EZRA LEVANT ｜ Alberta Premier Danielle Smith opposes mass immigration
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Summary
Did you know that Danielle Smith recently said she wants to double the population of Alberta through immigration? I can t believe it. I chew this and other immigration stories over with our friend Lauren Gunter in a feature interview conversation about mass immigration.
Transcript
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Hey everybody, did you know that Danielle Smith recently said she wants to double the population
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of Alberta through immigration? I can't believe it. I chew this and other immigration stories over
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with our friend Lauren Gunter in a feature interview conversation about mass immigration.
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But first let me invite you to make sure you have what we call Rebel News Plus. It's the video
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version of this podcast. I want you to see it, not just hear it. It's eight bucks a month,
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which might not sound like a lot of money to you, but it really adds up for us and it helps keep
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us free and independent. Just go to rebelnewsplus.com and click subscribe. All right, here's today's
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podcast. Tonight, does Danielle Smith really want to double the population of Alberta through
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immigration? It's August 15th and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.
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Well, I was in Ottawa yesterday, but it was an Albertan on trial. I'm talking about Tamara Leach.
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A lot of my time these days is spent on the legal repercussions of the Freedom Convoy,
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even though that was two and a half years ago. Between our coverage of the Tamara Leach trial,
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which I think today is day 40 or 41 of the hearings, and all the various permutations of
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the Coutts trials, I think by far it's the number one story we've been covering in the last year,
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even though the lockdowns and the pandemic itself are long over. It's interesting that an Alberta gal,
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a Métis grandma like Tamara Leach, can be hauled to Ottawa again and again and again in a clear abuse
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of process. And what startled me yesterday from the court was how prickly the judge was becoming,
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and I think that's because this is likely the longest trial she's ever had. Forget complex
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corporate litigation or criminal matters of murder or terrorism. This tiny little mischief trial has
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been turned into a full year affair because I genuinely believe this is how the establishment
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intends to punish Tamara Leach herself. There's no way she's going to get more jail time. She's
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already served 49 days. There's no way that, like, they can't punish, I think she's going to actually
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be acquitted, but they're turning the process into the punishment. Anyways, I tell you that because
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that's where I was yesterday. I was in Ottawa, but I felt like it was an Alberta story because it was
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that Alberta spirit of rebellion. It really was Albertans in many ways that helped lead the convoy,
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and I say that with some longing as a former Albertan myself who is in exile in Toronto. Well,
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the fact that I'm in Toronto doesn't mean I stopped thinking about Alberta. In so many ways, it is a
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province that shows philosophical and ideological leadership, and that sometimes manifests itself in
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the actual practical politics of the place. And right now, in the person of Danielle Smith, the premier
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of the United Conservative Party, I think we have probably what's the closest thing to a libertarian
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as a provincial premier in this country. You can certainly argue that Premier Scott Moe of Saskatchewan
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is a rock-ribbed conservative, although like many from that province, he's got sort of a social
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generosity side that even the old NDP still reverberates with there. But I think Danielle Smith
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is the most libertarian. And sometimes, though, her ideas are, I don't know, I'm not going to say quirky
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because that's insulting, but they're esoteric maybe. They're, I don't know, to help me sort of
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grok what's going on, including with Danielle Smith's views on immigration, we're joined now by really
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one of our Sherpas in Alberta, one of the senior columnists of that province. I'm talking about our
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old friend Lauren Gunter, who writes for the Edmonton Sun. Lauren, great to see you again.
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Good to see you. I'm not sure exactly what I was doing with that meandering introduction. I was
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just trying to say that although I was in Ottawa, it felt like a very Alberta thing, considering the
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Albertan Tamera Leach was on trial. And I do know Danielle Smith, because we were in college together,
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and she was always interested in ideas. Tell me a little bit about Danielle Smith on immigration,
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because I've seen different things from her. I'd love to tell you more about her on immigration,
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but she seems to have had a major 180 in the last three or four months. And I'm not sure it is. It
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might just be a sharpening of her views, an evolution, a growing up, whatever it is. But in
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March, she wrote to Prime Minister Trudeau and said, you're not letting us have enough immigrants here
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in Alberta. We are going to grow this province to 10 million from four and a half million by 2050,
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and therefore we need lots more immigrants to fill our job vacancies and start up new businesses and
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things. And I am all in favor of immigrants. I think immigration is good for Canada, but it's not
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good for Canada in the numbers that the Trudeau government has been allowing. It's crazy.
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By StatsCan's estimate, last year, they let in 2.3 million people.
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There's no other country in the world. No other country in the world has done that.
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No. The Americans get that many at their southern border, but they are 10 times the size we are.
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And they think of this as a problem. The Trudeau government, if it hadn't been,
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if this immigration level hadn't caused all sorts of economic repercussions, they would not be
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thinking of it as a problem even now. And even now, it's difficult to get an awful lot of their
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media friends to report on it as a problem. But it's had a negative impact on the housing markets,
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had a negative impact on the job market. It's had a negative impact on educational institutions.
