EZRA LEVANT ｜ Is the pandemic over？ Are the lockdowns over？
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Summary
Is the Pandemic over? Ezra asks the question in today's monologue, and why the government is still trying to force everyone to wear a face mask. Plus, Air Canada is under fire again, and a new no-fly zone over Ukraine.
Transcript
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Hello, my Rebels. I got a question for you. Do you think the pandemic is over?
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Well, I think the pandemic is. It's now endemic, as they say. But what about the lockdowns?
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They're definitely not over yet, are they? A lot of things have to be pulled up by the
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root or it's just going to come back again. I'll show you what I mean in today's monologue. But
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before I do, let me invite you to get the video version of today's monologue. Just go to
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pennies a day adds up for us. If enough people subscribe, we can really make a go of them
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without taking any of that Trudeau cash. Just go to rebelnewsplus.com. Thanks. Here's today's.
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Tonight, is the pandemic over? Are the lockdowns over? It's St. Patrick's Day,
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Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
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There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
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The only thing I have to say to the government about why I'm publishing it is because it's my
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By every measure, the pandemic is over. It's endemic now, as in it's just in the background,
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like the common cold or the annual flu season. Sometimes the flu is bad one year,
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sometimes it's not as bad the next. I'm skeptical about how accurately the COVID-19 coronavirus
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was identified, as opposed to other coronaviruses. By the way, the common cold
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is often caused by a coronavirus. That's why there were no colds last year. They needed to put those
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in another category, I bet. But there was such a political and financial incentive to identify
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every illness as COVID-19. I'm not sure if we'll ever know the true statistics behind what was done
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to us. Here's one example of hundreds. I just chose Massachusetts at random. It was the first one that
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popped up in my search engine. Department of Public Health updates COVID-19 death definition.
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Revised data capture more accurately the acute impact of COVID in the Commonwealth.
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Yeah, so 4,000 people who they used to claim for years and died from COVID, they actually didn't.
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Sorry about that. Yeah. Hey, sorry, old chap. Now that it's over, I guess we'll tell you the truth about it.
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But hey, trust the science, right? Mask mandates are done in many places, except for most Canadian schools.
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I hate that. I drive to work every morning and I see parents walking their children to school. The
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parents have no masks, but the young kids do. And I know why, because in a moment when the kids
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attended school, they'll have to put their masks on. The schools will demand it. That's gross. That's
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unscientific. Children are the least risk of COVID in society. For parents to accept the masking of their
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own children at all was outrageous. But now that everyone else is free except for the children,
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that's a disgrace. But really no different from the past two years when NHL hockey teams,
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millionaire players with billionaire owners, they were allowed to play hockey, but not your
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neighborhood kids hockey teams. That's science. Disgrace upon disgrace. And while vaccine passports
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are being dropped in many places in Canada, they're still in effect for many government jobs.
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I hear that Air Canada also is about to fire hundreds more staff soon. And of course, there's
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Trudeau's no-fly list. He correctly won't agree to a no-fly zone over Ukraine. That would involve
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Canadians shooting down Russian jets, which would start World War III with a nuclear power. But the thing
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about a Canadian no-fly list is that Canadians who aren't vaccinated, if you were to declare war on
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them, they have no nukes to fight back. In fact, if they even peacefully protest against Trudeau,
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they'll be clubbed like baby seals by Trudeau's police thugs and have their bank accounts frozen
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without any legal recourse. I see that British Airways and some other major airlines over there are
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dropping their in-flight mask requirements. I think that's great. You can still wear your mask
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if you like. You always could wear a mask if you wanted to. But now no one else has to match your
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fear level. This will be a great relief to passengers. And I have no doubt that it will be a
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great relief to many flight attendants who no longer have to be mask cops constantly harassing
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passengers about their mask falling beneath their nose or that they laughably have to put the mask on
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in between bites of food or sips of water. I heard a flight attendants send that once.
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Some flight attendants will miss that bizarre power. They like being bullies, but I think most
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will be glad it's done. But again, not in Canada. So there may be a simulation that we're free. It'll
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feel almost that we're free, but we're not free. As I said last night at a democracy fund again with
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Dr. Julie Panassi and Dennis Prager, sometimes things are more likely to happen a second time than they
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were to happen the first time. What I mean by that is two years ago, a lockdown of innocent,
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healthy, law-abiding Canadian citizens was unthinkable. It's just impossible. And physically,
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how would you lock them down morally? How could you justify it legally? How could you enforce it
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medically? How could you say it makes sense? It makes no sense at all. You'd have to be nuts to
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think that free Canadians would suddenly go along with being prisoners. Yeah, well, Canadians did.
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And in Quebec, they even put up with full curfews. Like there were children being scolded by parents
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or something. No surprise, it has recently come out that there was no science behind Quebec's
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imposition of the curfew. Just no science at all. Quebec Public Health scrambled to justify second
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curfew hours before announcement. I'm reading the CBC story here. Emails reveal former public health
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director lacked scientific studies, sought help to no avail. I'm going to read a little bit of this to you.
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Actually, give me about a minute. You know that they all did this, right? They all made it up.
