EZRA LEVANT ｜ I thought that Vladimir Putin would be banning TV stations — but actually it’s Trudeau who’s doing that
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
172.5488
Summary
Why should others go to jail when you don't have to pay taxes when you're the biggest carbon consumer in the world? And why is it so normal for a government minister to praise Trudeau's government comedians on the state broadcaster, the CBC?
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hello, my friends. Today, I talk about an authoritarian world leader who's banning TV
00:00:05.480
channels he doesn't like. No, I'm not talking about Vladimir Putin. I'm talking about Justin
00:00:09.500
Trudeau. I'll give you the details ahead. But before I do, let me invite you to become a
00:00:12.440
subscriber to Rebel News Plus. That's the video version of this channel. Just go to rebelnewsplus.com,
00:00:17.820
click subscribe, eight bucks a month. You get this show every day in video form, plus weekly shows
00:00:23.160
from four other of our teammates. It's worth the eight bucks a month. And by the way, we need that
00:00:27.920
money to stay independent from Trudeau. We don't take a dime from him. All right, here's today's show.
00:00:48.160
Tonight, I thought that Vladimir Putin would be banning TV stations, but actually, it's Trudeau
00:00:54.400
who's doing that. It's March 1st, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.
00:01:00.420
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
00:01:04.140
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
00:01:08.200
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody
00:01:14.060
I don't think it's a healthy sign that this tweet is considered normal. I bet even you think it's
00:01:26.020
normal. We just see it so often. 600 episodes making us laugh. An epic milestone. Congratulations,
00:01:33.460
22 minutes. So we've got a Trudeau cabinet minister, Pablo Rodriguez, praising Trudeau's
00:01:39.880
government comedians on Trudeau's CBC state broadcaster. None of that is a real or authentic
00:01:45.880
expression of Canada. It's all political propaganda. It's all bought and paid for. You cannot actually
00:01:52.560
be a government comedian unless you are a court jester in the style of William Summers. You know
00:01:59.440
who that is. We've talked about him before. William Summers was the official jester to Henry VIII,
00:02:03.960
who was a sort of leader of the opposition before that was a thing. His job was to mock the king
00:02:10.180
to his face, to challenge him, to rebut the flatterers, to bring him back down to earth,
00:02:16.400
given all the professional liars that you could imagine hung around a king. And Will Summers was
00:02:22.260
given special immunity to do so. He said what no one else dared to say to the king's face. Yeah,
00:02:30.000
the government comedians on the government broadcaster, the CBC, they do the opposite.
00:02:35.840
They attack Trudeau's enemies for him with a laugh track. That's not normal, by the way. I know a lot
00:02:42.800
of comedians are left-wing anyways. I get that. A lot of the arts are left-wing. I get that. But I'm
00:02:47.880
here to tell you it is not normal for a government cabinet minister to promote a government comedy
00:02:52.560
show on the government broadcaster. That is not normal in a healthy democracy. That's something
00:02:58.380
you'd see in Turkey or Iran or Russia, which is why I mention it. As far as I know, there is no ban
00:03:07.200
on Western broadcasters in Russia. At least the ones that I checked, the big ones, including state
00:03:13.940
broadcasters based in the West. For example, here's a dedicated British broadcasting channel, BBC,
00:03:21.180
called BBC Russian. It's an entire news channel published by the government of the United Kingdom
00:03:29.320
targeting Russia in Russian. Here's the U.S. government's Russian language broadcaster
00:03:35.880
called Voice of America in Russian. I don't think either are blocked in Russia. And frankly,
00:03:43.000
I'm not sure what that would even mean to try and block something. It's pretty easy to get access to
00:03:47.460
something on the internet that is blocked for geographical reasons. There's something called
00:03:52.400
a VPN. Maybe you've heard of that, or you can download a VPN that gets around a geographical
00:03:58.200
barrier by making it seem like your computer or your phone is located in a different country.
00:04:03.820
So I don't think Putin even tries to block BBC Russian or Voice of America Russian. But Pablo Rodriguez,
00:04:11.440
Trudeau's heritage minister who loves the government broadcaster, he's in charge of the CBC,
00:04:16.780
and he's also in charge of internet censorship, by the way. He just banned Russian TV stations from
00:04:22.500
Canada. Now you can still get the Trudeau CBC state broadcaster in Russia, but you can't get Russia
00:04:30.340
today, Putin's state broadcaster over here. At least not on TV where it had served countless thousands
00:04:39.680
of Russian-speaking Canadians for years. Now it started with a public suggestion by Rodriguez that
00:04:47.620
if Canada's heavily regulated cable companies knew what's best for them, they would delete Russia
00:04:53.960
today from their cable packages. I share the concerns of many Canadians about the presence of Russia today
00:05:01.240
in our broadcasting system. We're looking at all options. Now I don't like foreign government
00:05:08.560
propaganda here, but there sure is a lot of it starting with the CBC's own government propaganda,
00:05:15.180
but going much further than that, I mean, Trudeau's government press gallery specifically approves
00:05:22.680
applications from state broadcasters from Russia, Ukraine, Vietnam, and they just welcomed an
00:05:31.220
application from China's Xinhua, that's the state broadcaster for the Chinese Communist Party,
00:05:36.220
and that's the official precincts of Canada's parliament. Those folks get privileged access to
00:05:42.220
Trudeau and the government and the buildings. Rebel News was officially refused by the press gallery. So
00:05:47.720
Trudeau's heritage minister told Canada's broadcasters to cancel Russia today, and they did.