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It's had a negative impact on social services. And it's made it harder to get a doctor, for instance,
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because there are too many people coming in. You can't buy a house in Canada on a single
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average wage anymore, because there are 1 million, 1.5 million, 2 million new people flooding in every
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year under the Liberals. And those people have a right to find a place to live too. The only way
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you could stop that is to turn back the flow that the Liberals have had. And Danielle Smith finally
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said that yesterday on a Western Standard website podcast, where she said, well, yes, this is
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unsustainable, what they're doing now. But in fact, I have to think in some ways,
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she added to the problem back in March, when she wrote to the Prime Minister, she said,
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we want more control in Alberta over who we're taking. And but we want more. And I think that
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that you can imagine that the Trudeauites would forget the Alberta control part of that, and just
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go to cabinet meetings and say, well, look, even the Alberta government wants more people. So how can
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you say we're taking in too many? I didn't quite phrase it right. But that I mean, the thing about
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Danielle Smith, I think she regards herself as a very open minded person who cares about intellectual
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things. I think she reads, and she studies, and she looks at papers, I think she actually loves
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the world of ideas. In that way, she's completely the opposite of Justin Trudeau, who would never read
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a briefing. No, we learned he literally had to have someone read to him national security briefings,
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like a bedtime story, like Justin sits over there, and someone reads it to him, because he will not
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do the reading himself. That came out during the China interference matter. Danielle Smith, I think,
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is someone who is the opposite. But you can go too far the opposite, you can go down rabbit holes and
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obscure and strange thinking, like there's this concept, there's this group called the Century Project,
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which wants 100 million people in this country in a matter of decades. They're not going to live in
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the big Arctic. Like you look at Canada on the map, it looks huge. Most of it's unlivable. No one's
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moving to Inovic or Tuktoyaktuk. They're moving to Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal. And now they're
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spilling into some smaller cities, but everyone is really in certain metropolises. It's insane.
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Toronto is off the hook insane. And here's a stat I saw the other day, Lorne. There's about 750,000
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temporary foreign workers, and many of them working in McDonald's, Tim Hortons, like low skill,
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low paid jobs. Those are multi billion dollar multinational companies. And so they get to
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save a buck or two an hour. But I have not seen a young Canadian by that mean I like a teenager
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working in a fast food restaurant in years. And I think back to my own youth, that was my first job.
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I worked because you can't screw it up. You get paid a little bit of dough, but you learn
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things about showing up on work on time and, and being tidy. And you learn, you can't get your
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second job till you have your first job. That's right. I worked at a dairy queen when I was in high
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school. And it was the busiest dairy queen in Western Canada that didn't have burgers. We were just ice
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cream. But the thing I learned because the lineups would be really long on a Sunday summer evening.
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The thing I learned was people get cranky standing in line and you can't get cranky back. You have to
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learn in customer service that you need to be nice even to the cranky pants out there. And so those are
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very important life lessons that you, that you learn when you have those first jobs for sure. And so it is
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a, it is a problem that, that the governments, federal government in particular has to deal
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with. One thing that Smith said yesterday in her podcast on the Western standard was that,
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you know, you've, we've, this is a problem that all governments are now facing and, and we're even
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starting to see it creep into Alberta. And I think what she meant by that was, for instance, last year,
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Calgary had the greatest increase in rents of any city in the country. And so Calgary is becoming less
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affordable than it was. Edmonton is still one of the most affordable cities in the country. Calgary
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is still affordable relative to Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, lots of the other places, but it is
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becoming less so. And because of the flood, you can see over the next three to five years, lots of
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people, if the same levels are maintained by Ottawa, lots of people will flood into Calgary,
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lots of people will flood into Edmonton and start to do to the housing market and the job market in
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those cities, what they've already done to the housing markets and the job markets in Toronto and
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Vancouver in particular. And I think Smith sees that now that she didn't see in March. I think this
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idea that we could, in 25 years, double the population of the province is nuts. It's only
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doable if it's done organically. If that's what the market wants, if, if that's what is needed for
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work in the oil field, in the service industries, fine, because the housing will follow along with it.
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But if you're talking about forcing this issue as a government, then that's not going to work. It
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doesn't work when the feds do it. It's not going to work when the province does it. And another of
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her ideas that stems from this immigration population expansion thing is this idea that we should build
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billions of dollars of intercity trains and commuter trains all over the province. Like, where does that
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come from? Like, that's as nutty as the Calgary City Council building a $6.3 billion LRT line to
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nowhere, because in the future we'll need it. And it's as nutty as the federal government spending
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money on transit all over the country that isn't designed to do anything in particular, but make them
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feel more green about themselves and maybe make Greta more pleased with them.
