EZRA LEVANT ｜ An airline CEO comes out against the vaccine mandate
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Summary
A Canadian airline CEO comes out against Trudeau's vaccine mandate. I'll tell you what he said, and I'll show you what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said. Plus, Ezra explains why he thinks the unvaccinated should be allowed to stay at home.
Transcript
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Hello my Rebels, today I look at an astonishing comment by the new president, the new CEO of
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WestJet. He came out against Trudeau's vaccine mandate. I have never seen such courage in any
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Canadian CEO of two years of the lockdown. It won't surprise you to hear he's foreign. He just
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came to Canada to take the job. I'll give you the scoop on it. I'll tell you what he said and I'll
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show you what Trudeau said. That's in a moment, but first let me invite you to become a subscriber
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to Rebel News Plus. That's the video version of this podcast. Just go to rebelnewsplus.com,
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from Trudeau, you know. All right, here's today's podcast.
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Tonight, an airline CEO comes out against the vaccine mandate. It's June 1st, and this is the
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Ezra LeVant Show. Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
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There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer. The only thing I have to say to the
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government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
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I was very surprised to see this yesterday. It's a public comment on Twitter by Alexis von
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Hensbrecht. I think I'm pronouncing that right. He's the CEO of WestJet, Canada's second largest
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airline. It's based in the West. Maybe there's a tiny bit of a freedom spirit left out there.
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He said, vaccine mandate for all travelers and employees needs to be dropped. As vaccines are
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not preventing the spreading of the virus since Omicron, there is no more logic to maintain it.
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This will also relax some of the operational challenges at the airports. Wow. And in his tweet,
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he links to this CTV story. Headline, federal COVID-19 border restrictions extended for another
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month. Yeah. You think it's just another month? How about just another two weeks to stop the spread?
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Here's what the CTV story says. The federal COVID-19 restrictions at the border are being extended
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until at least June 30th. Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada announced
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on Tuesday, the federal government will continue to require foreign tourists to provide proof of being
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fully vaccinated. Yeah. Canadians need to provide that too, don't they? So I care about Canadians because
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I am a Canadian and because it's so evident to me that Trudeau is using the airline and railway
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vaccine mandates as a way to punish the opposition. Here's what I mean. Because if you're unvaccinated
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in 2022, if you manage to hold out this far, despite the bullying and threats and extortions,
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despite the punishments, I think the likelihood that you are anything but a Trudeau supporter is more
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than 90 percent. And that's really all Trudeau cares about. So of course he wants to punish and undermine
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and hurt and fatigue and demoralize that group of people who are against him politically. I mean,
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he literally called them racists and Nazis. And he went on TV saying that we shouldn't tolerate such people.
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It's not so much that the unvaccinated are a public danger. Many of them have recovered naturally from
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the virus and are naturally immune. And as Bill Gates himself tells us, vaccines don't stop you from
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catching or spreading the virus. They're not really vaccines in the traditional sense.
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The idea of checking if people are vaccinated, you know, if you have breakthrough infections,
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what's the point? Yeah. It's that Trudeau likes to punish his enemies, especially when they helpfully
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put themselves in a category like that. He hates Alberta and Saskatchewan. He hates the oil patch.
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He hates our military. He hates the unvaxxed because each of these groups are his political opponents
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and they're easy to class so he can target them. That's why he wants to criminalize them where he can
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merely ban and segregate them where that's the most he can do. But the thing is, that isn't such a neat
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class because if there are, say, 10 or 15 percent of the country that's unvaxxed, I bet it's actually
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higher. Well, that's just not it because they're very likely part of a family where some people are
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vaxxed. You might have a mom who stays at home with the kids and so she's not vaxxed because she's
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worried about her health. But the dad had to get vaxxed or he'd be fired from his job. So there's a
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family and Trudeau hates the mom because she's unvaxxed. But the dad is no ally of Trudeau.
