EZRA LEVANT ｜ Ezra Levant on the pro-freedom coverage of Rebel News
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Summary
Our friend Sheila Gunn-Reed is in town for our Christmas party, and I took the opportunity to sit down to go over the year in review, and to look ahead at 2024 with a great conversation about a great journalist.
Transcript
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Oh, I'm excited. Our friend Sheila Gunn-Reed is in town for our Christmas party. I took the
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opportunity to sit down, to go over the year in review, and to look ahead at 2024. A great
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conversation with a great journalist. That's ahead, but first let me invite you to become
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a subscriber to what we call Rebel News Plus. It's the video version of this podcast. It's
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eight bucks a month, but I know it's not a lot of dough for you, but it really adds up for us
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because enough people do that. We can pay our bills. You know we don't take any money from
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Trudeau or demonetized by YouTube, so it really makes a difference. If you can go to rebelnewsplus.com
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and click subscribe. All right, here's today's podcast.
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You're fighting for freedom. Shame on you, you sensorism bug.
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I don't know if you ever heard that wonderful saying, the sun never sets on the British
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Empire, and there was a point in time when that was true. Think about it. Australia, Canada,
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India, much of Africa, and the United Kingdom itself. So no matter what time zone you were
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in, it was always sunny. Well, we're not quite as big as that, but it is true that the sun
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never sets on Rebel News Empire. We have people in Australia. We have people all across the time
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zones in Canada, and although we don't have a full-timer in the United Kingdom anymore,
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we do like to cover the news there. So to get together in person is a rare event. We have
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daily meetings by Zoom, but that's not the same. Well, today is our Christmas party, so we brought
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at least the Canadians together to have a little Christmas celebration in our Toronto World
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headquarters, and we'll be joined by Zoom within our Australian delegation because we're going to
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announce the results of the Viewers' Choice Awards for the Rebbies. That's what we call our
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prize for the best Rebel reporter. But while our team is here in town, what better opportunity than
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to stop and have a catch-up with our Chief Reporter and Alberta Bureau Chief, Sheila Gunn-Reed,
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It's great to be in the office. I'm not here as much as I would like to be, but things are
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changing in here. I don't think we had this set up, this part set up last time.
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Yeah. You know, we haven't fully deployed the whole new studio, but it is more a real-life
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studio than a green-screen studio. There's these fancy chairs. I interviewed Conrad Black in there
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the other day, and I think we have some other plans. We're not rushing to get it done, but I think
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it is a fun thing to have a real-life studio. So thank you for being here. Now, Rebel News,
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I think, has shifted. During the lockdown and the pandemic, that was our overarching mission. It was,
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I think, 80% of what we did. Of course, we covered other things too, but every aspect of the lockdown
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from the quarantine for the country, for the curfew in Quebec, for the shutdown of the business laws,
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for the forced vaccine. Like, there was 20 different aspects that we covered, and we covered it like
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crazy. We're still working on some of those files. Tamera Leach is still on trial. Arthur Pavlovsky
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still has an appeal emanating from this. So we're doing that, but Rebel News has moved on to the
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frontline battles of today. What are some of the frontline battles that you see as our chief reporter?
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You know, I think a lot of what we're working on now are the things that still flow from the
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lockdowns in that the government is attacking the truth-tellers that told the truth about the
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lockdowns and the effects of the lockdowns and the effects of COVID vaccines. We're seeing that
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through Justin Trudeau's censorship legislation, you know, C-11, C-18, his attacks on the naturopath
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industry, the regulation of natural health products. So I think that's where we're moving
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to is, you know, the people who told the truth during the pandemic and then were censored by
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social media. Justin Trudeau is now trying to legislate social media companies to enforce
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silence of his political enemies. I think that's where our next battleground is. It's still in civil
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liberties. It's still the fight for free speech. It's still the little guy against the hammer of
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the government. You know, you made me think of something about how Trudeau isn't stopping. Like
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he really is. If it's the COVID today or disinformation or whatever it is. Yeah. I mean,
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as Dr. James Lindsay said, the issue is never the issue. The revolution is the issue. And he'll just,
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Trudeau will use whatever issue is in front of him to get the revolution. By revolution, I mean,
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authoritarian control over our lives and future power to the government. You know, he is so
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authoritarian by nature and he never stops. He's, and he's got a team around him that are the same
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way. I think of Stephen Gilboa. That is a pure ideologue who cares only about the revolution.
