the Australian fire. And it was mainly
00:04:15.020 a fully treed forest, as you heard, not just scrub and brush. And of course, neither the Soviet Union
00:04:21.200 nor Communist China is really known for being accurate and honest in public about how big the
00:04:26.300 problems are. We know that from Chernobyl. They lie because any bad news is regarded as a political
00:04:33.560 embarrassment for the Communists. So I'd say double the actual size of the fire. But if you care about
00:04:40.260 the environment, nothing touches the massive fire in Indonesia just a few years back, not that long
00:04:47.240 ago. From 1997. So in our lifetimes. Nothing ancient here. 20 million acres. Largest fire in recorded
00:04:57.000 history, apparently. It wasn't just trees. It was the peat bog underneath, that mossy, muddy
00:05:03.180 stuff that burned and burned and burned and released nearly three gigatons of carbon dioxide. That's
00:05:12.780 equivalent, they say, to half of all fossil fuels burned on purpose by people in a year. Just one fire.
00:05:20.000 I bet you hadn't even heard about that fire because it couldn't be blamed on the West or Donald Trump,
00:05:26.180 really, could it? So the Australian fires are smaller than these other ones I've listed by
00:05:32.380 every measure. Less loss of life, thank God. Fewer trees burned. Fewer emissions, though of course CO2
00:05:40.120 is the stuff of life. It's what trees breathe in through photosynthesis. Nothing grows back faster
00:05:45.260 than a burnt forest. Rich nutrients return to the soil. Lots of CO2 in the air. Forests grow back fast
00:05:52.180 and green, which is why smart forest management often includes controlled burns.
00:05:58.820 Here, listen to an Australian political leader. Barnaby Joyce is his name, the former Deputy Prime Minister
00:06:03.200 of Australia. Listen to this for a bit. I'm going to let this run for three solid minutes, but listen to him
00:06:08.480 and you tell me what you think.
00:06:10.260 Well, it's an area that you know better than most. How does it compare to fire seasons in years gone by?
00:06:19.000 OK, well, this is something I think is really important, Kieran. I don't have a problem with
00:06:23.100 people who vote Greens, and I certainly don't want to go sort of argument and ad hominem against
00:06:28.400 Green voters, because it's nothing to do with that. What it is, is certain, let's call them
00:06:33.780 conservation policies or green policies that I think have exacerbated this fire. And I'll name
00:06:40.340 three. One is the lack of controlled burns, fire reduction burns. Because as you know, if you keep
00:06:46.620 on piling vegetation, dry vegetation on top of dry vegetation, which was never burnt as the
00:06:52.900 aboriginals did when they were here, they were very aware of the dangers this caused. Then when a fire does
00:06:58.000 come, and they always do come, they are horrific. They are like a holocaust. And that policy needs
00:07:04.480 to be changed so we can get those control burnt. Now, speaking to people from the, you know, from
00:07:10.800 the Environment Department, and they say, well, they won't go on the record. They say it's just
00:07:15.280 so bureaucratic. It's bureaucratic for the purpose of not letting you do it. And of course...
00:07:20.440 But this morning we spoke to the RFS incident controller at Warhope. Jason McKellar spoke to us,
00:07:27.820 and my colleague Peter Stefanovic asked him, are you able to hazard reduce as much as you'd
00:07:34.300 like? He said, we do. Yes, we do as much as we can. We can't turn the place into a wasteland. There's
00:07:40.220 got to be a medium between burning and the asset protection zones. What do you say to that?