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He was forced to be vaxxed. And of course, he loves his wife. But my point here is that the entire
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family can't really go on a family vacation on WestJet now, can they? They can't go to a cycle
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of life event like a wedding or a funeral on a WestJet flight, can they? Because mom isn't vaxxed even
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though dad was forced to be vaxxed. So if you're WestJet or Canada, you didn't just lose mom as a
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customer, you lost the family unit as a customer. But it's worse than that. The second part of that
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CTV, the second sentence I read from that CTV story, foreign tourists have to show they're vaxxed
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to come to Canada. Many foreigners are not vaxxed. And many Americans, which is by far the biggest source
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of tourists and business travelers to Canada, some of them are vaxxed, but some aren't. But it's been
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ages since they had to widespread vaccine mandates down there. And some places like Florida, being an
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obvious example, never did. So some people are vaxxed and some aren't. But really, is everyone
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holding onto their vaccine certificates and carrying them in their wallets? I mean, maybe that's
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something you do, you say very carefully. But you're an American, and you want to go on a trip,
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you want to come to Canada, and you've got to go through this whole thing again? Yeah, you might
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want to go to Mexico instead. Better beaches, less corrupt than Trudeau. In Mexico, they don't censor
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you or seize your bank accounts, Trudeau style, and they don't require that you're jabbed.
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So if you're WestJet, you've been a good corporate citizen this whole time, which these days,
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unfortunately, means not being a good citizen to your fellow man, but being obedient to the
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government, forcing your own staff to be vaccinated under pain of being terminated, forcing your own
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customers to be vaccinated, and denying the vast majority of requests for religious or medical
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exemptions. So let's not pretend that WestJet hasn't been a complicit collaborator all along.
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They shut up and obeyed. The complete opposite of the boss of Cafe Pacific, who stood up to the
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Chinese dictatorship. Remember that story? Cafe Pacific, one of the world's great airlines,
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based in Hong Kong. And look at this story. I've told it to you before. The Chinese government
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demanded that the airline boss hand over the names of any staff who were engaged in pro-democracy
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protests, according to this report. And I've seen this report in four different news sources.
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The CEO gave the Chinese a piece of paper with a list of all the names of the protesters on it,
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but there's only one name on the list, his own name. Could you imagine that? He was soon drummed
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out as CEO. I don't know if this is a legend or a fact. I have read it in places like Newsweek and
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a Taiwanese newspaper. I would like to think that there are some Hong Kongers who believe that
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that much in freedom. I don't know if Alexis Ron Hensbrook is such a man. I don't know.
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WestJet spent two years complying with Trudeau's mandates, not just complying, but enforcing the
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rules against their own people, their own staff, their own customers. But you can't put all that
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on Van Hensbrook because according to this press release, I had never heard of Ron Hensbrook before,
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he actually only joined WestJet as their boss in February, just a few months ago, March, April,
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May, June, four months ago. He's from Europe. I think he might be German. I'm not sure.
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And Europe, they're slightly more sane than Canada on the lockdowns these days.
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So maybe Von Hensbrook is our version of the Cafe Pacific boss. He's not dulled and succumbed and
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obedient and submissive like 100% of the rest of the CEO class in this country. I cannot think of one
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company, one publicly traded company, one prestigious company, one stock market company,
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one company that you know the brand that spoke out against the vaccine mandates, let alone the
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lockdown orders, the distancing orders, the mask and sanity. Not one. Can you name one?
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Maybe it took a European to care. Maybe this is just a case of his personal and his business interests
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correlating with civil liberties. I mean, it's late, but it's bold. And it's directly in the face of
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The travel restrictions, the tourism groups want them lifted. And there has been some criticism
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that the communication around the reasoning hasn't been transparent.
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Well, the reality is, as much as people would like to pretend we're not, we're still in a pandemic.
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There are Canadians who die every single day because of COVID-19 in our hospitals. We are still at risk,
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particularly at risk as fall approaches of new variants. We need to make sure we're doing
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everything we can to keep Canadians safe. And I know people are eager to get back to things
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we love. But what will also, you know, further damage our tourism industry is if we get another
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wave, if we get more serious impacts from COVID. That's why every single time we have been
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anchored in science, we're reflecting on what the best way to do to make sure that we can get
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back to the things we love as quickly as possible without putting ourselves at risk for further
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health crises, for further economic shutdowns, for further hardship that COVID has.