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And we know that because he was willing to commit a crime for the revolution.
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Well, and we're also seeing a reoccurring theme in Justin Trudeau's government. We experienced this
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firsthand when we won a court order to be in the leadership debates. And he still wouldn't
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acknowledge us as journalists, even though a court had just slapped him on the wrist and said,
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they are journalists. His government is still doing the same thing. We saw, you know, Bill C-69,
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the no more pipelines law gets struck down. And what does Stephen Gilboa, the environment minister,
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say the next day, we're still going to proceed with this. We saw the plastics ban get struck down.
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And he said, we're still going to proceed with this. This government keeps getting slapped down
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and then they continue to ignore the courts. And that's a sign of an ideological, you know,
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I think it was Churchill who said a fanatic is someone who can't change his mind and won't change
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a subject. And think about Stephen Gilboa that way. He was in Dubai. He jetted there. I'm sure he
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went first class, if not on a private airline. And he was talking about, oh, we have such huge
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regulatory plans. They're novel. He has so many plans to regulate and shut down and cap the fossil
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fuels industry, which means to cap jobs. And I'm thinking he is undeterred. The number one, two,
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and three issue in Canadians, according to liberal pollsters like Abacus, the number one, two and
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three issues are all costs of living, prices of groceries, costs of housing. Pierre Polyev had a
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viral hit with his 15 minute video called Housing Hell. And you might say, well, that's a bit of a
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shocking title. Watch the video. It is hell. And so you would think they would address what Canadians
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care about. No. Stephen Gilboa thinks that what Canadians want right now is more carbon taxes,
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more bans on plastics and shutting down the oil and gas industry. The guy is, maniac's the wrong
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word, although he is manic about his issue. He is, he is un, he is, I guess like a terminator,
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as they say in that movie. You can't negotiate with him. You can't bargain with him. He will go
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until he is stopped. He's an extremist on these issues. I don't know if you saw it last week out of
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Alberta. Our environment minister, Rebecca Schultz said, the environment minister tried to get me to
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sign an NDA, a non-disclosure agreement, before he divulged the plans to continue to phase out
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Alberta's oil and gas with these emissions caps that he then went on the international stage and
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announced to the world. He didn't even give her a heads up on it unless she agreed to shut up about it.
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And that's not what she's elected to do. I've never heard of that before.
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Yeah. I mean, I've heard of a media walkup. So what that is. An embargo. Yeah. So journalists
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are invited typically an hour or two before a budget, let's say, so that they have time to read the
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budget documents and ask questions of experts. And they're giving it one or two hours before the
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whole world so that when it's announced, they're ready to say something. They're not spending two
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hours reading it. That's a very time limited lockup for people who are not part of government.
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And so that's the only thing I can think of that is close to a non-disclosure agreement. It's just,
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hey, we'll give you a sneak peek, but you can't blurt it out. And there's other reasons why they don't
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want to blurt it out because if someone knows what the budget is before the budget's released,
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they might buy or sell something on the stock market, whatever. That's the only thing I can think
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of. I guess there are some top secret state secrets. Sure. But to tell a cabinet minister of
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another government, I'm not going to tell you what my plans are unless you keep it secret from
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your government and your people. I have never heard of that in my life in Canada or frankly,
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in any other democracy. That is an insane thing to do. That is a crazy, that is an out of control guy.
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Yeah. Well, it also makes me wonder, who else are they saying this to? Right. And who else is
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complying? Who has signed that? He's so right. You know, I remember, I remember way back in the
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first Gulf War. So this is more than 20 years ago now. CNN, their, their boss, I think if I'm
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remembering his name, Eason Jordan, I'll have to check that, wrote, I think it was the New York Times
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of the Washington Post admitted that they had made a deal with Saddam Hussein, that they had a secret
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deal. CNN had a secret deal with Saddam Hussein that if they agreed to shape what they said,
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including to be his mouthpiece, they would be allowed to stay in Iraq when other media weren't.