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Look at this. Let me read. Hours before Quebec announced the reinstatement of a province-wide
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curfew in December, which began the next day, emails obtained by Radio Canada revealed the
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province's head of public health was still looking for studies to justify the decision. Oh, I thought you
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do it the other way around. I thought you have studies that justify it and then you do it. I didn't know
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you worked in reverse of that. In an email time stamped 1031 AM on December 30th, the assistant
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to former public health director Dr. Horacio Arruda solicited help from the province's Public Health
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Institute as well as a senior strategic medical advisor for Quebec Public Health to rationalize
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the curfew to reporters at a news conference later that day. Horacio would like you and your teams
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to provide him with an argument in relation to the curfew in anticipation of questions from journalists
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at the 5 p.m. press conference this evening, wrote René Levesque. What are the studies? What is being done
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elsewhere? The email reads, adding Arruda wanted it all in a light argument. At 2.36 p.m., less than three hours
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before the news conference, Eric Litvak, vice president of scientific affairs at the Institut National de Santé
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Publique du Québec, replied that the request was impossible to fulfill. On the SPQ side, we don't have an
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existing analysis that specifically addresses the curfew, and we are unfortunately unable to produce
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one today with such short notice, he wrote in an email. They made it all up. They made it all up. There was no science
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behind it. There's no medicine. There's no epidemiology, no studying unintended consequences,
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no mental health studies, no drug use studies, no family strife studies, no economic strife, no lost
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opportunities. 50,000 tickets handed out by cops in Quebec over these rules. Every single one of them
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should be canceled. Every single fine that someone already paid should be refunded. And of course,
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the wicked man who knew all of this, but proceeded nonetheless, Dr. Horacio Arruda,
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he must be prosecuted, but he won't be prosecuted, for how could he be prosecuted and not all the rest
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of them? So yeah, it was unthinkable that they would do to us what they did, but they said, let's
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just, just let us do it just for two weeks, okay? Just 15 days, okay? That's it. Just two weeks,
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just a little. Here's how they said it in America, and there's Donald Trump standing right next to it.
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We're asking that same sense of community to come together and stand up against this virus,
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and if everybody in America does what we ask for over the next 15 days, we will see a dramatic
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difference, and we won't have to worry about the ventilators, and we won't have to worry about the
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ICU beds, because we won't have our elderly and our people at the greatest risk having to be
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hospitalized. It's the same thing up here, two weeks to flatten the curve, but wasn't it quite
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something? How in lockstep they all were. Every country, every state, every province,
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every city, as if they were all reading from a script together, and in a way they were from the
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China-controlled World Health Organization, but really, what was the excuse for Aaron O'Toole or
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Jason Kenney or Doug Ford? Cowardice, lack of conviction, who knows? You know, socialists were
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going to abuse government power. It's sort of a given, but what is the excuse for so-called
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conservatives? It was unthinkable that it would happen once, but we proved that it was all too
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thinkable. It did happen, so obviously it'll be easier to do a second time. It's no longer
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unthinkable. It's no longer unimaginable, and why wouldn't it happen a second time? Over my dead body.
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Yeah, whose dead body? What court has ever said no to them? What political party? What police force?
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What college of physicians? What media company? Why wouldn't it happen again and then again? I mean,
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get ready for the next one, right? So we, you know, we'll have to prepare for the next one. That,
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you know, I'd say is, uh, we'll get attention this time.
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That's Bill Gates smiling a bit too much about the next pandemic. It's a bit creepy. I think he's
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getting creepier. It took her a while, but his wife, Melinda Gates, finally divorced him.
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And it was because of his refusal to stop visiting Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted pedophile
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who ran an international child rape gang. You know, it was also widely reported that
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Bill had a friendship or business or some kind of contact with Jeffrey Epstein and that you were not,
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that that was very upsetting to you. Did that play a role in the, in the divorce at all in this process?
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Yeah. As I said, it's not one thing. It was many things, but I did not like, uh, that he'd had
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meetings with Jeffrey Epstein. No. And you made that clear to him. I made that clear to him. I also
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met Jeffrey Epstein exactly one time. Did you? Yes. Because I wanted to see who this man was. And,
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um, I regretted it from the second I stepped in the door. He was abhorrent. He was evil,
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personified. I had nightmares about it afterwards. So, you know, my heart breaks for these young
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women because that's how I felt. And here I'm an older woman. My God, I feel terrible for those
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young women. It's awful. You felt that the moment you walked in. I didn't realize that. He was awful.
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Yeah. And you shared that with Bill and he still continued to spend time with him?
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Any of the questions remaining about what Bill's relationship there was, those are for Bill to
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answer. Okay. But I made it very clear how I felt about him. How can it be that after what we know
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and after what his own wife says, how can Bill Gates still be accepted uncritically as not just a
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subject matter expert, which he is not, but a moral expert? How, how can people still listen
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to him? His wife divorced him over what he was doing with Epstein? Well, money, of course,
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he's given away more than 300 million U S to his favorite media. That's almost just and true. No
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money. So that's enough to wash away any tough questions from the media party. But Bill Gates,
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isn't just into vaccines. He cares about global warming, even though he's big into private jets and
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that Epstein lifestyle. Remember this story here. He's the kook who wanted to spray tons of dust
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into the atmosphere enough to actually block the sun to reduce global warming. Just, just that. Hey,
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do you mind if I just dim the heavens to block out the sun? But how is that any nuttier than locking
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people in their own homes or forcing masks on children? They've all learned so much from the
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pandemic about what they can get away with in the future. They're all using that phrase climate
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lockdown now. Look at this. Here's a media company bankrolled by George Soros. In this case, I'll read
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a bit for you. Avoiding a climate lockdown. The world is approaching a tipping point on climate change
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when protecting the future of civilization will require dramatic interventions. Avoiding this scenario
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will require a green economic transformation and thus a radical overhaul of corporate governance,
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finance, policy, and energy systems. Okay, got it. Now, here's the key paragraph. Get this.
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Under a climate lockdown, governments would limit private vehicle use, ban consumption of red meat,
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and impose extreme energy saving measures, while fossil fuel companies would have to stop drilling.
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To avoid such a scenario, we must overhaul our economic structure and do capitalism differently.
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Many think of the climate crisis as distinct from the health and economic crises caused by the pandemic,
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but the three crises and their solutions are interconnected. Hello, citizens. You do have a choice.
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Give government control of your entire lives or give government total control over your lives,
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but it's your choice which way. They really won't stop talking about climate lockdowns. They're not
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done yet. They just had a massive dress rehearsal and it went swimmingly for them.