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So Trudeau says the risk, well, it might in the future sometime, maybe in the fall, maybe another
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wave. So he's banning people now because maybe something, something about the future, even though
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the vaccine doesn't stop transmission, even though the unvaccinated are put on buses, there's no sense
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to it other than punishment. There's no science here, only vengeance. The truckers were against
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the mandate, so this is part of his punishment to them, which is why I'm worried for Alexis von
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Hensbrook. You simply don't speak out against Trudeau in Canada. Von Hensbrook might not know that
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part either. When I think of hyper-regulated businesses in Canada, I think of the firearms
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industry, if there's any left. I think of tobacco, if there's any left. I think of the banks, and I
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think of airlines. A malicious government could kill an airline with the flick of its tail.
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Look what, look what they're doing in the Toronto Pearson Airport, making passengers come at 3.30 in
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the morning. The government did that. And that's just, that's just incompetence and abuse. That's not
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targeted vengeance. Von Hensbrook is daring Trudeau, challenging him. I noticed that Air Canada and
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Flare Air, or whatever the other small airlines are, Air Transat, I noticed that they are staying
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very, very silent. They are hiding very quietly right now. They are not coming forward to show
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unity and say, yeah, me too. They're not doing that. That would not only save WestJet, it would likely
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tip the scales and help push to freedom. If every airline said, this is nuts, I think it would make a
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dent. But they would rather see their competitor WestJet, their rival, massacred by Trudeau, than
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risk them standing in the breach, even if that would save the problem, solve the problem. They're
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happy for this European tourist to be mugged by a thug. But it's all a reminder of how our national
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temperament, our national conscience has been warped. The way we look at the world and what we have
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accepted. It's not normal what we have accepted here. We're outliers in the world. We're weird in
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the world. Trudeau is making us a worse version of ourselves than we used to be on censorship,
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on accepting poverty, on civil liberties, on pandemic response. You know, Von Hensbrook isn't the
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strange one. The rest of the cowards are Canadians as a whore. Still with us from war.
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I saw news that the fertility rate in Canada has hit an all-time low. Fertility rate is a pretty
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simple measurement. It's how many babies does the average woman have. And for a society to replace
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itself, the number is just over 2.0. It's around 2.1 for various reasons. Anything less than that,
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the society is shrinking, shrinking, shrinking, like Italy or Japan. Well, last year, Canada's
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fertility rate was around 1.4. Part of it, obviously, was the pandemic. But I think another part of it is
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it's just so expensive to start a family, to get married and get your own house. And the longer
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you delay that, the less likely you are to have kids or more than one kid. I think the cost of
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forming a family is probably the number one factor in a society's health and happiness.
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The government makes things harder by ramping up demand for housing, in my opinion, by having 1%
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of the population come to Canada every year in the form of immigration. 350,000 people a year all
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needing new homes. That pushes up the housing price. And of course, supply is limited by various
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regulations, including so-called green belts and other reasons to not build. It's a disaster
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for those squeezed in the middle. As Roman Babber said to me the other day, there is an upside to
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skyrocketing property values in that for many Canadians, that's their only form of savings.
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Their house, it's what they're counting on to retire. Okay, that is part of the equation. But
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what about young people trying to start a family? There's a lobby group called Generation Squeeze.
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I've never actually heard of it before, but they're worried about the squeeze. And they had
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a meeting with the government and it turns out Trudeau was lying. He actually is considering
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a tax on your household equity. Here to join us to talk about it is our friend Franco Terrazzano,
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the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. And he has a new essay on the website
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called Documents Show. Prime Minister's Office staff held meetings on home equity taxes. Franco,
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great to see you. Thanks for joining us. Tell us a little bit about what happened when Generation
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Squeeze went to talk to the Prime Minister's office. Well, Ezra, let me take your audience back just
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one step here. So the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, a federal crown corporation,
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gave $250,000 of our hard-earned taxpayers' money to this group to study a home equity tax. The report
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was released with a recommendation of a form of a home equity tax. Now, we've been sounding the alarm
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over this. And we heard from a bunch of liberal MPs, you know, essentially dismissing these concerns,
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saying the government isn't considering a home equity tax. We also heard from Prime Minister Justin
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Trudeau during the last election that the liberals would not bring in a home equity tax. But we just
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dug up some documents showing that staff within Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's office has in fact
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met with this group that is recommending a home equity tax not once but twice. So you have these
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liberal politicians essentially pinky promising taxpayers that they're not going to put in a home
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equity tax. Well, then why is Trudeau's staff meeting with these home equity tax pushers?