00:05:55.780
And I learned this not from those companies themselves, but from the government itself.
00:06:00.380
Here's Pablo Rodriguez. I commend Bell for removing RT. That's Russia today. Russia has been conducting
00:06:06.200
warfare in Ukraine since 2014 and information warfare across the world. RT is the propaganda arm
00:06:12.460
of Putin's regime that spreads disinformation. It is no place here. I'll have more to say
00:06:17.720
very, very soon. Well, what do you think was going on behind the scenes? The company's got the
00:06:24.360
message. What's the word for it when big government and big corporations make political decisions
00:06:31.340
together behind closed doors? I think that is actually a technical definition of fascism, isn't it?
00:06:37.740
Here's what the government reported. Rogers will also remove RT and replace it with a broadcast of
00:06:45.800
the Ukrainian flag. Now, that's not a business decision, then, is it? It's a political decision
00:06:52.220
just to have a flag there. Here's another one. Thank you to Shah for also removing RT from its network.
00:06:59.560
We must all do our part to fight back against Russia's propaganda. Must we all do our part to
00:07:06.400
fight propaganda? I accept that Russia today engages in propaganda. I accept that fact, just as Ukraine does
00:07:13.540
through its government and its government news network, just as Trudeau and Pablo Rodriguez do,
00:07:18.980
especially the CBC state broadcaster. Is this new partnership between the government and the media
00:07:23.600
to censor viewpoints, is it really mandatory? As Rodriguez says, we must do all our part. So do I have to do my
00:07:30.340
part to censor people? Say, are we at war? Can I ask? I applaud TELUS for joining Canadian broadcasters
00:07:40.540
and giving RT the boot. Canadians stand with the people of Ukraine. I'm sure many do. Maybe even most do.
00:07:48.860
I also know that a lot of Russians in Canada watched Russian news. I guess they're being punished too,
00:07:55.100
or they're being treated as untrustworthy, maybe, and that we have to save them from hearing things we
00:08:00.000
don't want them to hear, maybe. So Trudeau's cabinet minister says ban them, and they ban them.
00:08:08.000
I mean, would you argue with your boss if you're a cable company? And don't forget that the government
00:08:12.700
is their boss. Look at the rationale. They have disinformation. What is disinformation, by the way?
00:08:18.020
Spin? Is that what it means? One man's propaganda is another man's truth. Canadians get to make up their
00:08:24.220
own minds, except when Trudeau says they can't, I guess. This from the CBC state broadcaster,
00:08:30.960
this is not disinformation, apparently. I do ask that because, you know, given Canada's support of
00:08:38.020
Ukraine in this current crisis with Russia, I don't know if it's far-fetched to ask, but there is
00:08:44.840
concern that Russian actors could be continuing to fuel things as this protest grows, but perhaps even
00:08:52.900
instigating it from the outset. Well, again, I'm going to defer to our partners in the public safety,
00:09:01.080
the trained officials and experts in that area. Can we get them banned, too? Of course,
00:09:07.200
big tech is getting in on it. Here's Google YouTube with a statement out of Europe. They say,
00:09:12.140
due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, we're blocking YouTube channels connected to RT and Sputnik,
00:09:17.960
that's another Russian news agency, across Europe, effective immediately. It'll take time for our
00:09:23.840
systems to fully ramp up. Our teams continue to monitor the situation around the clock to take swift
00:09:28.700
action. Swift action. Is Google YouTube a country now? I mean, it does have 140,000 employees. That's as big
00:09:41.060
as, you know, a dozen small countries. But it's as big as a big country financially. And it has more
00:09:49.640
power than any country when it comes to the internet, doesn't it? I mean, they literally banned Donald
00:09:54.560
Trump when he was the sitting president. Why wouldn't they ban Vladimir Putin or any of his
00:09:59.740
associates? Here's a former British politician, Nick Clegg, who is now a senior executive at Facebook.
00:10:05.940
We have received requests from a number of governments and the European Union to take
00:10:11.380
further steps in relation to Russian state-controlled media. Given the exceptional nature of the current
00:10:16.900
situation, we will be restricting access to RT and Sputnik across the EU at this time.