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You know what? The Simpsons, that old cartoon, they have this con man character who comes into
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town. So, oh, you wouldn't want the monorail. That's more, you know, here in, I forget the name
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of the Springfield. Well, it's more a Shelbyville idea. You wouldn't want that. No, no, no, we want it.
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Like he's a huckster. Here's a quick clip of that just to remind people what I'm talking about.
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Oh, it's not for you. It's more of a Shelbyville idea. Now, wait just a minute. We're twice as smart
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as the people of Shelbyville. Just tell us your idea and we'll vote for it. All right. I tell you
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what I'll do. I'll show you my idea. I give you the Springfield monorail. I've sold monorails to
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Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook, and by gum it put them on the map. Well, sir, there's nothing on
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earth like a genuine bona fide electrified six car monorail. What'd I say? Monorail. What's it
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called? Monorail. That's right. Monorail. Monorail. Monorail. Monorail. Anyone who's, look at
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California where they've been talking about building this high speed rail for literally decades. And the
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other day they were so proud of themselves. They tweeted like a one kilometer stretch connected to
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nothing. They thought this was something to be proud of. There is so much traffic between Calgary and
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Edmonton by car. There's WestJet and Air Canada. There's Uber. There's buses. The idea that the
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government needs to come in and spend billions of dollars on a train, it infuriates me. And that's
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what I mean about Danielle Smith. She'll read a paper in a technocratic way and sort of get excited
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about it. But you need sort of a base instinct of government is bad. And I think on the immigration
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side, I told you half the story about 750,000 temporary foreign workers. Here's the other
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half. There's 450,000 unemployed people in this country between age 15 and 19. So why are you
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bringing in 750,000 people who I'm sure are fine people? But why are people from foreign lands being
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brought in for cheap labor and 450,000 Canadian young people can't find work? And they can't find work
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because these companies have an easy way out. Because we're saying that we're letting billion
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dollar companies say, hey, I need to save a dollar an hour on my salaries. So can I bring in foreign
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laborers? Sometimes they won't find work either. It's easy enough in Canada to get by on what the
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government will hand you or what your parents are prepared to pay while you're still living at home.
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And there's lots more young people living at home than there were when when I left home in the 70s.
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But but the other side of that is to that I don't blame any of the newcomers for being allowed in.
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That's not they're not the problem. They didn't you know, if somebody said to you, you're living in
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this decrepit developing country over here on the other side of the world, how would you like to come
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to Canada easy and free? Of course, you're going to say yes, you'd be ridiculous. You would be doing
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your family a disservice. You wouldn't be the best parent you could be if you said no. So I don't
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blame any of them for coming. The problem is all with the liberals and all with their woke notions
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that we you know, a little immigration is good. So a lot must be way better.
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Here's the one thing that I would I mean, obviously, there there are probably 2 billion people in the
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world who would come here. Most of Africa, much of Asia, even parts of South America. Why wouldn't you
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come here? Because it is but it is better to be the lowest rung of Canada than a middle rung in Somalia.
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But here's what here. The one thing I would differ with you on a little bit is we have over 1 million
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foreign students in Canada. There are not even 1 million Canadian students. There's just not in
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universities and colleges. And and they've set up all these fake diploma mills, right with a fake
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street address, and you pay them 10 or 20 grand, and you get a student visa, but it's not really a
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school. So it's it's a scam. So I would I would think that I'm going to estimate half of the people
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here on a student visa. I'd say I'd say that's that's maybe on the low side of it. So I mean,
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I suppose I'm not blaming them since we allow that since these fake colleges and by the way,
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some real colleges, they're getting billions. They're basically selling immigration for 20 or
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30 grand pop. And there's a lot of BS refugees. You're not you're not required by the federal
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government to go home when your studies in. So most of these colleges have a six to nine or 12 month
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program after which you are issued a certificate. You are allowed allowed under Canadian regulations
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under immigration law to continue working in Canada in a post graduate position for I think
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right now it's 36 months. They're trying to talk about cutting it back to 18 months. But why do you
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get to work here after you're done anyway? And while you're here working towards this certificate from
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this college, you can work 40 hours a week. Now, as of September one, that goes down to 24 hours a
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week. But nonetheless, you know, I I know a fellow who runs a restaurant in Toronto who said most of the
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people who come on bikes to pick up delivery food from his restaurant are technically foreign students,
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but they're really working 40 hours a week delivering food for for one of the delivery service.
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And I suppose if you're if if you're doing that, I take your point. Well, we're letting it happen.
