A tweet sent by the Saskatchewan Health Authority gives away the game, and we're here to break it down. Today's guest is Ezra Levenrant, host of the Ezra Levin Show on the Rebel Network's The Ezra Levin Podcast.
00:04:10.220The 10 largest pharmaceutical companies in Canada gave more than $151 million to doctors and hospitals across the country over the last two years.
00:04:19.520But unlike the U.S. and many European countries, Canada has no legislation compelling drug companies to reveal
00:04:25.900which health care providers got money or what it was for.
00:04:30.320Now, all three of these stories were from 2019, right before COVID hit.
00:04:36.360They were talking about other drugs, obviously.
00:04:40.000Do you think there's a teeny tiny chance that drug companies are doing the same thing now with doctors?
00:14:35.460But they're going to torture you until you save five, to save five, to show your loyalty to the party, or you will be punished until you do.
00:14:45.240Not because the party thinks this is five.
00:16:21.400It's not particularly interesting, although Edmonton and Calgary are important cities.
00:16:26.280But at the same time, Alberta held a plebiscite, really, on who should serve it in the federal Senate.
00:16:34.740Of course, that's not a decision to be made by the province.
00:16:37.500That is the power of the federal government.
00:16:40.340So it's something that Justin Trudeau could certainly well ignore.
00:16:43.700At the same time, there was a referendum to take Alberta's temperature, really, on the issue of equalization payments.
00:16:50.280So what would normally be probably an unremarkable evening of local votes has, I think, more meaning in joining us now to talk about the results is our friend Sheila Gunn-Reed.
00:17:51.660Do you have any thoughts on why the liberal left candidates won in both Calgary and Edmonton?
00:17:56.360Well, Edmonton, as Ralph Klein rightly pointed out one time when he said Edmonton is a nice city with too many mosquitoes and socialists, and that just comes from being the government town.
00:18:09.460It's where all the public sector workers are.
00:18:11.080It's always been left-leaning, even back in Ralph Klein's day.
00:18:22.040Although it is interesting to see a failed liberal cabinet minister who was once on Edmonton City Council, Amarjeet Sohi, get elected in Edmonton when he is so upfront about being anti-oil and gas and anti-pipeline.
00:18:37.040And I think in Edmonton and Calgary, the real winners are probably the Parkland Institute and the Pembina Institute, those left-leaning institutes that get all sorts of municipal money to tell you just exactly how much recycling you need to do and how low flow your showerheads are and how to retrofit your house with things that will make it more energy efficient.
00:19:01.720But in Calgary, the mayor-elect, Giotta Gondek, I think she was elected like 16 or 17 hours ago, and she's already talking about declaring a climate emergency in Calgary.
00:19:20.460It means lower speed limits, more expensive and useless recycling scams.
00:19:25.460Calgary's in for like a real wild ride.
00:19:30.720And I think she will be the leader of the official opposition here in Alberta, even more so than Rachel Notley is, because Rachel Notley is widely disliked in conservative circles.
00:19:46.100And if we thought that Kenny and Naheed Nenshi had a prickly relationship, I think it's going to get much, much worse between Jason Kenny and the city of Calgary.
00:20:40.380Yeah, you know, that's an interesting point, though, when you bring up the think tanks, because I think a lot of the problem here is, in Calgary, is that conservatives, like, have sort of walked off the field of municipal politics.
00:20:57.320Conservatives tend to focus on provincial politics and the macro-federal issues, but really the government that affects you first and most is the municipal level.
00:21:05.780And yet, there's really no fundraising for the next up-and-coming conservative leader on that level.
00:21:13.000The public sector unions, particularly the very powerful municipal ones in Edmonton and Calgary, they dump money into PACs or third-party advertisers to help their preferred candidate.
00:21:26.200There's none of that happening at the conservative level.
00:21:32.060None of the businesses are donating to the conservative organizations to sort of cultivate a new conservative candidate.
00:21:38.440And then the business community wonders why they're getting stuck with all these extra taxes when they didn't rally around the conservative of their choice or, you know, the potential conservative candidate.
00:21:49.620But also, I think some of this has to do with the wide dislike of Jason Kenney and its trickling down into municipal politics.
00:22:01.460Anybody that sort of was even closely related to the UCP, and as was the case with Jeremy Farkas, nobody wants anything to do with them.
00:22:11.360And you can see the flip side of this playing out.
00:22:14.300So the conservatives, the UCP, did not really get involved in the referendum question on equalization.
00:22:21.800And you would normally think they would have been really pushing for the yes side of that, like the yes side, yes, we need to get equalization out of the Constitution.
00:22:31.880But they didn't really lobby and campaign on that.
00:22:35.280And I think that's to the benefit of the yes side winning, because I think they were so widely disliked.
00:22:43.200So when conservative voters are willing to vote on a conservative issue in favor of it, but not for a conservative politician, Houston, we have a problem.
00:22:55.060Yeah, I think also there's some Jason Kenney fatigue and some Aaron O'Toole fatigue.
00:23:01.180And I think that's largely demoralized conservatives.