00:10:24.260
Here's the Globe and Mail reporting the news. They say, Russia's RT to be removed from Canadian lineup by
00:10:30.240
Bell, Rogers, Shaw, and Telus. The story doesn't have a word against censorship. In fact, they quote,
00:10:37.240
the Conservative Party is wanting the government to do more and harder and faster. Conservative
00:10:44.520
interim leader Candace Bergen has called on Ottawa to issue an order of general application directing the
00:10:50.100
CRTC to adopt a new broadcasting policy that revokes the licenses of such outlets so that Russia today
00:10:57.680
is taken off Canada's airwaves. Okay, so that's censorship. And that's the Globe and Mail.
00:11:07.440
It's a bit weird to read of a cheering for censorship in the Globe and Mail, given that China literally
00:11:17.200
publishes a propaganda section written by the Chinese embassy, but made to look like a special news report
00:11:26.080
in the Globe and Mail. It's called China Watch. Maybe you've seen it. China Watch makes it sound
00:11:30.820
skeptical, almost hostile to China. But in fact, it's written by the Chinese embassy and paid for by
00:11:36.920
the Chinese embassy. And the Globe and Mail runs it in the middle of their newspaper. So that's fine.
00:11:43.760
And so is pretty much everything from China, whether it's the Olympics or YouTube channels for Chinese
00:11:49.320
propaganda, even though YouTube itself is illegal in China. So there's that. We have had censorship in
00:11:57.240
time of war in Canada, World War II, for example. We have propaganda in times of war also. But Canada is not in a war.
00:12:07.560
Canada is using someone else's war as an excuse to censor a TV channel for Canadians.
00:12:14.840
And of course, no one speaks out. I'm not particularly a fan of Russia today. I'm not particularly a fan of Russia.
00:12:20.680
I probably watched a grand total of an hour of RT in my whole life. Say, do you think censorship of
00:12:27.560
Canadian TV channels will stop with RT? Or do you think that's just the start of that? Do you think it
00:12:36.040
might just be used against Canadians who have a different point of view from Trudeau on other matters,
00:12:40.920
like the truckers of freedom? And when censorship is used against others, probably against us,
00:12:49.240
do you really expect the conservative party to try to stop them? Stay with us for more.
00:12:55.480
You can go to Costco, you can go to Walmart, you can go shopping. You know, you don't know if the person has a shot
00:13:13.880
beside you or not. But we also know that it doesn't matter if you have one shot or 10 shots, you can catch COVID.
00:13:20.120
You see, the Prime Minister has triple shots. And I know hundreds of people with three shots that caught
00:13:25.320
COVID. We just have to be careful. We've got to always make sure we wash our hands and move forward.
00:13:31.480
But, Colin, we can't stay in this position forever. We've got to learn to live with this and get on with
00:13:37.000
our lives. I bet if I asked every single person in this room, do you want these damn masks or do you
00:13:41.960
want them off? They want them off. They want to get back to normal. They want to be able to go for dinner
00:13:46.600
with their families. And there's every single person, including myself, knows people that are
00:13:50.440
unvaccinated. You know, sure, there's the rebel rousers. And then there's just hardworking people
00:13:56.440
that just don't believe in it. And that's their choice. This is about, again, that democracy and
00:14:02.760
freedoms and liberties. And I hate, as a government, telling anyone what to do. We just got to get moving
00:14:08.920
forward and get out of this and protect the jobs. You know, I think a lot of people call them
00:14:15.480
probably yourself, too. Everyone's done with us. Like, we are done with it. Let's start moving on
00:14:21.720
and cautiously. And, you know, we've followed the rules, all of us, like 90% of us, for over two
00:14:28.920
years. The world's done with it. So let's just move forward. That was the first honest thing that Doug
00:14:34.920
Ford has said in two years. First thing that wasn't scripted for him by, I don't know, Pfizer or some
00:14:42.440
chief medical officer who was enjoying their celebrity. Of course, even there, he says no
00:14:47.080
one wants masks. Of course, all the staffers and ministers around him had their masks on.
00:14:51.960
And the funny thing is, he's acting as if he's always believed that, when, of course,
00:14:57.080
he was the one who declared an emergency in Ontario. And he's the one who fired hundreds,
00:15:03.560
perhaps thousands of nurses and others from the public sector. By the way, they're still fired,
00:15:08.840
even though tonight marks the first night that unvaccinated people in Ontario can go to the
00:15:13.880
restaurant. But even that's not quite true, is it? Because like in Alberta, he's maintaining the QR
00:15:19.560
code system to have vaccine passports implemented by individual businesses. So if they're not medically
00:15:26.840
necessary anymore, why are they allowed as a tool of discrimination? And why is the government of Ontario
00:15:32.600
Ontario supporting that? You can't trust a word these people say. And you notice that they're
00:15:36.840
talking about the damage they did in the passive third person as if someone else did the damage.
00:15:42.920
And Doug Ford's mad that he's learned about it. Yeah, I don't buy it. Joining me now via Skype to
00:15:48.360
talk about this is our friend Andrew Lawton, the boss of The Andrew Lawton Show and a reporter for
00:15:54.280
The True North. Good to see you again, my friend. Thanks for your time. That clip was from a few days back.