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Got it. So Generation Squeeze, they are the recommenders of the tax. They say that's going
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to form, that's going to be a solution. What's their, I mean, we of course, you and I disagree with
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the idea of this tax. We could talk more about that. But just if they were here, how would they argue
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that taxing homes makes homes more affordable? Like, how do they square that circle? They must have some
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intricate argument. Do you know, do you know how they put it? Well, it more so seems if you read the
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their news release around this report, it's almost like they're trying to punish the homeowners for
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getting these so called windfall gains on their home prices. But let's remember for so many Canadians,
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for our parents and our grandparents, their homes are their nest eggs. They rely on the sale of their
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homes to be able to afford to fund their own golden years. Now, we have a home equity tax calculator at
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taxpayer.com. And let me just give you a startling number of how much a home equity tax could cost.
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Let's say your parents or grandparents bought their home for about $250,000 back in 1980. Let's say they
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sell it today for about 1.2 million. A home equity tax could cost them anywhere between $50,000,
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all the way up to $190,000. That would be so much pain for so many people who rely on that nest egg.
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Right. And I know some folks, if you're living in a smaller town or a rural place, you're probably
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saying $1.2 million. That's, that's a dream. Well, actually, in Toronto, in Vancouver, even in Calgary and
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Edmonton, like I should say, in this city of Toronto, where I happen to live, the average cost of a house is
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well over a million dollars. And, you know, this reminds me, I think this is the issue that propelled
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Ronald Reagan into high office in California. People bought houses, like you say, in the olden times when
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people could afford them. And just, you know, the bubble or inflation or whatever, their home value
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went up. But that is a very illiquid asset. You don't get that money until you sell it. I think one of the
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things in Reagan's California is that you were, your property taxes were based on its value. So the property
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taxes were pushing often grandparents out of their homes simply because the market value of their homes had
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increased, but they were on a flat pension. That was one of the things that Reagan, if my history is right,
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wrote into office. I think they had a proposition, like a referendum, I think it was called Prop 13. I'll have to
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check my history. But when you say, I'm going to take your money, I'm going to wring it out of your
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house, even though you don't have that income, I think that that's a devastating thing to a lot of
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people. Tell me a little bit more about what the PMO said or did when they met with Generation Squeeze.
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I know you're trying to read the tea leaves from the access to information documents, but is there
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anything else in there? Well, we do know that Generation Squeeze did talk about the tax policy
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recommendation, right? Their form of home equity tax. We tried to reach out to get further comment, but we were
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not able to do so. But Ezra, let's just go back to this home equity tax recommendation. Remember, this report
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was funded with our own taxpayers' money, through the CMHC. Let's remember that. Very important. And the whole
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report was supposed to talk about how to improve sky-high housing prices, because look, that is a real
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problem. But trying to improve affordability with a new tax would be like trying to put out a fire with
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gasoline. It's just going to make things worse. And here's the thing, buried within that report, 50 pages
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in, they finally acknowledged that, surprise, surprise, a new tax could increase the cost of
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homes, because you could have would-be sellers adding on the tax to the price, or you could just
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have sellers decide to keep their house off the market, which would, again, reduce supply and increase
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prices. So what we need to see in Canada is we need to see governments allow people to actually build
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homes. And you build homes with hammers and nails, not with tax hikes. Yeah. You know, in Ontario, there's a
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land transfer tax. It's tens of thousands of dollars. It's an enormous burden. But I guess the reason I
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mention it is they're getting away with it. So Justin Trudeau and the feds must be looking at what is done in