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So CNN cut a secret deal with a dictator, didn't tell their viewers. And he later confessed this
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in, in a newspaper. How could you ever trust CNN before? It's not just that they said, okay,
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we're keeping a secret. It's they agreed to shape what they said. They were actually a foreign
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propaganda mouthpiece. Do you doubt that Stephen Gilboa has done the same thing with the CBC?
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And heck, why not with the CTV or, or the very many media companies that they subsidize?
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Or with Doug Ford, we see these massive electric vehicle battery deals that are coming to Ontario.
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What kind of silence is being bought on the back end for that? You know, I, I'm enchanted by Elon Musk
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these days. I find him so interesting. And that's another thing that we cover. We're sympathetic to
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Elon Musk, uh, editorially because we, we like his, he's an innovator. He's a builder. He's an
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industrialist. He's an engineer. He's anti-woke. He's for free speech. There's so many things we
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like about him. And, and it's, he's a litmus test because you don't have to love the guy. But if you
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hate, if you think he is a problem, if you think he's the enemy, that tells me something about you.
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And look at how the U S department of justice and the security exchange commission
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is gearing up to do a Trump on him. Yep. But, um, one of the things he said the other day,
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which I have forgotten about is early in Joe Biden's regime, he had a meeting of all the
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electric vehicle manufacturers except Tesla. Isn't that weird? The big guy. More than all
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the others combined. Yeah. And, and it's just, there's certain things. I mentioned this because
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Elon Musk is, I think he's, I know I'm shifting gears here. You made me think about it because you
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talked about the electric battery plants. Elon Musk says, and I believe him that he has never
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asked for a subsidy, that all these electric vehicle subsidies were asked for by GM or the
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others. And they just sort of sloshed over him by accident or as a collateral purpose. I think I
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believe him when he says that. And it's so, I mean, you could get Tesla to build a factory in Ontario.
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You could, there's an enormous automobile industry in Ontario already. It's a lot smaller than
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it used to be, but it's still enormous. You could get that if you had low tax environment,
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reasonable labor laws, and a non-woke pro-business environment. Elon Musk would build a factory
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for free. I know it. That's what he, I don't think that, I mean, I have to check, but I don't think
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he's being paid to set up his factory in, in California or in Texas. And to, to give 15 billion
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or whatever it is just to build some batteries, holy cow, there's a lot of things going on there.
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It's, it's buying jobs, buying votes, corporate welfare, but there's also,
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we're going to support Elon Musk's competitor. There's a lot of things cooking there.
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Yeah. I think you're right to touch on the buying votes thing too, because I see
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what's happening in the Canadian auto industry, sort of what happened in the Rust Belt for Trump,
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that the regular workers are starting to disconnect from their union leadership.
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COVID helped with that, I think, where people were being forced to take a vaccine to keep their job
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and looking to their union shop stewards saying, what are you doing with my dues? You're supposed
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to stick up for me. And I think those blue collar workers that were traditional NDP and liberal
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voters here in Ontario, they're going the way of the blue collar voter in Alberta.
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Isn't that interesting? You made me think of Washington County, Pennsylvania. I spent a fair
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bit of time there, 2015, 16, 17. That was steel and coal country. And those places were shutting down.
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I remember driving down one road and there was this big steel plant and it was just on a skeleton
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crew and just like one shift a day. All the other steel and coal had moved to China, but what had
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come in to save the state? Fracking. And as fracking gave these folks new job, great jobs, and actually
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royalty checks, because in Pennsylvania, you own your subsurface rights. So there was a lot of farmers who
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were getting what they call mailbox money. Every month they get a thousand or two thousand bucks.
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You know, it lifted the whole state. And that county, Washington County, went from being two to
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one for Democrats to being a big pro-Trump. And it put Trump over the edge in Pennsylvania,
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which helped give him the election. That's what it sounds like Doug Ford and Justin Trudeau don't want
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And the funny thing is Jagmeet Singh is what the least labor-ish leader of the NDP you could even
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design in a lab. The guy's out there with his Louis Vuitton bag or whatever.
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I don't think he's worked a day in his life with his hands and look who am I to talk,
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but I'm not the leader of the NDP. You're not pretending either.
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And where do these working class folks go? I mean, if you're in the government sector union,
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obviously you're going to vote for Trudeau and NDP, obviously. Right.