00:07:45.660 I have a difference of view to them. And as much as I can, it's probably the crucial word there,
00:07:51.660 because if the regulations had changed, they could do more. Now, I'm taking that on the basis
00:07:58.140 of other people who work in the forest, work for the department, who've said quite clearly,
00:08:03.180 we need more hazard reduction burns. And I've also taken that from people who would definitely
00:08:08.060 be green voters, who've said to me, one of the biggest problems was the fuel build up. And they
00:08:13.580 quote, you know, the history of Aboriginal management of the land. And so we have two
00:08:18.220 different views. And I have the reality and the fact that the fire is absolutely hellish. So I'm
00:08:24.860 looking at something that is burning. And it's not burning because they burnt off. It's burning
00:08:29.740 because they didn't burn off. And that's just a fact. The next two things is they've got to have
00:08:34.220 central watering points. They decommission dams, as they call them, so they push them in. So we don't
00:08:39.260 have central watering points in the state forest and the national parks, which the helicopters can
00:08:43.820 collect the water from. And the next one is the Labor Party, their policy was to get rid of,
00:08:48.300 or to let run into disrepair, the fire trails, the fire breaks, so we get access to it. These are facts,
00:08:54.380 Kieran, and these are facts that need to be changed. Well, look, it's just a fact. Fewer controlled burns,
00:09:01.900 fewer fire breaks, fewer dams with water. That's what's going on in Australia. But that's pretty boring
00:09:09.500 when the enemy could be global warming. I mean, take it from Jennifer Aniston at the Golden Globe Awards.
00:09:15.820 Make no mistake, the tragedy unfolding in Australia is climate change based. We need to act based on
00:09:22.620 science, move our global workforce to renewable energy, and respect our planet for the unique and
00:09:29.100 amazing place it is. That way we all have a future. Well, a Hollywood actress just settled the question.
00:09:36.060 The only person dumber than Jennifer Aniston when it comes to science is Catherine McKenna, who was
00:09:42.620 demoted from the global warming ministry last month by Trudeau, but she just won't stop talking about it.
00:09:48.140 Here she is. Climate politics are changing fast. It's becoming even more clear that the cost of an
00:09:53.660 action is much greater than the cost of grappling with the challenge. Leaders who refuse to pay attention
00:09:59.180 and take action could pay a political price. So they should. Yeah. And right after she tweeted that,
00:10:06.780 the liberal repeaters embedded at the CBC chimed in, sucking up as they always do. Here's Erin Wery.
00:10:13.820 It was not long ago that some Canadian politicians were touting the fact that Australia had repealed
00:10:19.180 its carbon tax. I suspect that won't be touted again. Yeah. I mean, Australia did have a carbon tax,
00:10:25.180 and then they repealed it. It was so hated. Is that what caused the fire, that they repealed the carbon
00:10:31.340 tax? Or was it the lack of a controlled burn policy, the lack of firewalls, lack of dams?
00:10:37.660 Would paying more taxes to politicians have somehow stopped the fires? Is that how fires work?
00:10:45.580 Would that have worked in Indonesia and China and Russia or just Australia?
00:10:53.660 Canada's worst fires in recent years were all started by arson, says the RCMP. But you still saw
00:10:59.660 McKenna and Justin Trudeau himself claiming that those BC fires were the result of global warming.
00:11:04.700 29 arson fires in BC in four years. So what about Australia?
00:11:09.260 Australia? Well, Australia's Spectator magazine meticulously went through the news reports town
00:11:17.420 by town in Australia and added up all the arrests for arson. And there are 200 of them. 200 cases of
00:11:29.180 arson in Australia since the fall. Let me read a little bit of the list. According to my calculations
00:11:36.620 and estimates, the number of individuals around Australia whose arson has contributed to the
00:11:41.580 current bushfire crisis has now passed 200. Now, the author here is not a global warming skeptic.
00:11:48.300 He just likes accuracy. Let me read some more from him. Australia has a fire bug crisis. It will no
00:11:54.780 doubt be up to a future royal commissions and inquiries to calculate exactly what proportion of the current
00:12:00.780 loss and destruction can be attributed to human action. But I suspect it will be a significant one.
00:12:05.340 Mankind may be causing climate change, but man is most definitely making fires start.