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Ontario and says, oh, we can get a piece of that action, too. I don't know. It's it's fun. I'm glad you helped
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explain for me who Generation Squeezed is. They were funded by the government to lobby the government to do that
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which the government wants to do, which is to tax. It's a typical Ottawa story. And they're getting rich off it, too. I
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I just I just don't know who would support this. If you're if you currently own a home, obviously you
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wouldn't support it because it's been taken by the government. If you're trying to get into a home and
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buy a home, this doesn't help you for the reasons you just said. Literally, the only people who benefit
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here are the tax collectors. This is such bad public policy, which is why I'm certain Justin Trudeau is
00:22:44.960
going to do it. Ezra, but here's the thing. You nailed it, right? Who benefits from it? Well, the politicians in
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Ottawa that are tripping over themselves trying to figure out how in the world they're going to pay
00:22:55.340
down their one trillion dollar plus debt. And look, we have to hold the Canada Mortgage and Housing
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Corporation to account here as well, because this is a crown corporation and on their website,
00:23:06.000
their number one objective is housing affordability. Well, let's look at the numbers here. In 2020,
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the average home price up 13 percent. 2021, up again, 21 percent. So we are facing a housing
00:23:17.820
affordability crisis. And what does the CMHC do? They turn around, pat themselves on the back and give their
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employees 48 million dollars in bonuses in 2020 and 2021. They give themselves bonuses when they fail
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to meet their own objectives and when Canadians can't afford to get into a home. You know, I think about this
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all the time. I'm lucky enough to be a homeowner myself. But if you're a young person trying to get into
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your first house in Toronto or Vancouver or another big city, I don't know what the national housing
00:23:49.520
average price is, but I get realtors dropping their flyers in my mailbox and they all boast that this
00:23:56.920
house sold for 300,000 more than list price. That house sold for half a million more. You're literally
00:24:03.000
having houses that are listed for 1.5 million, which is beyond the reach of many people, selling for
00:24:09.000
2 million. That's the madness. I don't know if that bubble can continue to grow, but we're in very
00:24:16.260
strange days. I think it has in part to do with inflation and the government just printing money.
00:24:21.800
Am I accurate on that? Well, of course. I mean, this is what's ballooning the price of so many
00:24:27.580
goods and services, but of course, hard assets as well. I mean, one of the big problems here is that
00:24:33.180
we've seen the central bank, the Bank of Canada, print hundreds of billions of dollars right out of
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thin air over the last two years. But of course, you can't just print new homes out of thin air,
00:24:43.740
right? So we're overstimulating demand with all the new dollars that is chasing too few goods. But then
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on the supply side, you have many of the regulations that we've already been talking about
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that are reducing our ability to actually build homes. And look, you know what's also so damaging
00:24:59.940
about this home equity tax? If you look at younger couples who are trying to save up for their first
00:25:05.540
home by selling their starter home, well, this is going to make them, it's going to make it even
00:25:10.280
harder for them to do that. So not only does it harm people who are looking to retire, but it can also
00:25:15.380
harm that younger couple looking to move into their first family home. You know, you said that housing is
00:25:20.680
up 21%. I know here in Toronto, it's up 29%. In one year, if you're a young person trying to scrape
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together a little pile of savings to make a down payment, you can't keep up. Like, as fast as you're
00:25:34.720
saving, the price is going up faster. You're literally falling further behind. I find this very
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stressful because, I don't know, I just think it would be very difficult to be a young person
00:25:46.380
in Toronto. And it comes back to how I started this conversation. I think
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forming a family in Canada and in the big cities in particular has never been more difficult. And I
00:25:59.740
really don't think the government gives a damn. I find this a very stressful thing, but I appreciate
00:26:04.160
the research you've done here, Franco. And I appreciate that you guys at the Taxpayers Federation
00:26:09.040
keep fighting for the little guys. So thanks for doing that. Hey, it was my pleasure. Thanks so much for
00:26:14.640
having me on. All right. Anytime. There's our friend Franco Toranzano. He's the federal director
00:26:19.940
of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. One of the good guys, that's for sure. Stay with us.
00:26:36.940
Hey, welcome back. Your viewer mail. Frank DeVries says,
00:26:41.400
rural citizens think for themselves and are capable and willing to survive without being manipulated
00:26:46.340
and told what to do. There's some truth there. I mean, I grew up semi-country. I mean, we went to
00:26:52.420
school in the city for most of our childhood, but we did grow up in the country. And country folk just
00:26:57.960
have to know how to do stuff because they're in the country and they have to be more independent.
