EZRA LEVANT ｜ Is World War III inevitable after the Munich Security Conference？
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Summary
A double whammy of a show today: heavy talk about the war in Ukraine, and a heavy interview with Bruce Pardy, the Queens University law professor, about the Rolo Trucker Commission inquiry. I ve got some interesting videos and photos from the Munich Security Conference.
Transcript
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Hello, my friends. A double whammy of a show today. Some heavy talk about the war in Ukraine and then a heavy interview with Bruce Pardy, the Queens University law professor, about that Justice Rolo Trucker Commission inquiry.
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I hope you'll join us for both of those, especially the Russia-Ukraine one. I've got some interesting videos and photos I want to show you, so I'd like you to get the video version of this podcast.
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Please go to rebelnewsplus.com. Click subscribe. It's only eight bucks a month. You get my daily show in full glorious video.
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Tonight, Ukraine's president says we're headed to World War III. Is he right? Are we doing anything about it?
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It's February 21st, and this is The Ezra Levant Show.
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I really had never heard of it before. It's a security conference, a military conference. There's one in Halifax, Canada.
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Every year, there's one in Herzliya, Israel. And there was a big one this past week in Munich called the Munich Security Conference.
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And it just started popping up on my social media because they're really advertising this military get-together.
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Here's a video produced in conjunction with the conference promoting their war meeting. Take a look.
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Usually, there are demonstrations against weapons during the MSC.
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But this year, for the first time, there's a demonstration of pro-weapons.
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Waffen für die Ukraine! Stop, denn jeder zieht!
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According to Infratest DIMAP, a German research institute, 15% of the Germans are calling for war weapons for Ukraine.
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Without weapons, we can't win. And unfortunately, not all people understand that.
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But if we don't get weapons, we'll just die like a people.
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We need all the weapons that our allies can provide us with.
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We not ask people of Germany fight for us, but we need the tools.
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35% think the German support of Ukraine with weapons goes too far.
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The anti-Ziko demo met for the first time 2002 to protest against war and weapons.
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From my perspective, the weapons are not a solution.
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The weapons reduce the problems, bring gigantic destroyings.
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I understand from the standpoint that they are on our support.
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But a war on the one side will be delivered more weapons and the other side will be delivered more on the other.
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Russia's war changed a lot. Also, the demonstrations around the MSC.
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Did you get that? Even the protesters this year are pro-war.
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Normally, the protesters at these war meetings are anti-war, but they're pro-war, I guess.
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And what's so exciting about this gathering of, well, they're not really soldiers, are they?
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They're more politicians and business people than actual soldiers.
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But they're promoting the fact that it's women's time to shine when it comes to war.
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If you just start typing in Munich Security Conference into your social media, you'll get endless pictures of how the boss girls are totally in charge now that we're on the brink of World War Three.
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And, of course, Sanna Marin is the new Prime Minister of Finland.
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Got in trouble, but just a little bit of trouble for going out dancing and having fun and doing girl stuff, you know.
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Now, I'm not sure who is sponsoring what, but the more I read about it and looked at all the photos and who was there and who was sponsoring it, it felt like it was kind of a military industrial complex version of the World Economic Forum.
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World Economic Forum, as you can see, is about money.
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But the Munich Security Conference is about war and Munich was where all the action was at this year.
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In fact, both father and son George Soros and his son Alex Soros were there.
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When the GOAT, the greatest of all time, speaks, things happen.
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Annual Davos speech moves from Davos to Munich this year as we kick off the Munich Security Conference.
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Oh, I didn't know you could just sort of buy your way into those things.
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I thought maybe you had to be a defense minister.
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Honored to kick off our annual Open Society Dinner at the Munich Security Conference.
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It's war in Ukraine one year on, public opinion in the West beyond.
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Thanks to Speaker Pelosi and the heads of state, government and policymakers that attended.
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So he's basically collecting politicians, not just Democrats, though, Republicans, too.
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You may remember her late husband, John McCain.
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I mean, there's money made made on the war side, selling equipment to destroy a country.
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And then there's selling the reconstruction of that country.
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He's been doing this sort of thing since as a teenager.
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He helped round up Jews for Hitler in his native Hungary.
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Do you remember this interview with Steve Croft of 60 Minutes?
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Hungarian Jew who escaped the Holocaust by posing as a Christian.
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And you watched lots of people get shipped off to the death camps.
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And I would say that that's when my character was made.
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I mean, it was a very personal experience of evil.
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My understanding is that you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson.
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Went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews.
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I mean, that sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years.
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Maybe as a child you don't see the connection, but it created no problem at all.
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For example, that I'm Jewish and here I am watching these people go, I could just as easily be there.
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Well, of course, I could be on the other side or I could be the one from whom the thing is being taken away.
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But there was no sense that I shouldn't be there because that was...
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Well, actually, in a funny way, it's just like in markets, that if I weren't there, of course I wasn't doing it, but somebody else would be taking it away anyhow.
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Whether I was there or not, I was only a spectator, the property was being taken away.
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So, I had no role in taking away that property.
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Here's some news about all the ammunition that is needed.
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Here's Jan Stoltenberg of NATO talking about how they're actually using ammunition faster than factories can make it.
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A race to increase the capacity of the defense industrial base.
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A year to 18 months is often what you're looking at.
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Bush says this is the greatest ramp up in military production, possibly going back to the Korean War.