00:12:12.140 Where's the proof, you ask? Below is a sample of news reports from around the country over recent
00:12:18.700 months. All right, let's just scroll down the page. I'm not going to read all 200 examples. I'll just read
00:12:24.500 some of them. Three teenage girls have been arrested for arson over 13 grass fires, police allege,
00:12:30.220 were deliberately lit on the New South Wales mid-north coast. New South Wales police believe 12 bushfires
00:12:37.180 may have been deliberately lit by arsonists during Tuesday's catastrophic fire conditions. A suspected
00:12:42.460 arsonist was arrested after a chase through the Royal National Park south of Sydney by an army Blackhawk
00:12:48.860 helicopter. The crew of the 6th Aviation Regiment unit in the Blackhawk spotted a man acting suspiciously in
00:12:55.500 the northern area of the park, the Daily Telegraph reported. Here's another one. Police allege a
00:13:01.100 teenager started a central Queensland bushfire that has destroyed 14 homes. Police say the 16-year-old
00:13:06.860 boy has not been charged with arson, but will be dealt with under the state's Youth Justice Act.
00:13:12.060 Here's another. Last week we learned that the Binnaburra fire, which destroyed the historic
00:13:16.460 Binnaburra Lodge in southeast Queensland, was started by a carelessly discarded cigarette. And the Gold Coast
00:13:24.060 hinterland bushfires the week before may have been started by army live-firing exercises at the
00:13:29.420 Kokoda Barracks, a spokesman for the Australian Defense Force, has conceded.
00:13:36.140 I'll just read a couple more. More than half of the 18 people who have been dealt with by police
00:13:39.740 over recent Queensland bushfires are children. Police have revealed since the state of emergency
00:13:45.660 was declared in Queensland on November 9th, police said they have taken action against 18 people for
00:13:50.220 deliberately lighting fires. Now I'm not going to read it all, but this journalist in each case is
00:13:55.820 citing and linking to other published reports in reputable newspapers of record. He's just adding
00:14:01.500 them all up. He's just putting them all on one big list. This is one of the craziest here.
00:14:06.780 A volunteer firefighter in Australia has been charged with deliberately lighting blazes
00:14:11.500 during the nation's bushfire crisis. Police arrested the man, 19, for seven counts of alleged arson
00:14:17.260 in an area south of Sydney, New South Wales. A fireman charged with arson. 72 people charged in
00:14:23.980 New South Wales alone. As firefighters remained on high alert, police revealed 103 of the destructive
00:14:30.700 fires that have lashed Queensland since September were deliberately lit. Figures obtained by AAP
00:14:37.020 reveal 98 people, 31 adults and 67 juveniles have been dealt with by Queensland police
00:14:41.980 for deliberately setting fires. So that's another 98 in Queensland. Okay, so who are these people?
00:14:48.700 Are they psychopaths? Are they murderers? Well, some of them may be. Are they environmentalists trying
00:14:54.620 to get a narrative going? Don't rule that out. These wildfires are political gold for opportunists like
00:15:00.540 Catherine McKenna and Aaron Wary. Here's what the author of this piece says in The Spectator.
00:15:06.140 There are no conspiracies here. Though arson has been tried and called for before as a tool of terror,
00:15:16.380 the Australian fires seem to result from the actions of unconnected individuals who are either disturbed or
00:15:22.060 reckless. This is nothing new. As ecological criminologist Paul Reed wrote back in November,
00:15:27.660 a 2015 satellite analysis of 113,000 fires from 1997 to 2009 confirmed what we had known for some time.
00:15:37.260 40% of fires are deliberately lit. Another 47% are accidental. That's 87%, by the way.
00:15:46.860 This generally matches previous data published a decade earlier that about half of all fires were
00:15:51.420 suspected or suspected or deliberate arson and 37% accidental combined. They reached the same
00:15:56.140 conclusion. 87% are man-made. It looks bad on TV and it is bad and 24 people have died, but it's been
00:16:06.140 much, much worse before, far worse before for people. Today, fossil fuels are the tool to fight fires,
00:16:13.820 fire trucks, water bombers, just plain evacuating people. We now have insurance to cover catastrophic
00:16:19.820 losses. Most people, thank God, we'll be okay. Accidents are accidental. Arsonists are criminals.