00:27:02.620
They have to learn how to fix stuff. They have to learn how to make do. And the country, many folks
00:27:07.700
have their own well, their own septic tank, their own everything. And sometimes they're snowed in.
00:27:12.460
They have to have their own plow. You just have to do stuff. And I'm not even talking about farmers
00:27:18.460
and ranchers. I think that's one reason why rural parts are more conservative. There is
00:27:24.400
an individualism. There is a self-reliance. There's a personal responsibility. You can't just,
00:27:30.100
I mean, there's no such thing as a beggar on the street in the country parts because there's no one
00:27:34.800
passing by to throw you a quarter, but there is plenty of work to do out there. I'm glad I grew up west of
00:27:41.460
Calgary sort of country style. I think it influenced my politics. You know, Bill Whittle, very thoughtful
00:27:49.180
guy, had this idea that once a year people would have to go into the wild for three and a half days.
00:27:56.520
And his idea being it would be one percent of your year. And you would live without the modern
00:28:04.860
miracles of capitalism, without electricity, without refrigerators, without running water.
00:28:13.220
One percent of your year. Just so that when you came back to society and civilization, you'd be
00:28:18.720
grateful for what you had become so accustomed to and numb to. Obviously, I don't think he meant that
00:28:26.480
as anything more than a thought exercise. He would certainly not send people out into the wild for
00:28:31.240
three and a half days, but it is a good thought exercise. And I think that's one reason why Trudeau
00:28:37.140
hates rural people. And the only meaningful changes to his gun laws will punish legal farmers and hunters
00:28:45.480
and really leave urban criminal gangsters alone. In fact, as I showed you, Bill C-5 will reduce the
00:28:53.300
punishment for gang criminals. Jimmy Canuck says the cops on site didn't need extra help,
00:29:01.920
extra armaments, etc. What they needed was someone who had the guts to do the job, probably a parent,
00:29:08.300
but they kept them out or arrested them. You're talking about the massacre at Uvalde.
00:29:12.880
And of course, the criminal deserves the odium and the hatred and the moral punishment.
00:29:23.180
But what about the people who swore an oath to protect, to serve and protect, and those cowards
00:29:28.880
who wouldn't go in for fear of being shot? So I do not say that the police are worse than the murderer.
00:29:33.880
Of course, they're not. But they're in second place. Breadfan978 says, I like how Trudeau's
00:29:44.180
lackeys don't even wait to start applauding until his statement was completed. How many times did
00:29:49.920
they rehearse that? Yeah. And to me, I just can't get over the sight of them all wearing their masks.
00:29:55.520
You know, they're all double vaxxed and boosted and all that. They're still wearing their masks
00:30:00.720
performatively. But you'll notice Trudeau didn't wear a mask when he visited Queen Elizabeth,
00:30:05.600
who's like in her 90s. He didn't wear a mask when he went to Ukraine. That would get in the way of
00:30:09.300
all the shots. By the way, most Ukrainians are not vaccinated. He only wears a mask when he's trying
00:30:13.840
to be just so woke. And it's a bit, I think people see through it. Well, that's our show for
00:30:20.180
today. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, good night.
00:30:24.000
Keep fighting for freedom and have that WestJet CEO in your prayers too. I think he needs it.
00:30:29.480
Adam Sos here for Rebel News, and I'm with JR, the owner of the Shooting Edge here in Calgary,
00:30:35.740
a great club, a club I myself come to frequently. Obviously, with Bill C-21, Justin Trudeau making
00:30:42.240
further advances on the sort of rights of legal gun owners in this country. I thought I'd swing by,
00:30:48.060
obviously, you work in the industry, but you're also something of an expert in this field.