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So you can't blame them. Well, that's the insanity is we're letting it happen. There's there's students
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who are taking bogus studies and stick around thereafter. There's temporary foreign workers who
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are indeed working instead of Canadian young people working. And then there's refugees,
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many of whom are bogus. A lot of these people coming as temporary foreign workers or students
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then later claim asylum. It's bizarre to me. I mean, we accepted this across Roxham Road. No one
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coming from the United States, by definition, is not a refugee. This is how I see this all over the
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world. By the way, I see this in Ireland, people walk across from Northern Ireland, they take the
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dinghy from France to Britain, they go to Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, walk into Ireland,
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the country and say, we're refugees. No, brother, you're not. You just came from the UK. And refugee
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law doesn't allow you to shop around. It's it's our folly that we accept this. Yeah, it is. It
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absolutely is. And we have. So under the liberals, say, let's go back to Harper. Under the Harper
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Conservatives, the refugee appeal approval rate in Canada was about 67%. It was about, let's say,
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two thirds. Since the liberals have taken over, the refugee appeal rate has now gone well over 90%.
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And I don't have the figures for last year because they're not available yet. But it looked like they
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were headed towards about 95 or 96%. So if you make an application to be considered an asylum seeker in
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Canada, there is a 95 or 96% chance, you will be granted your wish to stay here. And once you have
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been granted that the chances of you ever being sent out of the country are minimal. You know, it infuriates
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me in a way that the truck driver who ran into the junior B bus and killed all of those hockey
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players is is being deported, despite the fact that he immediately apologized, he made amends with the
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families, he pled guilty, so they wouldn't be subjected to a trial. He's followed all of the
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rules that he had to in order to minimize the grief for the families as much as he could. Nothing can bring
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back those young men and the adults who are their coaches. But but nonetheless, here's a fellow who has
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tried as hard as he can to do the right thing and stay. And he's being kicked out. And then all these
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people who abuse the system and claim refugee status that they're not that they're not entitled to,
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You know, I see this all around the world. One of the strange things that's happening in Ireland,
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let me just share with you, I was there a few weeks ago, here in Canada, we put our bulk refugees
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in big cities, or even smaller cities, like for example, some hotels in Niagara Falls,
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many hotels in the greater Toronto area, they're no longer tourist hotels, they're no longer for
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traveling business people, they are urban refugee camps. This is happening in the United States too,
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even in New York City. There's dozens of hotels that are now urban refugee camps. And so they sort
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of blend in and there's no really active local community that's going to really get motivated in
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many of these large cities. But in here's what's crazy about Ireland, is the government for some
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reason is choosing to spread out their refugee camps to the tiniest villages, literally today.
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There's this village I was at a few weeks ago called Dundrum, less than 200 people in the whole
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village, Lauren. Like I met almost half of them just wandering around. The local beautiful hotel,
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country club and golf course signed a contract with the government to shut down as a hotel and
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country club and golf course, and to take 280 military aged migrant men, not men, women and children,
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just men. So you have a town of 200 that is now getting 280 men on top of that. No consultation,
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no hearing, no planning, no consent. And it just happened just today, I think. And that's insane
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because it's so extremely visible. And you've just destroyed centuries of, like this village of
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Dundrum goes back centuries. You've just absolutely changed the course of history. You've changed
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everything in the lives of this village. I don't understand why they would be so provocative.
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In Canada and the United States, we're sort of hiding them in urban hotels. But it's, I don't know. I think
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that mass immigration is a global weapon being used against the West. Am I wrong on that?
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I think it is. But I also think it's being foisted on the West, not by the rest of the world,
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but by progressive elites in the West, who refuse to see that there might be a downside to all of
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this, whose wokeism is so pervasive, so strong, that they think, oh, if a little bit of our tolerance
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is good, then five times that, 10 times that must necessarily be better. And they refuse to see that
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there is a downside on the healthcare system, on the housing market, on the job market. It's like
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the elites that have crafted our justice system policies, where everyone gets bail, even people
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who have been convicted several times in the past of violent crimes, they still get bail as a default,
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because getting people into the community is always the best way to cut down on crime.
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And even when you can show statistics after statistics after statistics, that this mass
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immigration or these lenient bail rules, or whatever the issue is, that those are not working,
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you can show the proof they're not working. The progressive elites refuse to accept that their
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I think there's something also a little bit darker. There is so much wokeism on the issue of race,
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race, and anti-white racism is not only accepted, it's promoted. It's now normal to see job
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descriptions saying you must be a minority or another disadvantaged group. There's all sorts of
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DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion, training sessions, the anti-white, and, you know, the anti-racist
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baby, like you're told to read books, basically to being white is tantamount to being an oppressor.
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And what is the national, natural, rational, logical conclusion of this nouveau racism, but to
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be anti-white as a society? And I think that that's part of mass immigration. I think there are some
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progressives who say, we're going to knock the white. And by the way, I mean, I'm fine with people
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of all races. But I'm saying is that this mass immigration is deliberately, like in that hotel
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in Dundrum I just mentioned, there were some Ukrainian families there that were genuine refugees
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from the war. They're being evicted to bring in people from Nigeria and Somalia. It's really
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astonishing. Let me show you a quick video clip. I was in Marseille, France last year when there were
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race riots. And I went there and I found a man who looked very integrated. He looked very modern. He was
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dressed in the Western attire. He had a cloche-shaped beard. Like he looked like a well-integrated Muslim
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man. He was from Algeria. My French was terrible, but we managed to talk to each other. And I said, if it's
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so racist here in France, why are you here? Why are so many Algerians here? Marseille is almost half
00:26:32.700
Muslim certain parts. Here's a clip of him saying the quiet part out loud. He basically
00:26:38.840
said, France colonized Algeria for a century. I'm here to return the favor. Take a look at this.