00:15:59.960
I think that's the most authentic and natural I've heard Doug Ford in two years. What do you think?
00:16:06.680
Yeah. And I think it was certainly in the midst of the convoy fever where pretty much everyone
00:16:13.320
was fed up with it. And I think a lot of politicians were starting to see that the Canadian
00:16:17.320
population that had been, I think, for much of the last two years, fairly complacent and actually
00:16:22.660
welcoming of restrictions had started to turn. And I think that, again, there's a lot of a lot you
00:16:28.360
could ask about whether that was the authentic Ford or the Ford that imposed the vaccine requirements
00:16:33.160
and restrictions, or perhaps both were true. But certainly it did go to a lot of places. But even
00:16:39.000
then, that was, I think, a couple of weeks back now. The vaccine passport is gone in Ontario. But as
00:16:45.160
you alluded to, still some restrictions in place and still no end date for the mask mandate.
00:16:49.800
Yeah. You know, I haven't been to a restaurant in a while. I do. There's a couple of restaurants
00:16:54.520
in Ontario that I go to that don't ask me for a mask and don't ask me if I'm vaxxed.
00:16:59.960
And if someone says, I mean, and I just, like, I just don't engage in those conversations. And I
00:17:05.180
know these places won't kick me out. I don't want to name them because they'll probably get in trouble.
00:17:10.520
But I'm, you know, so tonight is theoretically I can go to my old favorite restaurants. But even then,
00:17:15.040
I don't want to wear a mask. I don't want to, I don't want to go through this public health
00:17:19.120
theater. We know it's all BS. We know, as Doug Ford says, we're all sick of it. But they can't
00:17:25.280
quite give it up, can they? The mask will be the last thing to go because it was the first thing to
00:17:30.480
come. Because I believe the mask is the flag of lockdownism. It's the symbol that you're submitting.
00:17:38.240
Because you can't tell just by looking at someone if they're vaxxed or not. You can't tell if
00:17:43.120
they've had it or not. But you can tell if they're wearing a mask if they're a believer,
00:17:48.320
if they're a submitter. And that's why it's such a proxy for things. I might go to a restaurant
00:17:54.240
tonight, Andrew, for the first time in probably a year. But I'm not wearing a mask. I'm just telling
00:18:00.640
you. Yeah, I think you're right there about the symbol of the mask. And the one problem that I have,
00:18:08.720
well, I have many problems. But one of the main problems I have with the masks is that they are
00:18:13.440
pretend unintrusive. Yeah, the people that promote them claim they are least intrusive. They are well,
00:18:20.560
it's just a piece of paper on your face. It's just it's it's barely anything at all. How is that a
00:18:24.880
problem? But doctors wear these all the time. And people try to claim that it's insignificant,
00:18:29.680
but it's not. It's not insignificant. It's entirely abnormal to go about in society,
00:18:35.280
not being able to see the faces of the people you are interacting with. I talked to someone who had
00:18:41.580
started a new job recently in an actual workplace. And they said, you know, they had never actually
00:18:46.460
seen their co workers faces, except for on, you know, the odd zoom call, if they were going in from
00:18:52.420
home or on Facebook or whatever, but they had never actually in person seen these people's faces that
00:18:56.800
they work with. And that is symbolic. It's not something you can quantify, but it is a very real
00:19:02.080
issue. And more importantly, it is just as it's a symbol of compliance to some people. It's also a
00:19:07.900
symbol to people like me of a new normal. You and I have both run into each other in foreign cities and
00:19:14.540
in cities across the country. And, you know, air travel is something that I fear is never going back
00:19:19.640
to the way it was before. Right now, you need to be vaccinated to get on an airplane in Canada.
00:19:23.920
And even once you're on there, you've got to keep the mask on. And heaven forbid, you take more than
00:19:28.620
30 seconds to eat your peanuts or whatever. There's a flight attendant telling you to put it back on
00:19:33.040
stuff like that is not the way a normal functioning society operates. Yeah. You know, and it it was the
00:19:39.900
little tool that every petty little authoritarian used to trump their neighbor, not only so they could
00:19:45.680
say they were more morally righteous than their neighbor, but it was a weapon to attack their
00:19:50.700
neighbor. And it really showed an authoritarian subtext or just beneath the surface. And it reminded
00:19:59.760
me of the fact that and I'm not comparing the lockdown to the Nazi Holocaust, but I am comparing
00:20:08.580
aspects of authoritarianism and how they can take root in a liberal society that sees itself as liberal
00:20:16.280
and educated and educated and cultured. Because remember, Nazism didn't happen overnight. Hitler
00:20:21.140
came into office, I would say, in 1933. It took him six more years to get full power in his hand.