00:16:26.700 We have to fight both. And maybe we can listen to the former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia who cited
00:16:33.660 aboriginal fire practices of controlled burns. But that's all too boring for the carbon tax set,
00:16:41.900 even in Hollywood and even here in Canada, isn't it? Stay with us for more.
00:16:49.820 Well, as you know, Andrew Scheer has announced his intentions to resign future tense as the leader of
00:17:08.940 the Conservative Party. He said he was going to resign, but then that seems to be delayed. He's still
00:17:15.660 enforcing discipline, hiring and firing staff. He's still living in Stornoway, taking the
00:17:21.740 salary top up. But the Conservative Party directors, the trustees, the governors, have decided that there
00:17:28.780 will be a leadership race in June. That's when it's going to be. With a whopping entry fee and other
00:17:36.780 rules, here to give us the update, is our friend Andrew Lawton with TNC.news. That's the True North
00:17:43.900 folks. And we'll talk to Andrew in a moment about his new show there. Andrew, great to see you. Happy New
00:17:49.260 Year. Bring us up to speed with the Conservative Leadership Race. It's, it'll be here in about six
00:17:55.900 and a half, about six months. Am I right? Yeah, it's going to be coming in June. And we have a
00:18:01.580 significant field of potential candidates. Few people who have said definitively they are in fact
00:18:07.820 running. And a growing number of people saying, maybe it's time to sit this one out. But I think
00:18:13.020 you touched on something important with the entry fee. The party is going to have a $300,000 entry fee,
00:18:19.660 which means even if you raise, let's say $500,000, you only really have to run a campaign $200,000
00:18:26.940 left, because $300,000 is going to the party. And this is done very deliberately to keep outsiders
00:18:33.100 out of the field, to keep people that don't have a hope of winning and aren't able to fundraise
00:18:37.500 nationally out of the field. And the other thing that's distinct this time from the leadership race
00:18:42.540 when Andrew Scheer won is that we're only dealing with about a six-month field of runway here,
00:18:47.900 rather than the year and a half long campaign that had at 1.15 candidates in the field.
00:18:54.140 So there are some changes. It's going to be a much smaller field this time around. And I think
00:18:59.020 that is going to be very determining to who is in it. And also Lisa Raitt, who's the co-share,
00:19:05.020 has said that people have 10 days to make up their mind. So it is really a snap judgment we're going
00:19:09.980 to see here. Yeah, I got to tell you, I think that there needed to be earlier winnowing last time
00:19:17.500 around. But this, in my own reaction, is this is much too high a hurdle. I mean, $300,000. If I recall,
00:19:27.740 it was $100,000 last time. And I think to raise $100,000 is a sign you're serious. That's a real amount
00:19:34.700 of money. But $300,000 to triple it. That seems so conspicuous, Andrew, that I'm going to call that
00:19:44.780 the Peter McKay, Jean Charest rules. If you're a plugged-in insider who's got lots of money, then you like
00:19:56.140 these rules because it keeps out a more grassrootsy populist opponent. I mean, $300,000 would be nothing
00:20:05.660 for Peter McKay or Jean Charest, but some grassrootsy reform party style or even PPC style MP or outsider,
00:20:16.620 that's probably insuperable in the short period of time they have. That's my own reflex. What do you
00:20:21.980 think? Well, I think there's a truth to that. And one of the things that you'd know, Ezra, I mean,
00:20:26.860 you've been in this political scene for quite a while, is that the conservative fundraising strategy
00:20:31.980 as a party has always been those little $20 donations at a time. And in fact, everyone has
00:20:37.660 this image of conservatives of being the deep-pocketed wealthy types. But when it comes to election financing,
00:20:43.580 conservatives have always relied on grassroots donations. So it is interesting that this leadership
00:20:50.300 model in many ways is skewed towards the alternative to that, which is, okay, you know, someone like
00:20:56.620 Jean Charest, call up 300 of your friends, get them each to give you $1,000, and then you're off to the
00:21:01.660 races, which is basically a single cocktail party for a lot of those people. But at the same time,
00:21:07.340 I'm not convinced that it's a bad idea to have rules that constrict the field. I would much rather
00:21:14.780 have it where you're out if you don't have a certain support level or something like that. And I don't
00:21:19.980 know what that would look like, but base it on support and not money. Because you could raise,
00:21:25.340 to go to the old rules, $100,000, you could raise that in one riding. If you were a popular MP that
00:21:31.420 had no hope of leadership, you could get that, because that's how much you spend on an MP campaign.