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That's why I think it's important that we finish up the current pandemic and the lockdowns properly,
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and here's what I mean by that. First of all, we have to end the lockdown punishments of citizens
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completely and the vaccine mandates for government jobs, federally and provincially, delete and destroy
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the QR code database system that is still operating in Canada, permitting private vaccine passports
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using government data. That has to be rooted out. And not just rooted out, it's got to be legally banned
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in the future. Secondly, we need to obviously end the most atrocious vaccine lockdown, the no-fly list.
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Millions of Canadians are not allowed to travel in this country by train or plane or ferry boat
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because they choose for whatever reason, including they already have natural immunity, not to get
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vaxxed. That has to end. I don't know any other country in the world that does that.
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Same with the cross-border limitations if you're not vaxxed. But thirdly, we need deep forensic
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investigations into how all these decisions were made and by whom. And by the decisions, I mean like how
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Quebec's unscientific curfew was brought into effect, despite the fact there was no evidence
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for it and they knew that. But every decision, was there any science behind it? I doubt it.
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I've shown you this before. The former head of the FDA saying no one actually knows where the whole six
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foot distancing rule came from. They all just sort of started repeating it, but no one knows who said
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it at first. That's atrocious. Fourth, who got all the money for ventilators that were never used or never
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even made? How were contracts awarded? Deep forensic investigations, deep accounting investigations.
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Fifthly, into hospitalized too and COVID patients. How many were there? How many were there?
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Like when Alberta's Dr. Dina Hinshaw lied and claimed that a child died from COVID when he actually died
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from cancer. She lied and used a dead child to promote her pandemic. Fear mongering,
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to scare other children and parents. It all needs to come out. There has to be an audit.
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There needs to be a sort of truth and reconciliation commission to let us know what really happened.
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There needs to be an admission of wrongdoing. The Federal and Provincial Emergencies Acts, for example,
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were so obviously abused. They need to be amended. So this just can't happen again. We need a full
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investigation of the police, especially those who went to Ottawa SWAT team style,
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to physically beat and even shoot protesters and journalists like our own Alexa. We need a deep
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inquiry into the banks. Whose bank accounts were seized? Who do they spy on? Those willing collaborators
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in Justin Trudeau's violation of civil liberties. We can't just say, okay, we're done with the lockdowns.
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We're through that, back to normal. We have to know. We have to show people what was done wrong
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and who did it. And we need the truth to come out. We need to make sure it'll never happen again,
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because if we don't, it will happen again, sooner than you think. Stay with us for more.
00:17:53.960
Hey, welcome back. Well, I saw a poll the other day that showed there is a tie for the least popular
00:18:12.360
premier in all of Canada. The most popular, to my surprise, was in British Columbia. Quebec's premier
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was pretty high. But tied for dead last was the new premier in Manitoba and Jason Kenney in Alberta.
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Amazing, considering how popular he was in his last election, where he trounced the NDP's Rachel Notley.
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Now he's tied at 30%, very low. And two days ago, there was a by-election in Fort McMurray.
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And the reason this was important is that the leadership contestant that Jason Kenney beat
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a couple of years ago when he created the United Conservative Party, Brian Jean is his name.
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Well, he was running in that by-election explicitly to get rid of Jason Kenney. And what a great column
00:19:03.720
I have here in my hands from the Edmonton Sun. Jean's by-election win, his springboard into UCP
00:19:10.200
leadership race, written by our friend Lauren Gunter, senior columnist with the Edmonton Sun,
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who joins us now via Skype. Lauren, great to see you again. I love the first line of your column,
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let the regicide begin. You don't see that word a lot. That feels sort of Shakespearean.
00:19:23.880
That means killing the king, right? That's what Brian Jean wants to do.
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He does. He's made no bones about it. And he has even said many times since he won a by-election
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on Tuesday that he's there to get rid of Jason Kenney. He's going to stop the NDP from becoming
00:19:44.760
the government of Alberta again, which he thinks would be disastrous. And I think he's right.
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He's going to stop the NDP by getting rid of Jason Kenney because Jason Kenney is the leader of the UCP.
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Well, there's a chance of it. I mean, the polls are pretty atrocious, I just mentioned. And by the way,
00:20:04.760
Kenney's poll numbers are actually improved from their rock bottom low a few weeks ago. I mean,
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he has taken his foot off the gas of the lockdowns. And I know that many Albertans say,
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hey, it was never as bad a lockdown in Alberta as it was in, let's say, Quebec,
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where they actually had nighttime curfews, if you can believe it. But I don't think comparing
00:20:28.520
yourself to the worst of Canadian premiers is what Albertans want. I think, I mean, listen,
00:20:34.680
I'm out here in exile in Toronto, but it seems to me that Alberta's motto is strong and free.