00:20:30.560
And the height of the Holocaust was actually 10 years. So from 33 to 43, it took 10 years for the most
00:20:38.120
liberal, cultured, educated country in Europe to become fully Nazi and deathly. And obviously,
00:20:44.720
we didn't go down the whole road. But boy, we sure went to the demonization part. We went to the
00:20:50.540
segregation part. We went to the fire doctors who didn't agree with it and condemn. We sure whipped
00:21:01.080
up the crowd. And as I've said before, I think we walked several years down the road. 1935 were the
00:21:08.800
Nuremberg laws, the segregationist laws. We didn't hit 1938, which was Kristallnacht,
00:21:14.220
where there was the smashing and the rioting. But we went a few years down that path, Andrew.
00:21:19.760
I mean, listen, I'm not Jewish. So I make a very deliberate point of avoiding any comparison to
00:21:25.400
that episode of history, because I don't feel like I've earned the right to make those comparisons.
00:21:30.080
But I do think that just more broadly on the question of authoritarianism,
00:21:34.320
there is a significant part that we often view authoritarianism in terms of the actual authoritarian
00:21:39.600
leaders. But they only have legitimacy because people give them legitimacy before it gets to that
00:21:45.220
point where they have the apparatus of a state and of enforcers. And to go back to the Canadian
00:21:50.300
context here, that's been one of the biggest frustrations I've had for most of the last two
00:21:54.440
years is how Canadians have actually been condemning the government for not regulating them more,
00:22:00.140
condemning the government for not putting more restrictions in place.
00:22:03.100
There were businesses before Ontario had a vaccine passport that were demanding Doug Ford
00:22:08.400
impose a vaccine passport on them. And I'm like, well, hang on, if that's important to you as a
00:22:12.880
business, why don't you make the decision? The reason they didn't want to is because they knew
00:22:16.560
that it would alienate their customers. They wanted to blame someone else. So there's a huge problem
00:22:21.640
of people looking to the government to solve their problems when it comes at the expense of their
00:22:28.620
Yeah. You know, my life has been changed and I'm a grown man. For children, it's been their lives
00:22:36.500
have been devastated. But I remember how I used to be. Our office is in sort of a light industrial
00:22:41.560
park part of Toronto. It's not in the downtown. It's sort of an interesting neighborhood. And there
00:22:45.560
were there was a bakery I would always stop in the morning just for it was an Italian bakery. I would
00:22:49.760
stop for a quick little espresso and maybe a little, you know, Italian baking or something.
00:22:54.580
And I just loved going there and seeing the workers every day and saying hi to the, like
00:23:00.040
it was just a neighborhood feeling. And I felt like I was connected to the neighbors and, and
00:23:04.820
maybe they knew my name or maybe they had forgotten it, but I always waved and said hi. And it was
00:23:08.400
a ritual. And the places in your neighborhood are part of your ritual. They're the backdrop to
00:23:12.980
your life. And I remember when I went in there and, and I had been friends with them for, for
00:23:18.680
years and we had done thousands of dollars worth. We would have our lunches catered from this
00:23:22.920
little bakery at our office here. So we weren't just friendly neighbors. We were, we were fairly
00:23:28.020
serious customers and just put your mask on. No, it has to be above your nose. And I'm thinking
00:23:34.340
what happened? You've just destroyed, I'm not going to call it a friendship, but I tell
00:23:39.260
you, I haven't been back there since that. And all these little places I would go, all these
00:23:46.400
folks I would say, Hey, how are you? How are you doing? It pitted us against each other.
00:23:50.900
It pitted shopkeeper against customer, neighbor against neighbor, family member against family
00:23:56.100
member. And it licensed rage instead of politeness. And I, I think that long after the legal instruments
00:24:06.080
for this lockdown are gone, I think the destruction of social niceties and politeness and courtesy
00:24:16.780
will take a generation to, to, to regrow. That's what I think.
00:24:21.980
Oh, I think you're right about that. I, there were a lot of people that derived great purpose
00:24:26.300
from these COVID restrictions, from the bylaw enforcement officers that in April of 2020,
00:24:31.780
we're handing out tickets for playing on closed slides and swing sets to the people now that are
00:24:37.640
saying, no, no, no, you have to show that you're vaccinated and have your mask on. And you've got to,
00:24:42.120
you know, pin it around your nose and all of that. There are people that have derived great purpose
00:24:46.140
from the control that the pandemic has brought them. And a lot of these people are going to,
00:24:50.460
to retreat back into irrelevance once this is all done. And I think that's very threatening because
00:24:55.660
they've enjoyed for the last two years, a sort of cultural hegemony on, on the narrative,
00:25:00.740
which they will not have forever. And I think fewer and fewer Canadians are accepting.
00:25:05.080
Yeah. You know what? I mean, it's hard to even, I mean, I think some people are coming out of the
00:25:10.540
haze now. There was, I don't know if you read that case from family court in Ontario of a judge.
00:25:16.800
That was just, I think that, that felt like the fever broke to have that judge speak that way.