00:26:48.540
Franchement, tout ce qui se passe ici, c'est par rapport à l'État. Tout ça, c'est la faute
00:26:54.100
des policiers, c'est la faute de l'État. Parce qu'ici en France, il y a trop de racisme.
00:26:58.300
Le racisme, il est au premier degré ici en France. C'est tout ce que j'ai à dire. C'est
00:27:02.980
Pourquoi millions de musulmans immigré à France si France est raciste?
00:27:12.240
Eh bien, ils nous ont colonisé 132 ans. Et là , c'est notre tour de venir ici pour,
00:27:20.200
pour, pour, comment t'expliquer là , pour, je sais pas trouver les mots. Ils nous ont colonisé
00:27:26.720
132 ans. Et maintenant, on va les coloniser à vie jusqu'à la mort.
00:27:30.320
He later, by the way, I should tell you, that man later chased us down the street, found us about
00:27:36.000
a mile away, and demanded that we delete that footage. And we sort of pretended we did. Now,
00:27:41.980
I'm not saying that he speaks for everyone. There are many people who immigrate to Canada who love
00:27:47.460
it, who want to become Canadians, who want to share our values, who become patriots. But if we're not
00:27:52.620
assimilating people and indoctrinating them into our, not just our economy, everyone talks about
00:27:57.640
GDP and our economy and growth. And what, how about cultural fit too? How about keeping it safe for
00:28:04.680
women to walk at night? Safe for women? Where's our high trust society? The Canada I grew up in had a
00:28:12.680
high trust society where the default approach with a stranger was, we're all in this community
00:28:18.920
together. I believe if you bring in people too quickly who don't assimilate and find a common ground
00:28:23.800
and common purpose and common culture, you're losing that high trust society. You may get
00:28:28.440
economic growth, but you're not going to get the safety and the feeling of belonging that we grew up
00:28:33.920
Right, right. No, I think that, I think that's absolutely fair. I think that's absolutely true.
00:28:38.040
And you're seeing that. A good example, you and I had talked about before we started this interview
00:28:45.460
about Jenica Atwin, the Green MP turned liberal from Fredericton, New Brunswick, who wants the
00:28:53.840
federal government to stop screening refugees from Gaza and just admit as many as want to come here as
00:29:01.940
quickly as possible. For instance, she even wants to get rid of the security screening
00:29:06.180
on the ground in Gaza before the people leave and come here. And that would, I think, simply lead
00:29:15.220
to two things. First of all, it would lead to Hamas embedding its own operatives within what looks like
00:29:24.060
a group of refugees, because Gaza controls who comes in and who gets out of Gaza. So of course,
00:29:29.940
they're going to put their own people in there. There's going to be a lot of incentive for their own
00:29:33.440
operators to get into those refugee groups, because the Israelis are closing in. And a lot of those
00:29:39.800
people, if they don't get out, are going to get dead. And so certainly there'll be a lot of people
00:29:44.700
in those Gaza refugee groups who would be Hamas. But also, you have to remember that during the October
00:29:51.540
7th massacre of Jews by Hamas, that was very widely and wildly popular with ordinary Palestinians.
00:30:02.100
People keep talking about, oh, Israel is going after Gaza, but they're killing all these poor
00:30:07.740
Palestinians. First of all, under international law, if you started the war and now you're hiding
00:30:13.560
behind civilians, their deaths are on your head, not on the head of the people who are defending
00:30:19.520
themselves. But second, what you've got there is this crazy passion for Hamas among a lot of
00:30:32.080
Palestinians, maybe even three quarters, as many as three quarters. And so if you're admitting an
00:30:36.800
awful lot of people to Canada who are passionately anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, and pro-Palestinian in
00:30:43.660
large numbers, are they going to integrate into Canada and live by the peaceful code that we have
00:30:51.360
here? Are they going to express their views in a non-violent way? Or are they simply going to start
00:30:58.480
jumping on hospital entranceways in Toronto again and lighting off firebombs and having violent
00:31:06.120
protests and calling for the death of Jews and maybe starting to attack Canadian government sites
00:31:14.280
because they don't think the Canadian government is pure enough in its support for Palestine?
00:31:19.340
We are simply inviting a ton of trouble. And that goes directly to what you're saying about when you
00:31:25.380
allow in so many people with so many different views without doing any kind of screening and at
00:31:32.040
this end, getting rid of any kind of cultural training for Canadian values, then you're asking
00:31:41.360
for trouble. Yeah. Well, let me close on this. In the United Kingdom, our former, our alumnus,
00:31:49.860
Tommy Robinson, who's, you know, a controversial person to the world. I like him and I trust him,
00:31:55.380
actually. He held a very large, very peaceful rally, the first on June 1st, the second on July 27th.