00:20:39.320
And Jason Kenney in particular had a reputation as someone with a light touch, not a heavy handed
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authoritarian approach. I think that while it may have been less worse than other provinces,
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I think he truly let down conservatives in this country. He was supposed to be the Ron DeSantis,
00:20:55.480
I think what he did, yeah, you know, we can argue about and probably should have a discussion about
00:21:02.360
what he did right and what he did wrong. And if there's another wave or another pandemic with
00:21:07.800
another disease, what Alberta should do next time or shouldn't, maybe even better what Alberta
00:21:14.840
shouldn't do next time than it did this time. But I think Kenney's biggest single fault through the
00:21:22.120
pandemic is not necessarily the individual steps that he took, but not bothering to explain them
00:21:28.840
much to Albertans, not bothering to go to the people of the province and say, hey, look, I know you don't
00:21:33.480
like this, but here's why we're doing this. And here's how we're going to come out of this. And,
00:21:38.040
and, you know, he, he didn't spend a lot of time being the leader. He did. One of the people I know who
00:21:45.560
is close to him said what he was trying to do was become Dr. Kenney. He wanted to become the expert
00:21:53.000
on the pandemic in Alberta. And he, and he already had one of those in Dina Hinshaw, who was actually
00:21:58.520
fairly good. I thought among, among all of the provincial chief medical officers, she was,
00:22:03.800
she was the best. I mean, again, we're comparing her to people who weren't that good, but, but
00:22:09.560
nonetheless, Alberta went through this fairly lightly. We have a lower case fatality rate on
00:22:16.520
pen on the pandemic than Ontario and Quebec. You're not going to hear that from very many sources because
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the CBC in particular, and the, and the Toronto Star, uh, love to think that Alberta was this
00:22:28.840
horrible wasteland of death and disease. Um, and we did have one really awful wave back last fall,
00:22:38.040
but, but for the most part, life has gone on here fairly normally, uh, with the exception of the vaccine
00:22:48.280
mandate, uh, for an awful lot of people in their workplaces, which really rankled a lot of Albertans
00:22:56.280
and the vaccine passport, which did it in indirectly did its job. The British government
00:23:02.920
brought it in to encourage more people to go get vaccines. And I, you know, I have a nephew who,
00:23:08.920
no, I'm not getting the vaccine. No, no, no. That's silly. I'm not. I read online where that's just that poison
00:23:14.680
they're putting in your arms. And then he couldn't get into the bar with his friends because of the
00:23:18.760
vaccine passport. Yeah. Okay. I'll get a vaccine. You know? So that's why the province did that. But
00:23:25.400
Kenny did not use the forum that he has to explain that. And, and he, he just looked like he would,
00:23:32.600
he was disappeared during the pandemic. And I think that's what's put a lot of people off.
00:23:36.200
Well, I mean, your example of a nephew who, you know, may not have had a deeply thoughtful reason,
00:23:41.000
um, for objecting, you know, there, but, but, but even your example shows that it was the duress,
00:23:47.880
it was the pain, the social pain, that it was not because you're protecting the world in any
00:23:53.880
particular way. It was just, I mean, and that's what I think irked me the most, if I may. It's,
00:24:00.600
I think every Canadian premier made a host of disastrous mistakes, but it's one thing to do
00:24:05.960
something medically wrong, but it's another thing to, to turn, uh, your, your opinion into a,
00:24:13.960
to weaponize it, to be painful on purpose. For example, President Macron of France said he,
00:24:20.600
his purpose was to be a pain in the ass. Like he would bring in as many punitive, irritating,
00:24:28.040
he even challenged the, the, the notion that you were a true French citizen if you didn't comply.
00:24:34.120
So it's one thing to say, I'm making this medically based decision with my best, uh,
00:24:40.360
good faith, uh, approach, but it's another to say, you know what? People aren't listening to me.
00:24:46.040
I'm right. They're wrong. So now I'm going to take on the role of the punisher and I'm going to make
00:24:52.600
life terrible for people who disagree with me. And I'm doing it on purpose to make their lives
00:24:57.880
miserable. That is not, I mean, that shows, I think an abusiveness that shocked me. And I used
00:25:06.360
to be quite close with Kenny and the thing that gets me these days alone. And I know you're, you
00:25:11.560
don't go all the way that I do, but his, his use of Trudeau style rhetoric to denounce skeptics and
00:25:19.880
hesitant people and people, you know, your nephew may just have not wanted to, but there are people
00:25:24.760
who have natural immunity who thought I'm already immune to this. I'm not going to take a,
00:25:29.400
a, a, a medicine that hasn't fully. And that's the sort of thing that they should have been doing,
00:25:34.360
right? They should have been more subtle about this. They should have been more nuanced,
00:25:38.520
I guess is maybe a better word about it and said, look, you know, if you fall into this category,
00:25:43.400
there's no real reason for you to have to have a vaccine. So you shouldn't need to get one if you
00:25:47.400
don't want one. Uh, and, and the other thing that bothered a lot of Albertans,
00:25:52.840
and I imagine it bothered people around the country, but it, but particularly it bothered
00:25:57.160
Albertans was the way the goalposts kept getting moved. Yeah. You remember at one point we were
00:26:01.560
told that if 70% of people got one shot and I think it was 25% Tam, Teresa Tam used to use this
00:26:09.960
for the feds. If 25% were double vaccinated, well, that would be enough. That would slow down the,
00:26:15.720
the infection enough that, uh, that it would, uh, that we didn't need to worry about anybody beyond
00:26:23.480
that. Well, then we got to 70, 25. Well, it couldn't be 70, 25 had to be 70% who are double
00:26:29.320
vaccinated and it had to be 80%. It had to be 85%. And they kept changing those rules. And then no matter
00:26:36.440
what, uh, people found using masks or with lockdowns, I mean, I've seen lots and lots of
00:26:44.440
studies since the, basically since the end of the Omicron wave, uh, about six weeks ago,
00:26:51.240
lots of studies that said that lockdowns did nothing. Yeah. If you keep, you know,
00:26:55.320
keep people from, from going out and, and, and going to social events, it really does very little.
00:27:01.080
And masks, well, if masks did anything, they kept you from getting the infection if you were in an
00:27:09.240
enclosed public space. Uh, but they didn't do an awful lot, uh, to, to protect us. And you know,
00:27:15.800
there was that absolutely annoying, uh, motto throughout the pandemic, my mask protects you,
00:27:23.880
your mask protects me. And that's why I think in Ontario right now, you have so many people who are
00:27:28.760
opposed to getting rid of the mask mandate is they bought this hole. They've swallowed this,
00:27:33.640
this notion from government experts that my mask protects you. So I have to keep wearing a mask.