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But if you're actually a working union, automobile or any other private sector union,
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you're not voting for Jagmeet Singh or Justin Trudeau.
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No. And that's a shift that happened in Alberta a very, very long time ago. Any of the oil patch
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unions, the pipeline unions, they don't vote for Jagmeet Singh. They don't vote for Rachel Notley.
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Because she votes against their jobs. Yeah. Well, what's going on in Alberta? Danielle Smith,
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I knew her from the university. We were actually at the same time she was the leader of the Young
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Progressive Conservatives. I was the president of the campus reform party. It was very funny. I mean,
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I've known her for 30 years and I sort of fell out of touch with her when she
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defected to the conservatives and it was eight or nine years ago. But I've had a reconnection with
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her. I've interviewed her a couple of times. I like generally the direction she's in and I judge
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her a lot by her enemies. I judge her by who's squawking about her. I judge her by what the
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Globe and Mail and McLean says against her. The more they hate her, the more I say, okay, she's doing
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well. Yeah. And she's learning, I think, from Pierre Polyev and how she handles the media.
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I don't know if you saw, she did exactly what Pierre Polyev did when he did the Apple thing.
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A journalist asked her, you know, we've seen emissions go up in Alberta. And she said,
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tell me your numbers. Where'd you get your numbers? The journalist was caught completely
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flat footed. It is so refreshing to see politicians now, particularly conservative ones, be emboldened
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enough to push back against the media, to treat the enemy like, or to treat the media like the enemy
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that they are. It's good to finally see them recognize it. Oh, you're so right. And in Alberta,
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in particular, the CBC, in an unethical manner, really campaigned against her in the last election,
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they knew their mission was to kill her, and they didn't succeed. You know, it's funny,
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because I was not at the Apple Orchard moment, which was just classic. But I was at an event
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with Pierre Polyev when that CP reporter sort of said, oh, you made a false announcement about
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a purported terror attack at the Rainbow Bridge. And he said, no, I referenced a media report. They
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went back and forth. And I was there. I hadn't been to a press conference like that in a while.
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And what was interesting to me, Sheila, is I think there were five or six reporters there.
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I got the first question and I asked about Hamas on the streets, which was the theme of the press
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conference. Here's what I saw about the rest of the questions. There was one Jewish reporter there
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for a Jewish newspaper who asked a Jewish question, but put that aside. The rest of the reporters,
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CBC, CTV, Global, etc. None of them asked about what Pierre Polyev said.
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All of them asked about really obscure hobby horse vendetta issues. And what's interesting is almost
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all of them just read verbatim from their phone. Now, I'm not criticizing. Sometimes I write my
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questions out if I want it to be just perfect. But what I sense there is they were reading questions
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sent to them by central command from the CBC. And so when Pierre Polyev pushed back in this case on
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the Canadian, they had no idea because they were just saying, oh, the big boss at the CBC headquarters
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wrote this perfectly worded attack on Polyev. I'm going to read it. Okay, but what happens if you're
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asked to back it up? So it was amazing to watch the back and forth. This Canadian press reporter
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had no idea. She had never been on the back foot before. She had never debated before.
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She had never been on the defensive before. She didn't know how to handle it. And predictably,
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all the other me, oh, you're a bully. Like, you see the CBC at issue panels. Oh, this is unbecoming
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of a leader. Really? You didn't say that when you and I and Rebel News was banned. Banned from it.
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I never had that solidarity from other media when we were literally banned or, I hate to say it,
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when our people were physically assaulted. Never that solidarity. But Pierre Polyev asked a question.
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And the entire media party takes it as a moral affront. It's a pleasure to see.
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We can't even go to a liberal press conference. We can't even find out where they are.
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And these people are complaining that being told to back up their contentions to politicians,
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that's offensive to them. Really, you must see Danielle Smith push back on that person because
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he said, you know, emissions are going up in Alberta. So, you know, you're headed off to Dubai
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and you're going to go there and sell Alberta oil and gas as a clean alternative. She just stopped.
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Is there a video clip of it? There's a video clip. Let's take a look.
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As the owner of this resource, we have a responsibility to make sure that we're taking
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care of emissions. That's why we set our target in the first place. What we don't accept is the federal
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government thinking they can do it better than us when they can't. And that's why we're going to be
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asserting our constitutional right to be able to manage this resource.