00:32:02.060
We covered it very peaceful. It was patriotic. It was multiracial. But it had a central message,
00:32:08.600
which is stop mass immigration. So two huge peaceful rallies. But in the last week or so,
00:32:14.120
there have been actual violent riots and counter riots in the UK and a lot of arrests of what I
00:32:22.080
call indigenous British people. They're the First Nations there. So I mean, they're, where does a
00:32:28.160
Brit go if he wants to go back to his homeland? Well, there's really nowhere else to go. So there's
00:32:33.420
been riots and prosecutions. So there was a poll done after the riots. That's my point. After the
00:32:38.900
riots, after the prosecutions and jailing of hundreds and hundreds of, of rioters, primarily
00:32:44.840
indigenous Brits, more than a third of Brits say that violence is a solution to mass immigration.
00:32:55.860
That is a shocking and terrifying number. A third say, according to a poll that was just released,
00:33:04.220
something yesterday. And obviously we're against violence. But when you say to people, you're not
00:33:09.820
allowed to protest, you're not allowed, like they're arresting people for memes, for social media
00:33:15.220
statements. For one person in Northern Ireland was jailed for simply watching the riot, not participating,
00:33:21.940
not hollering, not heckling. Just, he was a curious observer, which by the way, is a definition of a
00:33:27.360
journalist too. I, I fear that by, that, that I think the UK and France are way further down this
00:33:34.760
road than us, but I wish that we would learn from their bad example and not go that crazy. And the
00:33:40.740
talk of a 10 million person Alberta and a hundred million person Canada, we will, God forbid, may it
00:33:47.260
never happen. We will be at the place where there are riots too. And the fact that more than a third of
00:33:53.680
Brits say, yeah, rioting is the only way the establishment will listen to us. That is terrifying.
00:33:59.680
Because, because not only will the establishment not listen, they will arrest you for speaking out,
00:34:09.380
or they'll, you know, that's what this new online harms bill is all about in Canada, is the ability
00:34:14.560
of, of the CRTC as an agent of the government to take down posts that might say something unkind
00:34:22.200
about mass immigration. I, I noticed the other day, Facebook, uh, deleted a, um, I don't know what
00:34:29.920
you call it, an account, I guess, uh, that was put double X and that's two X chromosome. Right. And
00:34:37.700
it was to make comments on the international Olympic committee statement that gender now scientifically
00:34:45.520
is not, uh, determined by chromosome. You know, scientifically it is. And this is one of those
00:34:53.760
preposterous elite statements that ends with people honking their horns in downtown Ottawa for three
00:35:00.680
weeks because they have no other idea what they can do when, when the, the smartest people, the people
00:35:07.640
with the most education in, in, in society start spouting absolutely preposterous nonsense. And there
00:35:16.520
was a very good piece in the national review in the United States last week on, on the advent of
00:35:22.100
the profoundly wrong expert. And I think we're seeing that in all manner of issues now that the people who
00:35:30.960
are directing government policy, the people who are being consulted by governments and by elites, uh,
00:35:37.360
to, to give them ideas for solving problems are profoundly wrong. And, but they won't admit it.
00:35:45.560
The people who are paying them to give them ideas won't admit it. And if you start to say, Hey,
00:35:50.820
you're profoundly wrong, well then you'll get your social media account deleted. You might end up being
00:35:56.520
arrested if you're in Britain. Uh, and, and, and it's a topsy turvy world. Uh, you see, I, and you and
00:36:03.760
I differ very much on Donald Trump. I am not a big fan at all of Donald Trump, but I understand the
00:36:11.240
Trump phenomenon. The Trump phenomenon comes out of these profoundly wrong experts who on every issue,
00:36:18.760
not only are wrong, but they want to micromanage the lives of the people who aren't wrong. Yeah.
00:36:24.340
And, uh, and, and I think that's, I think that's what we're headed for.