00:27:42.360
If you're scared of the pandemic, because it's my mask protecting you and your mask, you know,
00:27:48.440
your mask protects you. You want to wear a mask, go ahead, wear a mask. I don't care. You know,
00:27:52.760
wear, wear, wear a tinfoil hat. I that's, that's not my concern. I think there are the sorts of
00:27:59.960
things that put, those are the sorts of things that put people off. There's a lot of people who
00:28:04.760
are terrified and will go to their graves, terrified people who will never travel again,
00:28:08.840
who will never go out again, who will wear a mask the rest of their lives, who will wear a mask when
00:28:12.520
they're by themselves, who will be, you know, cars with the windows up and a mask on. You know,
00:28:18.760
there'll be a lighthouse keeper, a hundred miles away from anyone else, and they'll be wearing a
00:28:22.440
mask. So there are people like that. And, and many of them would tend to vote NDP in Alberta,
00:28:27.560
for example. I want to slowly bring it back to Brian Jean. Jason Kenney would never get the NDP
00:28:33.400
big government vote. He just won't. They've hated him for too long. They've hated him because of what
00:28:37.720
he did with Stephen Harper. They've hated him, what he did with the Taxpayers Federation. They're
00:28:41.560
never going to vote for Jason Kenney. But in addition to alienating the entire left, he now calls people on
00:28:48.360
the right who have a variety of reasons for, you know, the churches. There was no other province in
00:28:55.480
Canada that took such a punitive approach to churchmen. It's not just angry, annoying
00:29:03.400
Pastor Arthur Pawlowski, and I say those, that's what he's described as. I like the guy,
00:29:07.880
but I can acknowledge that he can be grating, he's noisy, he shouts. Okay, fine. But can you explain
00:29:13.800
why you put Pastor James Coates in prison for 35 days? Can you explain why you put Pastor Tim Stevens
00:29:19.160
in prison? And, and so part of Jason Kenney's base was Christians, conservatives, small government,
00:29:27.640
libertarians. So if you're gonna, if you have no chance of getting the triple masker,
00:29:33.640
quadruple vaxxer NDP vote, but then you demonize those on the right. He used the word extremists again,
00:29:41.160
just the other day. He's sounding like Justin Trudeau, really using the language of the left
00:29:47.640
against his own base. Exactly. Well, what's there left to win with? And I'm not, and I'm not suggesting
00:29:53.400
that he's, he's an equal opportunity slanderer. I think he's gotten very, very frustrated,
00:30:01.880
A, by the political position he's in, and B, by, you know, the fact that Alberta would probably be
00:30:07.880
just about the hardest province in the country to handle a pandemic in a way that most people
00:30:15.080
could be convinced to agree with. Because poll after poll after poll shows that, you know,
00:30:19.480
there's about 40% of Albertans who, who love the NDP-like way of dealing with it. I mean,
00:30:25.400
if the NDP were still the provincial government here, we'd still be wearing hazmat suits and going
00:30:29.640
around with oxygen tanks. But, you know, there's about 40% who love that. And there's about 40 to
00:30:36.200
45% who hate that. I mean, there's no way of reconciling those two. And I'm not saying that,
00:30:41.720
that, that Jason, you should forgive him what he's saying about the right, because he's also saying
00:30:47.720
things about the left. But he's being sued now by a University of Alberta law professor,
00:30:52.360
because he called them deranged for saying, I'm wearing a mask, even though I don't know that I
00:30:56.680
really need one just to make Jason Kenney angry. Well, okay, stop calling people names like you're
00:31:02.760
the premier of the province. You have an opportunity to explain as the leader, take that bully pulpit
00:31:11.000
you have and start explaining why you like these things or why you're not going to do the same
00:31:14.600
things that Quebec is doing or the BC is doing or Ontario is doing. Have, have some fun that way.
00:31:20.360
Uh, stick a finger in the eye of the CBC and the Toronto star. Uh, I, I, I think that would be
00:31:27.000
very enjoyable. I remember wacky Bennett, who was the longtime social credit premier of British
00:31:32.280
Columbia said he never enjoyed politics more than when he was fighting with the lower mainland press.
00:31:38.280
Yeah. And, uh, you know, Jason hasn't adopted that similar sort of tactic and it's, it's a shame.
00:31:44.360
And that's one of the reasons he finds himself in such a mess right now. But I had in that
00:31:49.240
comment that you've been quoting, uh, the inside political poll numbers that all the parties
00:31:54.680
subscribe to from, from the Calgary pollster, Janet Brown and Brown got in trouble back. You'll
00:31:59.960
remember in December because she participated in a CBC poll where they asked other Canadians
00:32:05.480
how much they hated Alberta. Uh, they didn't ask the attitudes of other Canadians, uh, towards
00:32:12.440
other provinces, the singled out Alberta and they went after Alberta. So I, I, I have had some issues with,
00:32:18.920
with, with Janet Brown, but her political polling tends to be about as accurate as anybody in
00:32:22.920
Alberta. And she says now that the UCP are slightly ahead of the NDP in the last three months, since
00:32:29.560
the restrictions have come off, UCP's popularity has gone back up a bit. They're at 40% to 36% for the,
00:32:37.400
the NDP case. Kenny is still well below Notley in terms of personal popularity, but outside of Edmonton
00:32:45.720
and Calgary, the UCP is 20 points ahead of the NDP. So I, that, that kind of also minimizes, uh,
00:32:53.560
Brian Jean's view that, that, uh, you know, the UCP can't win against the NDP next time,
00:32:59.720
so long as Jason Kenny is the leader. Well, you say, wouldn't it be nice if Jason
00:33:03.960
Kenny became a conservative again and, and, and started talking like one? Well, he's had a year or two to
00:33:09.720
do that. But, um, in three weeks time, or April 9th to be precise, uh, his party is having a
00:33:16.200
convention. And one of the agenda items is to give, whether or not to give him the boot.