00:25:22.340
Frankly, I think that the combination of the truckers and then the Ukraine war just sort of
00:25:26.600
making everything else seem trivial. I think that snapped a lot of people out of the fever. I saw the
00:25:32.460
New Zealand high court recently announced they were scrapping their mandates. So I think that
00:25:37.500
certain slow institutions are catching up. But I remember in there in 2020, when there was literally
00:25:43.320
police do not cross tape on children's playgrounds. So that, so the kids are not allowed to be outside
00:25:50.760
where you don't catch the virus. Kids who are the least affected by the virus and no exercise,
00:25:56.280
go home and watch Netflix and order fast food delivered to your house. The, the anti-public
00:26:03.020
health, like roping off, chaining off police tape on outdoor playgrounds. We did that. And I think it's
00:26:12.720
important never to forget what was done because I feel like we're coming close to the end of at least
00:26:18.680
some of it. Justin Trudeau is going to hang on to what he can forever. But I think that, I think we have
00:26:24.720
to remember who did this to us and in what name they did it to us. And I think we have to remember
00:26:28.520
not to be duped again. Last word to you, my friend. Yeah. The first couple of weeks of this,
00:26:33.880
I'll admit there was a lot of distribution of the benefit of the doubt. We were seeing horror stories
00:26:39.240
emerging from Wuhan in China. We didn't know what we were dealing with. And at a certain point,
00:26:44.360
people were prepared to give the government and each other the benefit of the doubt. Social distancing
00:26:49.120
wasn't a state mandate. It was something that people did because it was courteous. You give
00:26:53.880
people extra space if you're passing them in a hallway or something. And at a certain point,
00:26:58.600
the government knew and decided to willfully obstruct the truth on COVID. And I'm not talking
00:27:04.660
about this in a conspiratorial way. I'm talking about committing to a path, committing to a narrative,
00:27:09.320
committing to an approach that flies in the face of the science. And more importantly,
00:27:14.240
that opened up a whole host of other issues that still they have been unwilling to address
00:27:19.280
the impact on children as one it will take years for us to understand the full extent of.
00:27:24.720
Yeah. Well, I feel like the tides are turning in public sentiment. I might go out for dinner tonight
00:27:31.000
and I can tell you I'm not wearing a mask in the lineup. There's nothing dumber than standing up,
00:27:35.800
wear a mask, sit down, take your mask off. I'm not going to go through that again. Let's see.
00:27:39.480
No, but the COVID has an altitude. It goes above your head when you're sitting.
00:27:43.820
That's right. What a world we have all lived through. I feel like you and us here at Rebel
00:27:48.740
News and a handful of others were on the right side of history, but the vast majority were not.
00:27:53.820
And that's something we're going to have to think about for a long time. Great to see you again,
00:27:56.620
my friend. Thanks for your time today. As always.
00:27:59.240
All right. There you have it, Andrew Lawton. He's the boss of the Andrew Lawton Show.
00:28:02.300
And you can watch him at tnc.news. That's our friends at True North. Stay with us. More ahead.
00:28:09.480
Hey, welcome back. Someone with a nickname, Rebel Richard says, hey, let's not buy gas and oil from
00:28:24.820
Russia. Then Trudeau can ride his bike to work. You know, when I wrote the book Ethical Oil about a
00:28:31.280
decade ago, I had an idea for country of origin labeling for energy. You know what I mean by that?
00:28:36.740
Literally anything you buy in a store, anything at Walmart, anything at Costco, your clothing,
00:28:41.560
even your food has country of origin labeling. You have the right to know where it came from.
00:28:49.240
Except for oil at your gas pump. Isn't that funny? You could track it. And you could be told if it was
00:28:56.140
Canadian oil, American oil, Saudi oil, Russian oil. I think we should have country of origin labeling
00:29:00.560
for oil so people can know, well, is this Russian oil or Saudi oil or American oil? Just so you can
00:29:07.180
make a choice if you care. I think most people wouldn't care, but some people would really care.
00:29:13.740
Chase James 2021 says, Biden wants the USA a third world country with the elimination of fossil fuels.
00:29:19.940
Fossil fuel is more economical and in the long run, much cleaner fuel than these electric cars
00:29:24.220
everyone keeps promoting. Yeah. And there's something called density of fuel. Here's what
00:29:28.540
I mean by that. Like this much fuel in a car will let you go more than a hundred miles. To get that
00:29:38.100
kind of energy that small, you can't do it with solar. You can't do it with wind. And, you know,
00:29:48.120
I mean, you can't fly a plane. Uh, you can't have a jumbo jet take off. You can't, you, let me put it
00:29:55.180
this way. You can't make wind turbines. The factories that make wind turbines are not powered by wind
00:30:01.600
turbines. They're powered by coal-fired power plants. Um, green energy, maybe one day it'll be a thing.