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Emissions have gone up radically in Alberta. But follow-up question. We had a couple of polls
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earlier this fall that suggest as many as two-thirds of Albertans actually support an emissions cap on
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oil and gas. How confident are you that Albertans back you on this?
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I think it was 62% in one poll and 57% in the other.
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No, what are your numbers that you're talking about emissions going up? I just need to know
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Well, it was from the Canadian energy regulator, Premier. I mean, I can send them to Sam if you like,
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but Albertans emissions are going up. I don't really want to argue about that. I'd like an answer to my
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Well, you did assert. That's why I'm curious what your numbers are, because I gave you the two
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examples of how our emissions have gone down. That's why I need to know why you say that they've gone up.
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Carbon dioxide emissions have gone up. You're forcing me to guess here, but I think it was something
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like 256 megatons. I don't have the number offhand. I can find it from the Canadian energy regulator and
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send it along to Sam. Too sweet. But I would like an answer to my second question, please.
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Okay. Well, I think emissions are going down. This is why we're probably not going to get an answer to
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this, because yes, emissions have gone down 53% in electricity. They've also gone down 45% on methane.
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And we're continuing to see that the Pathways Group, Dow Chemical, Air Products,
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and others have made emissions reduction targets of net zero by 2050. So there is a whole of industry
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approach to getting emissions down to net neutrality by 2050. It's a matter of rolling out the technology
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to make sure that we have the means to do it with a technology approach, as opposed to with a
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with a shut-in approach. So if you asked Albertans, do you want your production shut in so that you lose
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1.2 million barrels a day of production, and you reduce revenues by 6.5 billion a year, and you're
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cutting a third out of our health budget, I suspect you'd probably get a very different answer, because
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that is what the implications of a production cut of this magnitude would be. And that is not something
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that Albertans support, and it's certainly not something that the federal government should support
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either, when this industry gave $9 billion worth of corporate income tax to them last year.
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That is the consequences of what would happen if we ended up with the production cut, which we won't
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allow to happen. You're right, she is picking up a little bit of the apple. I think Pierre Polyev
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should, I mean, you don't want to walk around with an apple in your pocket, because that's going to be a
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big bulge. But if you have an apple holder, like Pierre Polyev always travels with an assistant,
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I think that assistant should have a little apple in like a suitcase or a purse or whatever. And if
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there's an apple, I think they should rush and hand the apple to the boss. And then I think the boss
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should take, this is just my theory, because I think it would be such a winning move. Let's go back to
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Danielle Smith for a second. There was a moment there, when on the provincial scene, it looked pretty
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bleak. And I think Doug Ford is actually a liberal, I think he's a disgrace. But Scott Moe, Danielle
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Smith, I see this Blaine Higgs. He was terrible during the lockdowns, but boy, he's standing up for
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things in terms of parental consent, or at least informing parents about their kids changing genders.
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I see a national revolt against carbon taxes. I see now the head of the Northwest Territories is saying,
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we can't have a carbon tax, everything we do is based on diesel, everything has to be shipped in or
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flown in. I sense that Danielle Smith is not alone. And there's this new coalition of premiers who are
00:23:56.580
in their calm manner. They're not bomb throwers, they're just in a calm manner saying, you know what,
00:24:01.940
we're sort of not going to go along with Trudeau anymore. He is unpopular, his ideas are unpopular.
00:24:08.820
He's still pretending it's 2015. And carbon tax is the thing people want to care about instead of
00:24:14.340
the cost of living in housing. I like the way things are going in the provincial scene.
00:24:18.340
Yeah, I think we're seeing a little bit of the DeSantis effect with Danielle Smith,
00:24:22.180
and I say DeSantis as the governor and not the candidate for the President of the United States,
00:24:26.900
in that she'll go out on these tough issues first, quite frequently, or at least the loudest. Sometimes
00:24:33.540
Saskatchewan is leading on these issues. They had their sovereignty act before we ever did in Alberta,
00:24:38.500
but they just quietly did it. We're a little bit more bombastic in Alberta. She'll go out loud,
00:24:44.100
she'll put the feds on warning. And wouldn't you know it, all the other premiers sidle up behind
00:24:48.980
her and say, you know what, us too. And we saw Ron DeSantis do that when he said, I'm not going to do
00:24:52.980
lockdowns anymore. Then all of a sudden, Kristi Noem in the Dakota said same thing. So I think she's
00:25:00.820
doing a little bit of that. And you'd be surprised who's joining her on these issues. For example,
00:25:05.140
in Manitoba, Wab Canoe, he's saying, you know what, we need a carbon tax break here too. He's breaking with his
00:25:11.300
own party and being more of one of those prairie pragmatist NDPers that we saw so many years ago.