00:30:52.120
So just maybe for folks out there who aren't familiar with firearms, for folks out there
00:30:56.020
who don't know the sort of logistics that someone goes through to own a firearm. Many people maybe
00:31:02.220
get the sentiment, you walk in, you get one. That's the end of the story. How many sort of
00:31:06.280
loopholes and rings and rules and red tape are people jumping through just to legally target shoot as
00:31:11.980
it is? Well, I think that's a good point, Adam, is that you don't just get to come in and buy a
00:31:16.960
firearm. This is not the States. And the problem is the left or the antis always try to equate
00:31:23.200
Canada to the US. But we have very different laws and very different cultures. So in Canada,
00:31:28.680
before you can even buy a firearm, you have to take a firearm safety course. And that's eight
00:31:32.480
hours of training. And then you have to, once you finish that and you're tested, then you have to
00:31:37.000
apply for the license. And in that application, two people are used as guarantors, that they know
00:31:43.220
you and that they think that you're okay with firearms. But also, if you're in a relationship,
00:31:47.180
then you have to, or even out of one for up to two years, disclose that, because then they go and
00:31:53.740
they check with that person to see whether or not they ever felt uncomfortable with you owning
00:31:58.780
firearms. So there's all these checks and balances along the way. And then eventually you get a firearms
00:32:04.300
license. So that process takes generally 60 to 90 days. So it's not a quick process. It's not like
00:32:11.460
you say, Oh, my God, I want to get a gun and then go get one. You've got to go through all of that.
00:32:15.580
Once you have that, then you still have to, if it's a restricted firearm, a handgun, when you go to buy
00:32:22.640
it, we still have to go through another check, and that we have to submit the transfer to the RCMP
00:32:29.040
again. So then they get us a chance at that point saying, we don't think so, or there's other
00:32:34.080
questions. So there's all of these things along the way. And then there's ancillary things like you have
00:32:40.120
to be a member of a gun club because there's only, there's really only a couple of ways to own a
00:32:43.940
handgun in the country. And that is either to be a target shooter or to be a collector. And if
00:32:48.800
you're a collector, then you have to actually express why you're collecting. And if you're a target
00:32:53.480
shooter, you're supposed to express where you go to shoot. And that's generally with a membership at a
00:32:59.120
Are there any plans to monitor how many handguns are purchased between now and when the legislation passes?
00:33:05.160
We're going to continue to collect data and monitor as we always do. We're hopeful that
00:33:11.380
this legislation is going to pass quickly so we can move forward with freezing the market
00:33:16.960
What do you think of Justin Trudeau's gun grab?
00:33:18.420
There's no point to it in the sense of like for legal gun owners to, you know, practice
00:33:23.200
the sport and the hobbies that they enjoy. You know, it's like if you like a fast car, but
00:33:28.400
you're in a 50 kilometre zone, does that mean you shouldn't have that car because it's
00:33:32.140
unnecessarily powerful and too fast, you know? So yeah, it's just, there's no point
00:33:36.880
to it. It's an ideology has nothing to do with safety. It's just no one should have guns
00:33:40.580
but the government and liberals are big governments. So they want you to rely on them and not yourself.
00:33:44.560
I think the biggest problem, honestly, is still the illegal guns coming across the vast,
00:33:49.260
the vast, vast majority of people that are getting guns legally or using them for sports
00:33:54.200
shooting. And that's who it hurts the most as a community. It's really hurting us. Like
00:33:58.700
with the OIC, you saw a big decrease in three gun, which is a huge shooting sport before
00:34:02.900
that went. So now I think we're going to start seeing stuff like steel challenge and other
00:34:06.840
shooting events kind of go the way of the Dodo because people just won't be able to get
00:34:09.820
pistols. So as far as the effect on the community, it's really, really bad.
00:34:14.380
I love the training that they gave us. I love the restrictions of how careful you have
00:34:18.300
to be with locking down your weapons. And when you transport them, they have to be locked
00:34:21.260
and you keep your ammunition safe. All those laws are already on the books here and in the States
00:34:26.200
about things like that. So I don't see that what Trudeau is doing is democratic or Canadian.
00:34:32.960
It's unfair that Justin Trudeau is doing this to everybody. I mean, I think if crime's going
00:34:45.320
With this is that the first thing they do is they come and they take all your guns away.
00:34:49.320
So you know, depending on your jurisdiction, there's going to be doors kicked in, right?