00:23:04.560And Jeremy Farkas, who I think would have been a better mayor in Calgary.
00:23:08.500And Edmonton had its conservative candidate who came closer, if I'm not mistaken.
00:23:17.780They could have been bolder conservatives.
00:23:20.220I think that someone who styled themselves as an anti-lockdownist, I don't know, maybe I'm wrong.
00:23:28.180Maybe that would have gotten them crushed.
00:23:29.780But I just feel like if you're not really a conservative fighting hard, why would people be motivated to help you?
00:23:36.960And the left certainly never stops putting the pedal to the metal.
00:23:41.240There's never been a time in my 49-year life where leftists and progressives and communists and socialists, whatever you want to call them,
00:23:49.060haven't always had their pedal to the metal, fold, go as fast and as hard as you can.
00:25:15.540And they need to learn from what just happened federally and what just happened municipally and maybe try to do something different.
00:25:21.980But it really should have been a wake-up call for the conservative voter because long before Jason Kenney was imposing vaccine passports on people,
00:25:29.340it was the mayors and council who were sort of saber-rattling and putting pressure on the provincial government to bring those to you.
00:25:38.020And so as a conservative voter or conservative-minded people, they really should have realized that this patchwork quilt of onerous restrictions all across the province,
00:25:48.240those were born at the municipal level because conservatives have not put in place people who actually care about civil liberties at the municipal level.
00:25:57.780And that's where a lot of these civil liberties and fractionates were happening.
00:26:00.640Yeah, you know, I think again of Ron DeSantis in Florida, of course, there's different cities and counties and school boards across Florida,
00:26:09.700some of which are Democrat-controlled, some are very authoritarian.
00:26:13.260But Ron DeSantis has sort of flooded the zone and has said, any school board that forces masking, we will fine you.
00:28:08.240And I think those MLAs need to hear from their constituents.
00:28:12.840I don't know how much they're listening.
00:28:15.300But they do need to hear from their constituents.
00:28:17.360And, you know, it's interesting to see, even on the referendum question, the urban-rural divide is taking place again.
00:28:24.700For example, the equalization question, the yes side was upwards of 70% in the more rural municipalities and 58% in Calgary.
00:28:37.800I think if Jason Kenney doesn't step down and if there isn't a leadership change, you are going to see that party crack apart back into the PCs of old.
00:28:49.980They'll probably keep the same name that they have.
00:28:52.520And a devolution back into, like, Wild Rose versus PCs.
00:28:56.560And guess who always comes up the middle when that happens?
00:31:52.680I don't know if she's Kenny's boss or if Kenny is hers boss.
00:31:56.020I think it may be a little bit more like what Teresa Tam is.
00:31:59.580And as you know, last year we showed you, through an access to information request, Teresa Tam's contract with the United Nations World Health Authority.
00:32:08.840She actually has a nondisclosure agreement she signed with the UN promising to keep their secrets.
00:32:15.060She was actually on the board that voted as to whether or not to declare COVID-19 infectious to people or not.
00:32:22.980That was in the early days in January of 2020.
00:32:25.240So she's keeping UN secrets at the same time she was working as Canada's public health officer.
00:32:32.500I think that Teresa Tam really didn't make any decisions on her own.
00:32:38.820I think she was really the UN World Health Organization spokesman in Canada.
00:32:43.440And I think the provincial public health officers were just sort of deputies of her and then city health officers were deputies of them.
00:32:53.420I don't think there was a lot of independent thinking or research going on at all.
00:32:58.780I think it literally was follow the flock like birds line up naturally.
00:33:04.780I think every public health officer was in lockstep with the other.
00:33:08.280I honestly don't know what they all do for a living other than repeat the same talking points.
00:33:12.920Couldn't you have like an intern do that or like an app?
00:33:39.120That's a violation of parliamentary privilege or unparliamentary language.
00:33:43.600I'm worried about the lies, but I'm also worried about the immunity that the drug companies have managed to get from the government.
00:33:50.760So it's one thing to mislead people about the safety or efficacy of a vaccine.
00:33:56.260But what happens if you're compelled or duped into taking the vaccine and are harmed and you cannot sue the vaccine companies because they're indemnified?
00:36:30.020what will change but it's a fact. This protest will have a march until like the Abraham field so we'll follow it.
00:37:00.020So, today I'm interested to know, for those frontline workers, how do you still live the difference between the vaccinated and the vaccinated with your colleagues?
00:37:21.520I would say that I have the chance to have colleagues who are relatively respectful of them because they know that I respect them.
00:37:30.020They know that I have a certain credibility and that they respect my values but I think that it's not the same everywhere.
00:37:36.020It's the same everywhere. And we are here especially in support of employees and the health personnel.
00:37:41.520We are still in a certain proximity with them.
00:37:44.520And we are still in the future and we are still in the future.
00:37:51.020For me, probably, it's more dramatic because I'm in the technical service.
00:37:56.020But, in fact, I'm quite the only one who remains.
00:38:01.020With my point of view of this problem,