00:25:18.020
I had a hard heart towards Wab Canoe. Oh, I do. I still do on a lot of issues.
00:25:22.980
Because he did some really rough things. But I have to say, when he won, his acceptance speech
00:25:30.020
showed more humility than I thought, showed a recognition of his past failures. And
00:25:35.540
it was, I mean, I'm not sure how he's governed since Canada, they haven't followed it that closely.
00:25:40.260
But he talked about how indigenous people can't always just blame the system. I want to show you
00:25:45.620
a short clip of that. Because this moment of grace bought a lot of time for me with Wab Canoe,
00:25:51.940
someone who I had hardened my heart to. Here, take a look at Wab Canoe, the premier of Manitoba.
00:25:56.900
I want to speak to the young Nietzsche's out there. I want to speak to young people from all
00:26:05.860
backgrounds. Really, I want to speak to people of all ages. But I want to speak to young Nietzsche's
00:26:10.980
in particular. I was given a second chance in life. And I would like to think that I've made good
00:26:22.740
on that opportunity. And you can do the same. Here's how. My life became immeasurably better
00:26:33.860
when I stopped making excuses. And I started looking for a reason. And I found that reason in our
00:26:45.700
family. I found that reason in our community. And I found that reason in our province and country.
00:26:55.140
And so to young people out there who want to change your life for the better, you can do it.
00:27:00.180
I tell you, if he's saying he wants a holiday from the carbon tax, that tells me he's listening
00:27:06.180
more to the people of Manitoba than he's listening to Jagmeet Singh. And that's a good sign.
00:27:10.900
Well, he's also more reasonable on this issue than the previous PC government.
00:27:15.300
Isn't that a great point? That's such a good point. You know what? It is true. Everyone does
00:27:21.060
deserve a right to earn a second chance. They don't deserve a second chance just cause.
00:27:25.620
Right. But I think there has to be some sort of recognition
00:27:28.980
and maybe contrition or something. He did a lot of bad things. But I like, for an NDPer,
00:27:34.340
he's off to a good start. As you point out, and by the way, I remember Brian Pallister, who was
00:27:40.020
the Premier of Manitoba during the lockdowns, was one of the most brutal. One of the most brutal.
00:27:45.380
Very interesting. Well, I don't know. I think that everywhere I look, there's disaster. But
00:27:52.420
I do have hope that things will correct, that the pendulum will swing back. I think in the United
00:27:57.300
States, it will. In fact, I think everyone knows that, including the Democrats, are going to try and
00:28:01.540
replace Joe Biden before the election, because I think he's a disaster. Most Democrats know it.
00:28:06.260
I think they're trying to maneuver Gavin Newsom in there, frankly. I think in Canada,
00:28:10.580
the polls show almost a 20-point lead by Pierre Polyev. And he is still silent on certain key
00:28:15.620
issues. He has not said a word against mass immigration, for example. He's afraid of certain
00:28:21.060
cultural issues because he doesn't want to be tagged as racist. And I get it, he wants to win. But I
00:28:25.860
think in every way, Pierre Polyev would be an improvement. I think that, I mean, according to polls,
00:28:31.860
right now, Trump would win, frankly, even if he was in jail. I see elections overseas. For example,
00:28:38.900
in Holland, the Netherlands, with here builders, winning in part by opposing nitrogen taxes that
00:28:45.620
they're imposing on their farmers. It was weird for me to hear it, because we hear carbon, carbon,
00:28:49.860
carbon, carbon. And we're sort of numb to the fact how crazy it is talking about chemical. It's on
00:28:55.540
the periodic table of the elements. It would be like if someone started talking about,
00:28:58.500
you know, hydrogen. Yeah. Oh, we got to get rid of this hydrogen. Well, it's like the building block.