00:30:09.740
I don't know if you ever remember that movie Avatar, but, uh, they were looking for this mineral called
00:30:15.540
the unobtainium, unobtainium. Yeah, that's about it. This fantasy fuel of the future that's perfect
00:30:22.740
in every way, except it doesn't exist. Maybe one day we'll find it, but we haven't yet. And until
00:30:27.780
then we have to use fossil fuels, gas for your car, jet fuel for planes. Sorry, solar doesn't work
00:30:32.860
yet. Alma Alma says, so Christy Freeland lived and studied in Ukraine and bought an apartment with
00:30:39.440
her sister in Kiev overlooking the square. Is that the same apartment in Kiev that one of Putin's
00:30:44.700
missiles pierced? Anyone else read about the recent suicide of one of Gazprom's directors
00:30:48.640
who was found dead in St. Petersburg? I did hear the part about a Gazprom director found dead.
00:30:54.660
I didn't hear the part about Christy Freeland, um, buying a, an apartment in Kiev. I'll have to
00:31:00.180
look into that because there's so many rumors out there. I think we have to be on guard in case that's
00:31:04.240
one of them. But, uh, I have no doubt. I mean, Christy Freeland has been an anti-Russian activist
00:31:08.980
her whole life. And in many ways, I think I have too. I remember even when I was in high school
00:31:13.960
during the Cold War, that's how old I am. I was one of the few people in my class who were
00:31:19.800
vocally against communists, even in my book, Ethical Oil. And my book, Shakedown, sorry,
00:31:24.940
my book, pardon me, Groundswell, The Case for Fracking. I've, I go on at great length about
00:31:29.760
the dangers of Russia and Putin. Um, but I think that Christy Freeland has an obsession that is very
00:31:36.620
deep. And as you probably know, her grandfather, uh, published a Nazi newspaper. Um, and she covered
00:31:44.640
that up for him for years. I think Christy Freeland is really iffy. I think she's ethically iffy. I
00:31:50.660
think her family history, although I would never put the sins of the grandfather on the granddaughter,
00:31:54.780
I would like to know more about what the grandpa, the Nazi taught Christy Freeland. And I think most
00:32:00.640
relevant is I'm worried about her being on the board of directors of the World Economic Forum.
00:32:06.080
I think Christy Freeland, um, is actually probably more dangerous than Justin Trudeau in many ways.
00:32:12.360
And I am a critic of Vladimir Putin and have been for 20 years, but, uh, it makes me nervous that
00:32:19.960
Christy Freeland is leading the charge. I, I think she's, uh, she's a diplomatic risk. Let me put it that
00:32:26.400
away. That's our show for today. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters
00:32:32.040
to you at home, good night and keep fighting for freedom. And let me leave you with our video of
00:32:36.000
the day from Adam in Calgary, who did a story about protesters continuing their demonstrations
00:32:42.140
against government overreach. I should tell you, Jason Kenney is trying to rehabilitate his image
00:32:47.140
on Twitter by saying how much he's against those damaging policies that he himself brought in
00:32:52.160
for the lockdown, but he still is, um, banning unvaxxed people from working in large swaths of
00:32:59.780
the public sector. He's still jailing Pastor Arthur Pawlowski. And, uh, I think he's just,
00:33:07.040
he's caught between nervousness that he's going to lose his party, uh, leadership convention in a
00:33:13.340
month or so. And also his commitment to being a lockdown. This is really bizarre to see. I'll leave
00:33:17.840
you with that video. I'll see you later. I'm Sos here for Rebel News and we are once again at the
00:33:22.580
Calgary Freedom Rally here in Central Memorial Park where hundreds are once again gathered. I want to
00:33:28.720
take just a moment to pause and reflect on the fact that week after week, hundreds and indeed
00:33:33.440
thousands of people have been standing in solidarity together in what is very likely one of the largest
00:33:39.820
civil rights movements in Canadian history. We have never seen so many cities standing so many
00:33:45.480
weekends week after week for their freedom, standing in unity and standing for each other.
00:33:51.520
These people are protesting, demanding a permanent end to mandates and an end to all the restrictions
00:33:56.480
from COVID-19 that have done so much harm to society.
00:34:00.220
And this is my warning to these so-called leaders, leave our children alone!
00:34:07.440
So there is a pretty clear sentiment among the people here that temporary lifts of mandates
00:34:17.340
and restrictions aren't enough. There's always this threat that they will return those half
00:34:22.180
promises. What is the impression you're gathering from people here? What do they want for these
00:34:28.040
We need to be sure that this can never happen again. We need our elected officials to vote into
00:34:33.620
law. Restrictions on their abilities to impose these non-pharmaceutical interventions.
00:34:38.620
Well, I can't speak for the rest of these people. I can only speak for myself.
00:34:42.620
I want freedom. I want this to end. I want it never to be reinstigated again because I'm free
00:34:53.620
Total freedom. No government controls. No vaccine mandates. No government controlling bank accounts.
00:35:01.620
We're trying to keep the country free. It's all about freedom.
