Ezra Levant explains why Canada s Liberals are copying the anti-Trump resistance movement in their campaign against Ontario s new premier, Doug Ford. He also explains why Doug Ford should go to jail, and why he should not.
00:00:00.000Tonight, that crazy anti-Trump resistance movement?
00:00:03.860Canada's liberals are copying it in their war against Doug Ford.
00:00:07.940It's September 14th and you're watching The Ezra Levant Show.
00:00:16.320Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
00:00:20.180There's 8,500 customers here and you won't give them an answer.
00:00:23.900You come here once a year with a sign and you feel morally superior.
00:00:26.860The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
00:00:37.500I read a story today on a website called iPolitics and it got me thinking about the kind of political campaigns we're going to see in Ontario politics and federal politics.
00:00:47.160Can I take a few minutes on this story?
00:00:48.640The headline is, MP says only liberals can protect cities from conservative belligerence and contempt.
00:00:59.860A Toronto area MP says only a re-elected liberal government can protect Canadian cities from the contempt and belligerence of conservatives.
00:01:07.200Okay, so nothing really out of the ordinary there.
00:01:11.200On the sidelines of the Liberal caucus retreat in Saskatoon Thursday, Spadina Fort York MP Adam Vaughn told iPolitics that any skepticism about his party's 2019 election strategy of running against former Prime Minister Stephen Harper should be put to rest because people like Ontario Premier Doug Ford are reminding voters of Harper's ways.
00:01:32.020And we'll make the contrast with Justin Trudeau even more powerful.
00:01:35.780Just for those who don't know, Adam Vaughn is this guy.
00:01:40.020He used to be a TV journalist in Toronto as his dad was before him.
00:01:43.540And I think he really, really misses being on TV every day.
00:01:47.020And he has a rapport with other journalists, of course.
00:01:49.000So he gives outlandish quotes that clearly weren't vetted by the party, but they seem to abide it.
00:02:05.360Vaughn argued that Ford's tactics are a carryover from the Harper government, pointing out that many of his former staff are now running the back rooms at Queen's Park.
00:02:13.740People in Toronto know that Harper is behind the scenes, that Ford is on the forefront, and that the only thing standing between Toronto and the deep blue sea is a liberal government up in Ottawa that's prepared to fix things in Toronto rather than break them, Vaughn said in a blistering attack on the Tories.
00:02:30.840Do you really think that Stephen Harper is behind the scenes in Toronto, this quarrel that Adam Vaughn is talking about?
00:02:37.740For our viewers outside of Ontario, as you may know, the city of Toronto has 47 city councillors, 47.
00:02:46.080And they are each very, very important.
00:02:49.760And they each feel the need to weigh in on every question of importance or unimportance.
00:02:54.000And they each need to introduce their guests at City Hall and proclaim, I don't know, National Vegetarian Sandwich Day or whatever it is today.
00:03:02.140I mean, it's really like 47 different one-man political parties.
00:03:05.000Nothing gets done, but nothing gets done very slowly, very noisily, and very expensively.
00:03:10.060Doug Ford, the new Ontario Premier, he knows all about this because he used to be a city councillor in Toronto.
00:03:16.200He lived it, and so did his late brother, Rob Ford, who was a councillor until he became mayor and he died of cancer.
00:03:22.880Can I show you my favourite Rob Ford video?
00:17:11.600Well, it's incredible what you can find when you ask the federal government for documents
00:17:16.160that, you know, the CBC and CTV and Global Mail and the Media Party just won't ask.
00:17:21.800You know they won't ask about certain sensitive questions.
00:17:25.360Now, just because you ask the government for documents doesn't mean you'll get them.
00:17:29.860The number one move with the Justin Trudeau government when it comes to access to information documents is delay.
00:17:35.660We have some requests that have been delayed more than three years.
00:17:39.820Of course, when they finally do cough up the documents, they often black them out, redact them, or simply, whoops, forget to send others over.
00:17:47.840But still, you send in enough questions, you're bound to get some answers.
00:17:52.640And Sheila Gunn-Reed has had a trove with them lately.
00:17:54.640She joins us now via Skype from the Edmonton area.
00:18:02.500You have been breaking news almost every day based on laser-focused questions about Syrian refugees.
00:18:11.500Now, the fact that we're talking about this in 2018, and these refugees were rushed in in November, December 2015, goes to my point of how the government is slow-walking the facts, aren't they?
00:18:26.080And, you know, when we do finally get these documents, like you said, they're redacted.
00:18:31.560So often we have to ask a couple different ministries and try to put together the story of the redactions by meticulously going through these documents and comparing different memos to really get the full story.
00:18:45.720The fact that it takes three years, when in fact they're supposed to respond, I think, in 30 days, shows the depth of corruption in the transparency of this government.
00:18:55.660And the fact that no other media care shows that they're going to get away with it, as they do with all their other ethics breaches.
00:19:02.220I mean, I can't believe, I think it's seven, six or seven times now that liberal cabinet ministers have been found to be in breach of the Conflict of Interest Act.
00:19:37.420Have any other media done what they often do when someone has a scoop, which is follow up on the story, take the story and run with it because it's such breaking news?
00:20:39.880I mean, give us credit for it if you have any ethics, but steal it.
00:20:42.760The fact that they would rather deny their viewers and audience the facts than to even tip their hat to our journalism shows why no one trusts the mainstream media anymore.
00:20:55.360Well, and, you know, we make it really easy for them to steal our stories because we do something that the rest of the main or that the mainstream media doesn't do.
00:21:04.160And when we file these access to information requests and when we get newsworthy documents back, we actually publish the documents so that the people who are watching our coverage, they can see exactly what we're telling them.
00:21:16.900And the mainstream media, they can take these documents and run their own story, even spin it their own way.
00:21:22.680But they refuse to do it because the information came from us.
00:21:26.160And then they wonder why there's another round of layoffs plaguing the mainstream media.
00:21:31.000And that's just the public prosecuting them for their dereliction of duty.
00:21:58.740As people probably know, there's no commas in websites.
00:22:01.880So if you just type in 50,000.ca, we've got one of your breaking stories.
00:22:09.340Tell our viewers why 50,000.ca is the website name we've chosen.
00:22:13.920Well, we discovered through access to information documents, despite the government's efforts to hide this from other queries, like those from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation,
00:22:26.420that $50,000 is the amount in cash aid, direct cash aid from the federal government provided to refugee families.
00:22:37.320And the government used a family of four as their baseline when we know that there were more families of seven and eight and even nine coming than there were families of four.
00:22:47.700So that's the name of the website, 50,000.ca.
00:22:51.820And the reason I found it so outrageous was not only the fact that the government was actively trying to hide that,
00:22:58.420and we could see it in the documents where they were editing their talking points in real time saying,
00:23:04.140we're not going to tell the public this amount.
00:23:06.540But it was so shocking to me that the government right now continues to fight Canadian veterans in court,
00:23:13.600and Canadian service members have to use the food bank at Christmastime because we are not compensating them the way they need to be.
00:23:22.500And I found it so outrageous, so I started a petition to the government asking them to treat Canadian veterans and active service members
00:23:29.720as well as they treat migrant families who've done, I don't know, the hard work of landing on a plane or dragging their luggage across the border.
00:23:38.300Yeah. $50,000 cash, that doesn't account for health care, education, welfare, medicine, any other social services they get.