00:29:05.300
Well, hydrogen. Are you crazy? We've heard this word carbon. It's in everything. And they've
00:29:11.220
labeled it as pollution. We are made up largely of carbon. See, carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen is a
00:29:18.100
building block for almost everything. And so here, let me play a clip from you when I was talking to
00:29:23.780
Geert Wilders, and he just talks about nitrogen on the blue. And what? And in the Netherlands,
00:29:29.780
they normalize the war on nitrogen. Yeah. And hearing him say it, it just, I mean,
00:29:34.180
I know what he's talking about, because we covered the farmers' rebellion. But it made me realize how
00:29:38.260
absurd we must sound to normal people. Carbon, carbon, carbon, carbon emissions, zero net carbon.
00:29:44.500
Take a look at Geert talking about nitrogen. The second priority is that people feel that they are totally
00:29:51.460
an ejected, the Dutchman, the indigenous people. They believe that while we spent 60, 17 billion
00:29:58.740
euros a year when it comes to nitrogen or climate change or all those other things, that they have
00:30:08.660
trouble paying for their utilities, the rent, the gasoline for their car, the social security or the
00:30:17.700
healthcare system. So we believe that we should stop feeding those leftish, liberal, ideological
00:30:24.900
nonsense issues. And we should make sure that our people have enough money in their pocket and really
00:30:31.460
can help our economy and help themselves. So those issues are the two most important. Stop the immigration
00:30:38.980
and asylum seeking. Be proud of our own identity, culture, and everything that goes with that. And make
00:30:47.140
sure that we make better choices with the euros that we have. Don't spend it to Africa. Don't spend it to
00:30:54.180
other countries in the European Union as a transfer union that we almost have in the eurozone. Don't
00:30:59.220
spend it on nitrogen and other issues. Give our own people their money back with lower taxes and lower
00:31:06.420
burdens for the Dutchman. It's all madness. It's all madness. It's... You know that old saying,
00:31:14.980
how many angels dance on the head of a pin. You know, you can get into such an abstruse,
00:31:20.500
uh, abstract debate about something that has, that is no longer related to anything in real life.
00:31:27.300
And, and I think of the massive global warming conference that the UN has, and everyone's talking
00:31:34.180
about, well, I'm an expert in carbon emissions reduction technology. And you're all focused on the
00:31:38.900
nitty gritty instead of the emperor has no clothes. You guys are all crazy. You're talking about carbon,
00:31:44.020
which is a naturally occurring element. You're pretending that what you do will make a difference
00:31:47.940
to the world's temperature. You are literally saying that if we don't pay your taxes, there will be
00:31:52.580
tornadoes or a volcano or something. And you want to sacrifice the virgin to the volcano, but you're
00:31:57.860
updating that narrative and talking about we'll pay taxes to me and I promise there won't be a hurricane.
00:32:02.900
They are all crazy because they've been saying it for decades now. Everyone just repeats the weird
00:32:09.380
talking points. I do think though, the emperor does have no, no clothes now. Um, we saw the United Arab
00:32:17.940
Emirates say, we're not phasing out fossil fuels. That's crazy. Show us how that works that we could
00:32:26.100
ever advance as a society and ever be actually energy efficient without our good friend fossil fuels.
00:32:31.940
Saskatchewan and Alberta did what Trump did in von Germany. They went there, they had their
00:32:37.700
delegations and they promoted clean Canadian oil and gas as opposed to the dictatorial dirty oil and
00:32:44.980
gas of the world. So I think, I think we're seeing a bit of the tide shifting specifically when the,
00:32:52.180
the host country is saying we have absolutely no intention of phasing out fossil fuels.
00:32:56.500
Yeah. I mean, Dubai is such an energy intensive place, whether it's for air conditioning
00:33:01.620
or building steel towers to the sky. Just building things just because you can.
00:33:05.620
Yeah. And, and, and there's more aircraft per person there between Etihad and Emirates to the
00:33:12.980
world's largest airlines in a tiny country. I mean, that is a fossil fuel. That's a, that's a country
00:33:17.940
that's getting a lot of things right. Well, listen, it's great to catch up with you. And I feel like
00:33:24.020
2023 was the year that rebel news normalized. I mean, we were so focused on the pandemic and rightly so,
00:33:30.900
I think we rose to the occasion. It was a historic moment. One of the great things we did was create,
00:33:35.140
create with our friends at the democracy fund, a civil liberties charity to help fill the void.