00:35:05.620
Freedom. It's not about the vaccine. We, you know, people here, we all believe science.
00:35:09.620
We all trust science. It's not about that. We're against Trudeau. We're against tyranny.
00:35:13.620
We want to be free. It's our bodies. It's our choice. That term doesn't get to change just because the narrative changes.
00:35:19.620
You still have to get a vaccine in order to have able to go to work and able to travel.
00:35:27.620
There's still a lot of pressure for people who aren't convinced about why that's important.
00:35:34.620
So, you know what? Although on the surface, it feels like we're kind of free and we are,
00:35:40.620
there's still several people or groups, if you want to call them, that are still getting pressured to do that.
00:35:46.620
I don't think that's fair because they just want to have a conversation about it.
00:35:51.620
They want some more information before they do it.
00:35:53.620
But so many people got forced after Christmas, if they were in health care or if they were in travel industries
00:36:01.620
or if they worked for the government to get vaccinated without question.
00:36:05.620
And I don't think that's right. I don't think that's fair. That's why we're here.
00:36:08.620
Well, I don't think anybody's going to want to end the protest until everything guaranteed is not going to reopen.
00:36:16.620
Like even in Alberta, we don't trust the premier.
00:36:20.620
We want our freedom. We want our right to choose. We want our lives back. This is a free country.
00:36:26.620
What we're doing is beyond wrong. We want freedom, freedom to live our lives the way that we see fit.
00:36:34.620
Well, we're fighting for bodily autonomy and we know these things are going to come back.
00:36:39.620
Like they're not done with them. And these governments got to go, all of them.
00:36:43.620
You know, there's not one premier. There's not one federal government that's on our side.
00:36:49.620
And we need to keep fighting for that. Get them all out.
00:36:53.620
Well, folks here are speaking about this as a great awakening.
00:36:57.620
The people here are not simply being placated by the fact that some mandates and restrictions are being dropped.
00:37:03.620
They want assurances that these restrictions and mandates are gone for good.
00:37:08.620
They're also calling for an end to the keeping of political prisoners like Pastor Archer Pawlowski
00:37:14.620
who are being held simply for questioning their narrative.
00:37:24.620
So you're, are you attending the protest or did you stumble upon it?
00:37:28.620
We are waiting for a friend down the line. We've been here one week before and now we're back again.
00:37:33.620
So what is it that you want? What are you fighting for? What are you protesting?
00:37:36.620
Well, we are both musicians and have lost a lot of work over the past year to do these mandates.
00:37:41.620
And we have a seven month old baby. I was pregnant when the vaccine came out.
00:37:45.620
And we just basically want people to have control over their medical choices again.
00:38:00.620
For the first time in effectively the two years that these protests have been taking place,
00:38:04.620
we're seeing a significant counter protest here.
00:38:07.620
Police have effectively set up a barricade preventing the protesters from interacting.
00:38:12.620
I'm going to try and speak with some of the counter protesters to see what their perspective is.
00:38:16.620
Would you guys like to say at all how you're counter protesting or what you're standing for?
00:38:22.620
So what exactly is it that you're counter protesting here?
00:38:25.620
I support the right to protest. That is at the heart of any democracy.
00:38:32.620
That being said, we need to keep our society safe. Public health measures are a means of doing that.
00:38:38.620
Sorry. Thank you. Did you want to say something? No. Does anyone want to say why you're...
00:38:59.620
You have to care about freedom. You wouldn't march with the flag.
00:39:04.620
The last few weeks we've attended these protests,
00:39:06.620
we have seen the public opinion on the sides of streets shift.
00:39:09.620
People have been clapping and cheering in roadside cafes and bars.
00:39:14.620
It's almost as though while society begins to shift,
00:39:21.620
some of the activists, some of the counter protesters,
00:39:35.620
And what do you make of, for the first time really,
00:39:50.620
I don't really care how you want to live your life.
00:39:54.620
however you want to live your life is your right to choose.
00:40:14.620
Like nothing I've ever been a part of in my life.
00:40:29.620
I was riding that high for days after I got home.
00:40:37.620
But lots of it, there's sort of ifs and buts languages
00:40:42.620
Well, what I've been hearing is they dropped it.
00:40:50.620
But the fact is they can still freeze our bank accounts
00:40:56.620
We're seeing week after week thousands and thousands of people
00:41:01.620
In your lifetime, have you ever seen a movement like this
00:41:03.620
for civil liberties, a movement where so many people
00:41:21.620
Well, the Emergencies Act for the time being has been revoked.
00:41:25.620
Mandates and restrictions are also being revoked.
00:41:29.620
But people continue to demand their freedoms long term.
00:41:32.620
And these people are not going to desist in their protests
00:41:35.620
until those freedoms are guaranteed for the long term.
00:41:38.620
People will continue to march for their freedoms.
00:41:40.620
As always, I want to thank you all so much for tuning in.