00:21:36.780 So the $300,000 forces you to look nationally, it forces you to look outside of your immediate comfort
00:21:42.380 zone. But I'm more interested in the timeframe they've set to make up your mind. Because one of,
00:21:48.700 I think, the most motivating factors to getting into a leadership race is if you're not happy with
00:21:53.660 the field of candidates. And if they're saying you've got, you know, with basically less than
00:21:57.980 two weeks to get in, well, that says to me, you can't wait and see. And then if there's no one there,
00:22:03.020 then get in the race. It means that they're really picking from a field that's already determined,
00:22:07.980 which is the people that everyone thinks are going to run. Yeah. And I mean, I haven't seen
00:22:11.820 the details of the rules, but I have to imagine even making those 300 phone calls that you talked
00:22:18.060 about, that takes days and days and days to make those phone calls. I don't know if someone could
00:22:22.700 chip in like 10 grand. I don't know what the limits are. But well, no, but this is an important point,
00:22:29.340 though, because in April, Kevin O'Leary is actually taking the elections,
00:22:34.220 Canada, taking elections, Canada to court. And there's going to be a trial over that very
00:22:38.860 question because Kevin O'Leary incurred a lot of leadership debt. And he thinks he should be
00:22:43.580 able to just pay it off with a personal check. But he can't because of that. I think it's $1,600 limit.
00:22:50.220 Well, you know what, even that is saying, well, you got two weeks or 10 days to raise 300 grand,
00:22:55.420 but you have to do it in small chunks. It just seems like a strange way to vet.
00:23:00.620 I do think there has to be some vetting. My big quarrel with the way it was done last time,
00:23:06.620 and Andrew, you correct me if my memory is wrong, is that there was really no way to know the various
00:23:12.220 strength of a candidate until it was over. As we can see in the US Democratic presidential primaries,
00:23:20.380 every week or so, someone drops out because they just can't sustain it. There's polls all the time,
00:23:25.580 there's spending. So the field is narrowing. It was that way four years ago with Donald Trump
00:23:30.220 and the Republicans. One of the problems I think that there was last time in the conservative
00:23:35.580 party leadership race is that there was really no vetting, no way to know who was ahead or not
00:23:41.340 until the very end. So there was no way to sharpen the focus. So there was 14 candidates right until the
00:23:48.940 last day. And that resulted in a lot of strange first choice, second choice balloting. I don't
00:23:54.940 know. I think that the rules last time elected everybody's second choice, Andrew Scheer. I know
00:24:01.580 that's what happened. And that's not enough to convince Canadians to make him the first choice.
00:24:06.620 I think the rules this time look like they're just going to give us some red Tory retread from the 80s.
00:24:12.220 I don't know. That's just how I feel. And I feel like these rules have been gamed already by insiders.
00:24:19.260 I'm pessimistic. I don't want to be, but I feel pessimistic based on these rules.