00:36:28.360
Let me close with this because we're talking a little bit about censorship now. Um, the other day,
00:36:34.300
Elon Musk interviewed Donald Trump on the Twitter platform, which is now called X. And it was very
00:36:41.120
long and interviewed and some people have their thoughts on the substance of it and the style of
00:36:44.800
it. But, uh, according to Twitter, and they may be exaggerating, but they claim that it was listened
00:36:51.200
to or, or, or watched or, uh, came to the attention of 1 billion people. Now, I, I don't know how that
00:37:00.060
can be given that there's not even a billion people on Twitter, but it was pretty big. But the day before
00:37:06.180
the head of the European union, um, Terry, I think I'm pronouncing his right, his last name, sent a big
00:37:13.660
letter on European union stationary to, to Elon Musk, basically warning him not to say certain
00:37:21.720
things, not to incite hatred, basically. So a letter from a European bureaucrat who himself
00:37:27.080
is not elected because he's the head of the EU writing to an American citizen, Elon Musk, telling
00:37:34.460
him that he can't say certain things in his interview with a presidential candidate, the chutzpah,
00:37:40.100
the condescension, the, the audacity, but, but that is absolutely all of them. When I was in Davos
00:37:48.840
at the world economic forum last year, the two names they hated the most was Donald Trump because
00:37:53.400
they think he'll smash their international architecture, but they hate is a very close
00:37:58.840
second. Elon Musk for enabling people to see and hear and say things that they weren't allowed to
00:38:05.260
before then. I, I am just as worried about an assassination attempt, God forbid, against Elon
00:38:11.400
Musk as, as I think that we should be worried about one against Trump. The, the chutzpah of some
00:38:17.320
European Belgian bureaucrat to write a letter to Elon Musk in America and say, you're not allowed to say
00:38:23.440
certain things in your interview with Donald Trump in an election. It is so appalling, but it's so
00:38:28.340
normal. And that letter did indeed go out. It's, it's, it's normal in those circles. They really
00:38:33.920
do believe that the world is becoming a darker, more sinister place, and they are the only lights
00:38:40.480
that are keeping it civilized. And so therefore they can do whatever they choose in order to protect
00:38:47.900
what they see as civilization. And they're just full of it. Yeah. Lauren, it's great to catch up with
00:38:53.040
you. I meant to talk a lot more about Alberta things, but we talked mainly about immigration,
00:38:57.000
but I have to tell you all around the world, that is a key issue in places like Hungary and Poland,
00:39:03.300
they have made a very starkly different choice. And I have to tell you, there's no pro Hamas marches
00:39:08.740
in Hungary and Poland. There's no stabbing attacks in the street of Hungary and Poland. There's no,
00:39:14.360
I was in Hungary at the large Jewish synagogue in Budapest. They don't even have a security guard.
00:39:19.740
There's no anti-Semitic graffiti in Hungary. It was, it was actually declared by the world Jewish
00:39:24.760
Congress to be the safest European city in which to be a Jew. I have to tell you, my friend, there is
00:39:30.620
a connection. There absolutely is a connection. However politically incorrect it is to say so,
00:39:35.360
it's something that's going to be, I think, the issue of our times. Thank you for talking with me
00:39:40.380
about it. It's better to talk about these things than to brush them under the carpet, which I think
00:39:44.560
a lot of the mainstream media do. All right, there you have it. Lauren Gunter, one of our favorite guys.
00:39:49.280
He's a senior columnist for the Edmonton Sun. Take care, my friend.
00:40:03.620
I was going to read some letters, but let me share with you some thoughts about other things as well.
00:40:07.680
My colleague, Sarah Stock, is in Ottawa reporting on Tamara Leach's trial. It really is astonishing that
00:40:13.280
the largest trial in Canada, the largest trial in Canada in, for years, I can't remember any
00:40:18.820
longer running trial with more government resources, it is not for terrorism. We saw about the two
00:40:24.420
terrorists from ISIS that were brought into this country even after they had committed terrorism
00:40:29.560
overseas. Their trial will not be as long as Tamara Leach's. There will be no trial of, for example,
00:40:36.700
the great bank heist where they stole all that gold from Toronto Pearson Airport. That won't be as long.
00:40:42.520
There are atrocious terrorist acts, atrocious crimes, drug gangs, car theft rings. If you're in the
00:40:50.100
greater Toronto area, you know that cars are stolen literally every day. People break in, get the key
00:40:55.120
fobs and drive away with luxury cars, put them on a ship and send them to the Middle East or Africa.
00:41:01.200
It's an astonishing crime wave. None of those get the police crackdown.
00:41:06.720
The prosecutorial resources and the time of our courts, like Tamara Leach. And I just turn that
00:41:13.680
over my head and I realize what backwards and upside down morality we have in our justice system.
00:41:21.200
That Tamara Leach, who had never done a crime in her life, never arrested in her life, never actually
00:41:28.560
did anything other than be sort of the spiritual leader of the convoy, has the largest mischief trial
00:41:35.100
in not just Canadian history, but anywhere in the Commonwealth. And my time yesterday was
00:41:40.940
confirmed that. Now, I was happy to say that I was certainly left with the impression that Tamara
00:41:46.780
Leach will be acquitted and that the prosecutors were just phoning it in. They had some of those
00:41:50.840
embarrassingly stupid arguments I'd ever seen. But what else are you going to do?