00:33:20.440
And that's why the election of Brian Jean, his former and future rival, um, to the legislature
00:33:26.680
two days ago was so interesting. And Brian Jean, if I, if I'm going from memory accurately, got 63%.
00:33:33.000
How much of that was him? How much of that was the party? I don't know. Um, the NDP was down under 20%,
00:33:39.160
which is interesting. There were two, not one, but two separatist parties on the ballot and they were
00:33:45.320
in one got significant vote. Yeah. So it's very interesting to me. And, um, I don't know. I mean,
00:33:52.680
I think that Jason Kenny, one of his problems, if I may say, is that the whole time out of the corner of
00:33:58.360
I, he's been looking at Ottawa and he's been thinking, well, I want to run Alberta successfully,
00:34:03.720
but in a manner that I can one day go back and live out my ambition to become prime minister.
00:34:08.760
So I don't want to say anything too pro-westerner. I don't want to say anything too wexity.
00:34:14.360
I want to be a polite company on the, on the vaccine mandate. So I'm not going to do
00:34:20.440
what Ron DeSantis has done. I'm not going to do what the Brits have done
00:34:24.120
and give natural immunity legal status status. I want to get through this in, in good shape so
00:34:31.240
that in five or 10 years I can become prime minister. I think a lot of what he did made sense.
00:34:38.440
If you understand that his, his lifelong ambition was the prime minister.
00:34:43.080
Yeah. You know, whether or not he wants to go back and become prime minister,
00:34:49.080
he, he was in Ottawa long enough that he still plays a kind of an Ottawa game. And I have been
00:34:55.880
saying now in print for at least three years that he really, really, really needs to hit
00:35:03.240
Justin Trudeau harder. He not only needs to hit Trudeau harder because Trudeau deserves to be hit as
00:35:09.080
hard as he possibly can as often and, and as enthusiastically as, as you can do it. But he also
00:35:16.440
needs to hit him because it's good politics. Like I think one of the things that he gets dinged for
00:35:21.960
is, you know, if he had done almost all the same things that he did on the pandemic, but at the
00:35:28.760
same time was hammering Trudeau on a regular basis over Trudeau's destruction of the oil and gas industry,
00:35:36.120
he wouldn't be as unpopular on the pandemic stuff as he is. I don't think he has gone hard enough
00:35:43.320
on Ottawa often enough. He has started to do it a bit, but you know, is it too little too late? I
00:35:49.400
mean, is, is the good news about the UCP coming back now that the pandemic restrictions are over,
00:35:55.160
is that too little too late? Three weeks is not a very long time in politics to turn around a giant
00:36:02.920
ship that it's also taking on water in a hurry. Yeah. Well, I got to tell you, I won't
00:36:08.200
keep my cards to my chest. I believe that Jason Kenney should be replaced. And I say this as
00:36:15.320
someone who's been friends with Jason Kenney for pretty much 30 years. I think that he has done
00:36:20.280
things that violate any precept of conservatism and violate his own life's, a lifetime's worth of
00:36:29.480
promises and, and beliefs that I just, I can't look the guy in the eye anymore.
00:36:36.600
You and I would disagree on that, but, but, you know, my big concern about replacing Jason Kenney,
00:36:44.440
uh, it is, it's sort of a practical one. It's a, it's a pragmatic, pragmatic and political one.
00:36:52.520
Uh, I don't know who else you'd replace him with. Like I, Brian Jean is not going to beat the NDP
00:36:56.680
any more likely than, than Jason Kenney. Jason Kenney is much more likely to beat the NDP than
00:37:01.080
Brian Jean is. Uh, and we've seen that before. So if your principal concern is, as Brian Jean says,
00:37:08.680
his is to keep the NDP from becoming the government in Alberta again, then we wouldn't vote Jason Kenney
00:37:17.320
out. I don't think, because I don't think there's time or another obvious candidate to replace him.
00:37:22.520
That's the, uh, one of the other big problems I've had with the UCP is they do not have
00:37:28.360
what I would call a class a cabinet. Yeah. Uh, there are a few people in the cabinet who are
00:37:34.200
pretty good, but there aren't a lot of obvious choices to replace
00:37:40.280
Kenney or anybody else as the leader, uh, of the UCP, you know, and interesting.
00:37:47.800
Brian Jean for all of his, uh, squawking about Jason Kenney can't beat the NDP, blah, blah, blah,
00:37:54.040
blah, blah. He, when he was asked recently what he would have done differently in the pandemic,
00:37:58.440
one of the things he said is he would have brought Rachel Notley into cabinet.
00:38:01.720
So we got a clip of that. Let me, you know, and it's a little, it's, it's a quirky answer.
00:38:07.000
It's a quirky idea. I don't even think it makes sense in a parliamentary system.
00:38:10.280
Here's the clip of that. I know exactly what you mean. Take a look.
00:38:13.000
You said, you know, better decisions, make different decisions.
00:38:16.120
Can you give even one example that maybe of a decision that was made that you don't agree
00:38:19.800
with that you would like to see that you would have done differently?
00:38:23.960
Absolutely. Um, first thing about leadership and the most important thing about leadership
00:38:27.320
is that you bring other people with you along for the ride. You make sure that they're
00:38:31.320
empowered with you and be part of it. And one of those people that I think would have been
00:38:35.240
very important on this particular venture that we've had with COVID is Rachel
00:38:39.080
Notley as the leader of the opposition. I think she should have been brought into the
00:38:42.120
cabinet table. She should have brought into this decision-making so that Albertans could have
00:38:46.280
trusted the UCP and could have trusted, you know, Jason Kenney and they don't, but that would have
00:38:51.960
been one way. Yeah. I mean, listen, I like Brian Jean. Um, he is quirky and, um, but I, I,
00:39:01.000
I have to say I would tolerate quirkiness over, I just feel like too many things have been nuked,
00:39:07.080
too many bridges burned. And I, I just can't get over the fact that even as we're talking,
00:39:13.000
Lauren, I happen to know that there's a Christian pastor in, in prison, you know, and, and he's been
00:39:18.040
in, I don't know, is he in his second straight line?