00:24:25.020 One of the big problems with ranked balloting is that it rewards mediocrity in a way,
00:24:29.500 because ranked balloting suggests that you have to be the consensus choice or you have to just blow
00:24:35.580 everyone out of the water on the first ballot. And if you look at Stephen Harper, 2003, that was what
00:24:39.820 he did. He had more than 50% of the vote on the first ballot, but it was also a very small field
00:24:44.940 of candidates. I think three at the time. And if you look now with a field of 14 candidates,
00:24:51.340 the ranked balloting is actually a bit of a farce for the first, you know, nine or 10 rounds because,
00:24:55.740 or I guess seven or eight, because, you know, the first one, it's okay. You know,
00:24:58.780 we now apportion 0.6% of the vote. And then now we reapportion 0.8% of the vote. And it was revealing
00:25:05.980 that the entire conservative leadership system is based on who's the least offensive, who's the
00:25:12.300 most palatable to the most number of people. And that's not really how elections are run. We don't
00:25:17.020 have ranked balloting in ridings. We don't have ranked balloting nationally. So I do think there
00:25:21.500 is a concern with that. The conservatives also weight very heavily ridings nationally. So there's
00:25:29.420 regional representation, whereas people in the Quebec conservative party, for example,
00:25:35.180 get a huge say in who becomes the conservative party of Canada leader, even if the leadership
00:25:40.780 strategy is not really rooted in Quebec support. So there are a lot of question marks about whether
00:25:47.020 the leadership system is really producing the best candidate for the conservatives or the most
00:25:53.260 viable candidate. And I'm not sure that it does. At the same time, I also don't think no one wants to
00:25:58.060 uproot that system right now, because it's the only one the party has ever known.
00:26:02.300 Yeah. Well, you're referring to the dairy cartel, of course, that helped put Andrew Scheer ahead of
00:26:07.660 Maxime Bernier. We'll never know what would have happened had that not been the case. Let me ask you
00:26:13.740 this, and then you've got a little bit of news I'd like you to share with our viewers.
00:26:19.020 Just your opinion. If you had to choose your ideal leader for the conservatives,
00:26:24.140 put aside the rules, put aside the details. I'm talking about your dream team here, fantasy
00:26:30.460 football style. Who would you choose that you think has the right combination of conservative chops
00:26:38.220 and winnability?
00:26:40.380 And of the people who are contenders, there isn't anyone that's really lighting a fire under me.
00:26:46.620 I do think, though, that stylistically, there needs to be someone who's very high energy.
00:26:51.340 You know, one of the things that I learned covering the campaign is that Trudeau is,
00:26:55.340 for all his faults, very high energy. He is very electrifying to his crowd and certainly to the
00:27:01.340 media. And there are a number of reasons for that. But I think conservatives need to not beat him on
00:27:07.260 the substance or beat him on style, rather. But conservatives need to have someone that can at
00:27:11.660 least compete in that arena, someone that has energy, someone that has a bit of fire, and someone who isn't
00:27:17.420 just really just posting along and hoping that the policy is going to sell. And I was a fan of
00:27:23.580 Maxime Bernier in the 2017 leadership. I know he's not in the conservative party now. But I do think
00:27:29.260 someone like him is what the party needs.
00:27:31.420 Yeah, I think you're right. Donald Trump has incredible energy. I mean, it's hard to believe
00:27:38.140 that he's in his 70s, if I'm not mistaken. I mean, Justin Trudeau just got back from a 16-day vacation,
00:27:46.620 and he's taking two more private days. I don't think Trump has taken more than one day off since
00:27:52.300 he's been president. He works at all hours. I mean, sure, he has visits at his own golf club and maybe
00:27:57.980 plays the odd round. But he's a high energy president. But I think that I think the issues,
00:28:04.860 I think it's not enough just to be high energy. I mean, in his own way, Jagmeet Singh, he danced
00:28:10.060 around and he had some energy. I think high energy, yes, for sure. But you got to be unafraid to tackle
00:28:16.700 the issues that so many conservatives are afraid of because the media tells them not to. You guys at
00:28:23.500 True North specialize in immigration. And that's, in my view, one of the number one issues. But oh,
00:28:30.220 my God, was Andrew Scheer afraid of that? I think high energy is great. But you talk about that issue,
00:28:35.900 you're going to get a lot of conservatives revved up no matter what your style is. What do you think
00:28:39.660 of that? Well, I think you raise an important point there. And part of that energy and that fire
00:28:44.780 I'm talking about is pushing back against the media, which conservatives are often afraid to do.