00:41:55.640
If you're instructed by the attorney general to prosecute Tamara Leach at all costs and you've got
00:42:00.860
nothing, you sort of try and make something out of nothing. Maybe the prosecutors were just
00:42:06.140
filling time, but they certainly did it in a punitive way. I'm excited that Rebel News is not
00:42:10.540
just the publisher of Tamara Leach's autobiography, but that we're working with the Democracy Fund to
00:42:15.420
crowdfund Tamara Leach's legal fees. If you can help, please do go to helptamara.com. I saw
00:42:21.820
the lawyers in action and there was this wonderful moment, if I can just share it with you.
00:42:25.100
One of the leading cases in mischief as a criminal offense was discussed yesterday. I forget the name
00:42:33.360
of the case, so I don't want to get it wrong. The prosecution was referring to that case. It was a
00:42:38.900
high court, it was an appeal court decision about a neighbor who parked his truck near his neighbor
00:42:46.360
and had a message on the truck, something like, I'm not responsible for the flood in your basement.
00:42:52.580
Like some squabble between the two. So it was on neighbor number one's truck on neighbor number
00:43:00.660
one's property next to neighbor number two. Neighbor number two somehow managed to get not just some
00:43:07.660
civil suit, small claim suit, but managed to get a mischief prosecution and conviction of a crime of
00:43:15.340
his neighbor. So the guy, neighbor number one, who put up this weird sign on his truck that didn't have
00:43:20.300
any swears, didn't have any threats. It was just sort of a nuisance. Convicted of a crime? Well, that
00:43:26.720
case was appealed and neighbor number one was acquitted. It was overturned on appeal. And the weight
00:43:35.400
of that court case, the importance of it, was that if you have expression, if you have political
00:43:40.820
expression or you have some meaning, that can be a defense to mischief. So you can see why this is an
00:43:46.240
important case when Tamara Leach, the head of the truckers, is on trial for mischief. Anyway, so that's the
00:43:52.620
case. The prosecution brought up the case and was trying somehow to make the point that this benefited the
00:43:59.380
prosecution. The judge waited and said, yeah, no, I'm not sure if you quite understand that case. And they were
00:44:05.840
bantering back and forth. The judge was really pushing back against the prosecutor. And I said, well, I assume the
00:44:12.380
judge is right. She's a very senior judge. And then it was my favorite moment yesterday. Lawrence
00:44:18.700
Greenspawn, the senior lawyer, the head of three lawyers defending Tamara Leach, pipes up in a very
00:44:23.440
gentle way and says, Your Honor, I was the lawyer who took that case to the court of appeal 14 years ago,
00:44:31.980
and I won. And so literally Tamara Leach's lawyer is the expert lawyer who fought the case and won in the
00:44:41.060
court of appeal 14 years ago, setting the precedent for freedom of speech, even in the case of mischief,
00:44:47.920
being a source of acquittal. And it was sort of funny to me, because here's some prosecutors trying
00:44:52.660
to say, I know what this case means. Your Honor, let me tell you, this case really helps us because
00:44:56.600
of blah, blah, blah. And the judge said, no, I don't, I don't really think so. And then sitting over
00:45:00.540
there with a big smile on his face is the lawyer who actually took that case and won that case and
00:45:05.940
argued that case and knows that case probably better than anyone else in the world, Lawrence
00:45:09.980
Greenspawn, Tamara Leach's lawyer. And in that moment, and by the way, the way Lawrence Greenspawn
00:45:14.160
mentioned this and brought it up sort of in a self-deprecating way, oh, I'm so old kind of thing.
00:45:19.740
It was very funny, very lighthearted, and it was an amazing moment. And I thought, boy,
00:45:26.300
having a great lawyer can make all the difference. And not only is Lawrence Greenspawn, in my personal
00:45:33.480
view, a great lawyer. And I say that, I probably know 50 lawyers. Watching him in that moment,
00:45:39.660
being the man of the hour, knowing that case of mischief when there's political expression,
00:45:45.540
I felt pretty good about it. Look, I don't know how the Tamara Leach case is going to end. I just
00:45:49.140
don't know. How do I know? Only the judge herself knows. But I'm fairly optimistic. And I think
00:45:54.880
what the prosecution started is an attempt to not just criminalize Tamara Leach and punish her
00:46:00.160
personally, but to sort of retroactively criminalize the entire convoy, I think it's
00:46:04.840
going to backfire on the government. I think it's going to be an acquittal, and thereby a vindication
00:46:09.060
of the entire convoy. Yes, it was Trudeau who threw the country under martial law. And yes,
00:46:13.800
it was Trudeau who did atrocious things and made atrocious statements. But at the end of the day,
00:46:18.660
it's the Ontario government, the provincial government, Doug Ford's government, that instructs,
00:46:23.580
pays, directs, and chooses to go after Tamara Leach with the prosecutors. Those are Ontario prosecutors,
00:46:29.340
not federal prosecutors. Anyways, Sarah Stock continues to cover that story for us.
00:46:38.280
That's our show for today. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us at Rebel World Headquarters,
00:46:43.760
to you at home, good night, and keep fighting for freedom.