00:39:20.600
He keeps violating court orders. He's got to stop violating court orders. That's the problem.
00:39:25.080
Well, you know, I, I saw Kenny, uh, refer to that and saying, oh, it's just regular rule of
00:39:32.920
law stuff. And he incited violence. Um, I, I watched his, I watched Arthur Pawlowski entire
00:39:39.400
19 minute sermon pep talk speech to the truckers. Never once did he incite violence. In fact, three
00:39:45.800
times he said peaceful, always peaceful. I, I've just never seen a guy be so hounded before.
00:39:52.920
And after a certain while, you know, I mean, he's been arrested or ticketed or accosted by police
00:39:59.880
over 100 times. I just, it doesn't feel like the Jason Kenny I knew who went to China and scolded
00:40:07.000
them on their treatment of pastors who, who scolded, uh, places in the Middle East for their treatment
00:40:13.640
of Christians and, and put aside Arthur Pawlowski, the other, the other Christian pastors, which it's just,
00:40:19.000
it, it just makes me bloody uncomfortable. And why just Alberta? I don't know. I, you know,
00:40:25.240
I, I, I don't want to crack that open here. I mean, I've talked about that a great length with our,
00:40:29.320
with our viewers. Let me ask you the, the, the key question and I want to get back to your column
00:40:33.080
and I really recommend it. It's called Gene's by-election when his springboard into UCP leadership
00:40:37.480
race, Edmonton Sun. Okay. Fast forward to April 9th, conservative polls are slowly ticking up as
00:40:45.480
people renormalize. Kenny maybe is engaging in some last minute show-offy bashing of Trudeau,
00:40:54.360
takes your advice, Lauren. What's going to happen? He needs 50% plus one to hang on. Do you think the
00:41:01.720
UCP is going to kick him out or do you think they're going to say, well, we're mad at you,
00:41:06.200
but we think you can beat Rachel Notley again? Well, if they do say the latter and I, you know,
00:41:13.480
I vacillate right now. I get a sense some days that they're going to kick him out. I get the sense next
00:41:18.440
days that he's going to squeak by. It's really hard to know. Call me in two weeks just before the
00:41:24.440
campaign, I'll give you a better prediction. But say he does get 53%, 55%, 56%. Ralph Klein felt he had
00:41:34.520
to resign in 2004 because he only got 55% approval and he had won four consecutive majority elections.
00:41:43.560
So, you know, Jason has said he'll stick around if he's at 50% plus one. Do you really want to be in
00:41:49.320
charge of a club where half the people want you out? Like, I think it has to be more overwhelming
00:41:55.000
than that. And I don't think it's going to be. Yeah. Well, I note that Kenny's team tried to beat
00:42:00.600
Brian Jean in the nomination in Fort McMurray and they were not successful. Listen, Lauren,
00:42:06.440
this is very interesting. And I find it noteworthy that the first political casualty of the Truckers'
00:42:15.080
rebellion was Aaron O'Toole, a conservative who wasn't very conservative. Wouldn't it be interesting
00:42:22.360
if the next political casualty, not of the Truckers, but of the sort of reaction to the
00:42:27.080
over-lockdownism, was Jason Kenney? It would make more sense. It could be. And you know,
00:42:31.320
the people who are motivated to get rid of him are much more energized than the people who are
00:42:36.680
motivated to keep him. Right. And since you have to drive from all over the province, you know,
00:42:41.640
six hours from Fort McMurray, six hours from Grand Prairie, four hours from Medicine Hat,
00:42:46.360
three and a half from Lethbridge in order to vote. And you may have to stand in line for several hours.
00:42:53.480
That the enthusiasm gap between the anti-Kenny and the pro-Kenny side makes me lean towards the
00:43:00.440
anti-Kenny side as a prediction. But like I said, I can't get a handle on it fully just yet.
00:43:08.200
Yeah. Well, very interesting times. And I know that not everyone who watches the show is Albertan,
00:43:13.240
but I think this is a very interesting battle. I remember in the early days, and I'll close on this,
00:43:18.840
when Kenny was the Ron DeSantis of Canada, if not rhetorically, he was just
00:43:23.240
the least punitive. And I think he sort of relished being that guy. But then I don't know what happened.
00:43:28.680
Something snapped. Something spooked him. Someone threatened him, maybe. And by that,
00:43:32.840
I don't mean like a threat of violence. But maybe Trudeau said, if you let natural immunity be an
00:43:39.240
exemption, we're going to clobber you in this constitutional way, or we're going to...
00:43:44.840
Yeah. When you get under the dome too much, and you can't get out during the pandemic the way you
00:43:50.280
should as a leader. When you get under the dome at the Alberta legislature too much,
00:43:55.880
you start to listen to what the people under the dome are saying. And that's the press gallery,
00:44:02.120
and the opposition, and the bureaucrats, and the experts. And it's very, very hard then to stand up
00:44:09.400
and say, wait, I know you're all saying this, I'm doing something else.
00:44:14.280
Yeah, you're right. Lorne Gunter, senior columnist, Edmonton Sun, great to see you again. Thanks for
00:44:19.160
your time. You bet. All right. There you have it. Stay with us. More ahead.
00:44:35.800
Hey, welcome back. Your viewer mail, Graham French says, I didn't expect so much anti-Russia propaganda
00:44:40.520
on the rebel. I actually really don't think we're engaged in anti-Russia propaganda. In fact,
00:44:46.680
I think we've spoken out against anti-Russian propaganda. I know I have, and others too.