00:28:50.620 But going along with them never wins their love, never wins their affection. I mean,
00:28:54.860 a great example just from today is that there was when the conservative convention entertained a
00:29:00.540 motion on birthright citizenship in Canada and whether to do away with it. The media just went
00:29:06.140 nuts saying, oh, this is racist. And how dare the conservatives and how dare the conservative
00:29:09.980 members. And just today, CBC is running a feature on birthright tourism or birth tourism in Canada
00:29:17.420 and how it's this terrible thing. So now all of a sudden the media has come around to what it was
00:29:22.300 maligning people for being. And the nature of immigration and a lot of other issues is that
00:29:27.660 the truth will ultimately come out as people see the truth of reckless immigration policies,
00:29:33.660 as people see the truth of all of these areas of the government or the media saying you can't talk
00:29:38.940 about this. And people will eventually come around. You've got to have a politician that's prepared
00:29:43.260 to be a leader on those instead of a follower. Yeah. I think anyone who studies Quebec politics
00:29:48.860 and the shocking breakthrough of the brand new party, Francois Legault's CAC party, he's now the
00:29:54.140 premier there, would see that far from being electoral kryptonite, it's electoral gold. At least that's my
00:30:03.740 view. And there's a reason why Justin Trudeau and no other party is willing to really take on Quebec for
00:30:10.860 its immigration policies, its burqa ban, because they know that's extremely popular no matter what
00:30:16.540 the CBC says. That's my view. Andrew, you are starting your own TV show in Canada at TNC.News.
00:30:24.620 Tell me a little bit about it. Yeah, so many people may know I actually did for a long period of time
00:30:30.860 a daily talk radio show and I've always loved that medium. I've always loved that format. So I'm bringing
00:30:36.140 back the Andrew Lawton show. Really, it's going to be and I shouldn't even say bringing back because
00:30:40.620 it's going to be a new show with the same name where we're going to talk about these issues,
00:30:44.780 be irreverent. We're going to promote free speech. We're going to really be a voice on the issues
00:30:49.180 that the mainstream media is not covering. And the Andrew Lawton show is going to be launching
00:30:53.580 within the next couple of weeks. So looking forward to getting that going as a podcast.
00:30:58.220 Well, that's great. Will it be video as well or just audio?
00:31:01.580 Well, it's going to be a podcast on video rather than a TV show. So there are going to be visual
00:31:05.900 elements, but I'm really going to take the inspiration of format from my talk radio days.
00:31:10.540 Got it. Great. Well, I tell you, sign me up. I think I'm already a minor donor to TNC.News,
00:31:16.460 but if there's a subscription fee or whatever, I look forward to it. We're always grateful when
00:31:20.940 you come on our show and I can hardly wait to see you in your own natural habitat, which I'm
00:31:27.980 looking forward to. So good luck to you, my friend.
00:31:30.220 Thank you very much.
00:31:31.100 All right. There you have it, our friend Andrew Lawton. You heard it here. He's having his own
00:31:35.100 video podcast and he tells me that'll be at TNC.News. Stay with us. More ahead on The Rubble.
00:31:52.060 Hey, what do you think about my monologue about the 200 cases of arson in Australia? Look, I mean,
00:31:58.700 I'm not downplaying how bad the fires are. They're shocking. They remind me of the wildfire in Fort
00:32:04.700 McMurray that was also to blame on a lack of controlled burns. And in that case, Rachel Notley
00:32:10.700 had canceled all the water bomber contracts just a week or so before the fires. Terrible to look at.
00:32:16.940 Great tragedy. Great loss of property. Thank God no one lost their life in Fort McMurray. But oh my God,
00:32:23.900 did all the pagan global warming worshipers blame Mother Earth or actually they blamed mankind, didn't
00:32:30.460 they? No, that's not what started the fires there. And that's not what started the fires in Australia.
00:32:35.900 But boy, Catherine McKenna wants to get her politics out of it and Greenpeace will get their fundraising out
00:32:41.820 of it. All right. That's the show for today. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at
00:32:47.020 Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night and keep fighting for freedom.