00:34:55.060
It's not going to be pleasant. Hey, you know, J.R., you know, there's been a complaint by
00:34:58.860
somebody, you know, we're going to suspend your license, right? Just, you know, while
00:35:01.820
you're working. So, you know, you can't have firearms or we're going to come and get your
00:35:05.400
firearms from you or, you know, like that. It's going to be a door kick in.
00:35:08.820
So that's what I was going to get to and ask was they have tweaked it. So it's not the current,
00:35:13.500
like a spouse's concern. So they contact and they investigate. They have amended it so that it
00:35:18.020
is more aggressive and people could theoretically politically target people, report them and
00:35:25.900
Oh, 100 percent. And you know, this is going to like I'm waiting. I wonder how many days
00:35:31.140
after this is enacted that there'll be some complaint about me. Like every gun shop owner
00:35:35.460
will have a complaint against them. Like it's just going to be one of those things because
00:35:38.940
the left plays dirty. Like they play so dirty that there's there's no honor amongst those
00:35:45.380
thieves. Yeah. Right. And so it'll just be they'll just start targeting anybody who owns
00:35:49.800
firearms. It'll just be one of those things. It's going to be the brown shirts. I mean,
00:35:53.380
making these complaints and all of a sudden, you know, anybody who has collections, oh, you
00:35:58.360
know, he waved a gun around like, no, he didn't. But they're going to come take the guns away.
00:36:03.080
And then you can spend the twenty, thirty thousand dollars to fight it. We need to get your guns
00:36:07.020
back. But, you know, you're you're screwed. Yeah. Just like they now with the they automatically
00:36:13.980
make registration certificates expire when they change a classification, which takes away
00:36:19.140
your ability to have a Section 71 referral. Like you can't fight these things like they're
00:36:23.580
taking it. So you can't go to the courts for remedies now. Yeah. That's the thing is that's
00:36:27.920
very undemocratic. Yeah. Right. You should always have a remedy through the courts if you've
00:36:33.460
been wronged. How can I safely, effectively defend myself against somebody bigger than
00:36:42.180
me that is intending to hurt myself, my family, come into my home? We're not big ladies. We
00:36:50.640
need something sometimes if it comes to that, I think. Yeah. Well, I wouldn't say it's a direct
00:36:56.820
attack on legal gun owners, but I think it's just more of like a ploy to pretend he's doing
00:37:00.700
something about people's safety rather than actually doing something about safety. Like
00:37:06.920
instead of cracking down on illegal guns coming over the border, which are the majority of
00:37:10.460
the ones used in violent crimes. Yeah. He's yeah, basically attacking legal gun owners instead
00:37:16.820
of cracking down on illegal gun owners and illegal importation of firearms. We promised to go even
00:37:22.760
further to protect our communities. Taxpayers are going to be in for a sticker shock on how much
00:37:27.460
they're going to pay, you know, for this that does nothing for public safety. Like if it did,
00:37:33.680
if this honestly, if I honestly believe this had a chance of doing anything for like of a sizable
00:37:40.960
measure for public safety, not onesie, twosie, but size will measure. I'd probably be more behind it,
00:37:46.520
but I know it's not. Yeah. Right. Other jurisdictions have shown that the people tout Australia. Okay. They got
00:37:52.360
would have, so the gun mass murderers have gone away. They've had 18 or 19 mass killings using knives
00:37:59.980
and arrows, bow and arrows, like guys using crossbows since they banned guns. So nobody's talking about it,
00:38:06.580
but they've had more since. What this means is that it will no longer be possible to buy, sell,
00:38:13.420
transfer, or import handguns anywhere in Canada. In other words, we're capping the market for handguns.
00:38:26.040
Well, I want to thank JR and the Shooting Edge so much for having us out today. I think it's important
00:38:30.460
to get a perspective from inside the industry, from someone who really knows this stuff. So many
00:38:35.160
people out there really don't know much about the industry, don't know much about the sports,
00:38:39.040
surrounding firearms, target shooting, hunting, all of that good stuff, and the extent to which
00:38:43.080
these restrictions will affect them. So once again, grateful to have JR sort of breaking this down
00:38:47.940
for us and giving us some practical outlooks on what may result as a result of Justin Trudeau's
00:38:52.640
latest attack on legal firearm owners in Canada. As always, I want to thank you all so much for