00:44:55.160
But it's not anti-Russian propaganda to point out that Vladimir Putin was a KGB boss,
00:45:01.560
and that he's authoritarian, and that he's imperialistic, and that he's invading another
00:45:06.520
country. Now, I have done several shows on the fact that Ukraine and the West are making mistakes
00:45:13.960
also, bringing NATO right to the border of Russia, doing a lot of things that I think Russia would
00:45:23.640
find crowding. I've compared it to when Cuba put missiles, sorry, when the Soviet Union put missiles
00:45:29.400
in Cuba right on America's doorstep. That caused America to put an embargo around Cuba, and there
00:45:36.520
was even the failed pay of pigs' invasion. So I'm not unsympathetic to certain geographical
00:45:42.600
security issues that Russia has, but that doesn't mean I'm going to whitewash Vladimir Putin and a
00:45:50.520
brutal war that's costing lives. But I think that we have been very propaganda-free. In fact,
00:45:56.360
we've condemned the censorship of Russian media like Russia today.
00:46:02.120
Trobin 2021 says, I really wish a news organization would investigate the government
00:46:07.080
agency of Impact Canada. Why are behavioral scientists advising our government on how to
00:46:13.480
nudge our thinking? This is an agenda that comes from the World Economic Forum. Is Canada now part of
00:46:18.040
the World Economic Forum social engineering program? Well, thank you for bringing this to my attention.
00:46:22.440
I was not familiar with that subject. I'll look into it. But I have to say that of all the countries
00:46:27.160
in the world, Canada is one of the most submissive to the World Economic Forum. And I think you know,
00:46:32.360
because I've said it probably half a dozen times, is that Chrystia Freeland actually serves on the
00:46:37.080
Board of Governors of the World Economic Forum. How is that even an ethical thing to have two masters?
00:46:43.400
I mean, either you're serving Klaus Schwab in the World Economic Forum, or you're serving Canada and
00:46:48.360
the Constitution and your oath of loyalty here. I don't even know how that happens. And the fact that
00:46:53.560
that is so utterly ignored by the mainstream media is shocking to me. That's our show for the day.
00:47:00.280
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rubber World Headquarters, let me leave you with a video
00:47:04.040
of the day from our friend Avi Amini down under. He was in the Supreme Court of the State of Victoria
00:47:10.040
suing for his right to be a reporter. They banned him from the Parliament in a manner we've been banned
00:47:18.120
up here. He was in trial for a couple days. Here's how that went. I'll see you tomorrow. Bye bye.
00:47:23.160
If you remember last year when I attended Daniel Andrews press conference and I was kicked out and
00:47:30.280
banned from the Parliament precinct for seven days. So you're not permitted to return here for seven days.
00:47:36.280
At the request of Daniel Andrews, the Premier's personal assistant. The Premier's PA doesn't want
00:47:42.360
him here at the conferences. So from now, for seven days, rebel news is not allowed anywhere here.
00:47:52.600
Representing us on this important case was probably Australia's most well-known media lawyer,
00:47:59.640
Justin Quill, with counsel Will Horton QC. They say the only thing worse than representing yourself
00:48:07.880
in such cases, especially up against the government, is having a bad lawyer. And that's why
00:48:12.440
at Rebel News we choose the best. And Will Horton QC from the Owen Dixon chambers across the road
00:48:19.960
is the best. And it was clear by the end of the hearing as to what makes him the best. You saw that
00:48:27.240
the government's council were struggling, fighting with every last breath because it really felt at
00:48:34.360
the end that the judge was seeing this case for what it is. In summary, for those that haven't been
00:48:40.440
following the last few days, I know most of the world has been watching what's happening,
00:48:44.280
but for those that haven't, what's happened here? Well, there's two steps to this. The first is they're
00:48:48.920
claiming that decisions made about the parliamentary precinct by parliament can't be considered or
00:48:57.080
reviewed by this court. So if we get over that hurdle, we get into the second step. That is,
00:49:04.280
was the process that was undertaken appropriate? Did they afford you natural justice? So they're the two
00:49:11.160
hurdles. If we lose on the first point, we don't get to the second. If we win on the first,
00:49:15.480
then the judge will look at the decision-making process and whether that was appropriate.
00:49:20.120
So this entire case was really about the idea that Daniel Andrews and the government can pre-select
00:49:28.120
who is going to hold them accountable, especially in an election year like this year,
00:49:33.880
in the parliament of Victoria, in the corridors of power. We say that new media like Rebel News,
00:49:41.400
even though we don't necessarily support many of the government's positions, we believe we have the
00:49:49.640
right to hold them accountable. If anything, we're probably going to hold them more accountable
00:49:55.240
than his friends, those that he controls, the ones he allows in parliament. After two long days,
00:50:03.160
I believe we've had a pretty fair trial. The judge has reserved his decision.
00:50:07.960
And well, once we get that answer, once he comes back with his ruling, you'll be the first to know.
00:50:15.000
I feel pretty good about it. This is a really smart judge. He was really engaged. He followed
00:50:20.440
everything. And I, you know, it'd be really interesting to see whether he agrees with our
00:50:24.600
arguments. I hope he does. Of course, I think it was interesting. We still don't know after two
00:50:28.520
days of hearing and a whole lot of documents back and forth, we still don't know who the decision
00:50:33.960
maker was because the Speaker, who is the only person we say can make this decision,
00:50:40.520
did not give any evidence, didn't put on an affidavit. And we're told he didn't do that in
00:50:45.560
part because that he didn't want to be a subject to cross-examination. So we say that allows the judge
00:50:52.040
to draw an inference against the other party. If his honour does that, that puts us in a better position.
00:50:57.240
But anyway, there are some other, you know, really interesting parts of this case,
00:51:03.720
like this question of exclusive cognizant. Can this court consider the decision of Parliament? So,
00:51:10.360
look, it's going to be interesting. I hope we've won. I feel pretty good about it.
00:51:14.200
And I think, you know, it'll be the right decision if we have.