00:33:40.500
Other than the justice center for constitutional freedoms, there really were very, very few people
00:33:45.140
fighting for civil liberties in the courts. And that was our total focus for a year. I think this
00:33:52.260
last year, we focused on other things, whether it's David Menzies and the transgender insanity,
00:33:57.700
or whether it's, you know, I mean, I mean, now we're focused on the Hamas war a bit. What do you think
00:34:04.340
2024 is going to hold? I think we've already seen a little bit of it. And that is fighting for the free
00:34:12.260
speech of people who are being canceled, particularly local politicians on the school board
00:34:17.460
and whatnot, who are standing up against the trans agenda, who are saying, this is madness.
00:34:22.580
These boys cannot compete against girls. We cannot sexualize kids in the classroom.
00:34:26.980
I've done some reporting on that. David Menzies has done some incredible work on that.
00:34:31.060
And I think that's where the real next fight for the democracy fund will be,
00:34:37.300
is on these smaller issues where people, politicians are brave enough to stand up
00:34:42.980
and speak on behalf of the people who sent them there to do what's best for kids at the school board.
00:34:47.540
Yeah. The last two big cases the democracy fund has are pastor Arthur Pavlovsky's appeal
00:34:54.900
of his conviction for giving that sermon at the blockade and Tamara Leach's trial insanely
00:35:01.380
is reaching all the way into March of 2024. Those are the last big cases. Of course,
00:35:06.180
the democracy fund has hundreds of little cases that are being dispatched. I think that
00:35:14.180
one thing to watch is the CBC when they're cornered. They know, they have, they absolutely realize
00:35:22.900
that Pierre Pauliev is serious when he says he doesn't like them. Every conservative leader
00:35:27.060
always says, oh, I don't like the CBC. Stephen Harper didn't defund them or privatize them.
00:35:31.780
No. Andrew Scheer and the other guy whose name I've forgotten and don't want to remember.
00:35:36.660
They, they would never criticize the CBC. Pierre Pauliev is campaigning against them,
00:35:42.660
is naming and shaming them every day. They've got to be taking him seriously, and I do,
00:35:48.020
that he will privatize and do something to them. I think you're going to see
00:35:53.140
the CBC and then the newly colonized print media who just got another big bailout from Trudeau.
00:36:01.300
You are going to see the activation of the state regime media more than you've ever seen before.
00:36:07.620
And you're probably thinking, how is that possible? They're already fully activated.
00:36:11.060
Imagine someone who, who feels in their bones, they are going to be fired if Pierre Pauliev wins.
00:36:19.700
They personally will be fired. What wouldn't they do? They would do anything. And I think you're going
00:36:25.700
to see 2024 will be the year of the extreme weaponization of all the institutions that Trudeau
00:36:32.660
can control through money. You're going to see media. You're going to see professors getting
00:36:36.980
government grants. You're going to see the RCMP. You're going to see this total weaponization
00:36:41.860
of the instruments of the state that Trudeau controls. When you're 20 points behind and they're
00:36:46.020
facing electoral oblivion. If you're an extremist like that, you will do anything. You will burn
00:36:51.220
down the whole house to stop your opponents from winning. I think that 2024 will be in some ways the
00:36:58.340
worst year yet. I'll offer just a little pushback because these constant media bailouts are evidence
00:37:06.900
that whatever the media is doing is completely failing. It shows that people have lost trust in them,
00:37:11.700
particularly over the last three years. The media didn't just attack the conservatives,
00:37:17.860
they attacked the people during COVID. And so the people who normally would have maybe tuned into the
00:37:24.420
CBC, they have turned against the CBC and it has necessitated ongoing bailouts. So I think the media's
00:37:33.380
effectiveness at attacking politicians on the right, I think it's drastically dwindled because of the
00:37:40.580
media's own actions over the last three years. You know what, you make some good points there. And of
00:37:44.340
course, we talked earlier about Elon Musk liberating Twitter, reinvigorating Twitter. It's the public
00:37:50.340
square. And maybe, maybe the people through alternative ways of connecting and communicating can outweigh the