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Early on, we realized we had to really put our foot all the way to the floor.
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The U.S. isn't at war with Russia, but that matters little to weapons manufacturers whose products are part of the fight.
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Our defense industrial base is still largely geared towards a peacetime environment
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and not towards a wartime or at least a quasi wartime environment that we're now in.
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What I said was that the current rate of ammunition consumption is higher, bigger than the current rate of production.
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But since we have been aware of that for some time, we have started to do something.
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We're not just sitting there idle and watching this happening.
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So that's the reason why we over several months have worked hard at NATO and also within the Rammstein format to ramp up production.
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That's the reason why we launched this out-of-circle extraordinary review of our stockpiles.
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Wow, you've got the attention of George Soros. He's an investor.
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He can see supply and demand. Everyone is so psyched up.
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And did you know that this Munich Security Conference has an official page called Partners and Sponsors?
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And if you look through it, as I have, you'll see there's plenty of weapons manufacturers, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, other arms manufacturers.
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You can see George Soros' open societies there. Bill Gates is there.
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Google, Goldman Sachs, of course. McKinsey, of course. The Rockefeller Brothers.
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Listen, folks, there is money to be made in war.
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Of course, the star of the whole thing. Well, I'm not sure about the star.
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But the mascot, at least, is Joe Biden, who arrived on time coordinating things, perhaps, in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine.
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Now, take a look at this video here. Take a look.
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now there were sirens there an air raid siren the first in days but there was no air raid i
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wonder i just wonder if that was just a little bit of theater for joe biden but joe biden wasn't
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going to be the only one to get the spotlight rishi sunak the new prime minister of the uk even
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though he's not faced an election yet he was in munich and he's so excited uh here's the headline
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of this story munich conference rishi sunak says uk to provide ukraine with long-range weapons
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calls for new nato charge um why would you need a long-range weapon to defend in ukraine ukraine is a
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fair-sized country i call it middle size but a long-range weapon does that mean you're you're
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going to attack russia itself you know russia's gun nuclear weapons right and is this about defending
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ukraine's territorial integrity or is this about it's about going to war with russia
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here's the russian foreign ministry that put out a tweet saying quoting president putin vladimir putin
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who gave a speech uh in fact he's been giving a series of speeches this week putin said we know
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that the west has been involved in the kiev regime's attempts to strike at our strategic air
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bases the drones used for these purposes were fitted with the assistance of western specialists
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and now they want to inspect our defense facilities it's another way of saying that russia is suspending
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its participation in arms treaties uh but look at this story in the new york post quoting vladimir
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zelensky talking to a german paper let me read the headline china backing russia in ukraine would
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mean world war three zelensky let me quote uh zelensky himself this is in english if china allies
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with russia there will be a world war there will be a world war and i do think that china is aware of
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that he said all right well uh here's china's reaction it is the u.s not china that has been pouring
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weapons into the battlefield in ukraine the u.s is in no position to tell china what to do
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china will never accept u.s finger pointing or coercion on china-russia relations um what's
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interesting about that chinese reaction is it was addressed to the united states not to vladimir
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zelensky because i think the chinese have come to the analysis that zelensky is not the decider here
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zelensky is the mascot he's the actor he literally was an actor and a comedian before
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becoming president he's not the decider the decider is the money man who's poured in more than a hundred
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billion dollars into ukraine who's overseeing that money who's managing that money whoever
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is the answer to that question is the answer to who's making the decisions for ukraine and i don't
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think it's vladimir zelensky i think it may be rishi sunak and joe biden and what has been called the
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military industrial complex it may be jan stoltenberg i think that jan stoltenberg of nato and rishi sunak
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and joe biden have more say over what happens in ukraine than zelensky does uh but look at this
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breaking china's president xi jinping plans to visit moscow for a summit with russian president
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vladimir putin in the spring seeking a more active role in shaping the outcome of the ukraine war
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that was after zelensky's comment you know one of the most important things that happened during
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the cold war was richard nixon breaking china away from the soviet union and trying to orient it towards
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the west i don't know if you know that history richard nixon was known famously as an anti-communist
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he was very hard line on the thing and yet he sent henry kissinger secretly to do shuttle diplomacy
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back and forth to china to convince china to break with the soviet union and aim himself aim sorry not
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himself aim that country towards the west because nixon knew that if china and the soviet union got
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together that would be an enormous military and economic force i think that joe biden is sending
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those mighty countries back together financially industrially in terms of high tech russia has been
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selling its energy to china for a long time but now russia is importing from china automobiles
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high-tech things like phones and computers there is more chinese money on in russian markets than ever
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before to fill the void left by the west sanctions and as you know we sent our own reporter to russia a
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few months ago doesn't feel like the western sanctions are having a pinch in russia in part
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because russia is so strong because of his energy wealth but also in part because there are other
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forces in the world willing to fill that void one question i have for you
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is what's the end game here what's the plan what's the exit strategy well in in most wars isn't the exit
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strategy to defeat the enemy when the west got involved when the allies got involved in the second
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world war it wasn't to have a stalemate it was a total unconditional victory over the axes total surrender
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nothing given to them no quarter given to them in fact to this day there are american military bases
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in japan italy and germany the three axis powers to this day america has a military base in all three
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of those countries total surrender that's normally the plan in a war in other cases it's just to reduce
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a threat what is the end game with ukraine and russia if you listen to vladimir zelensky he talks
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constantly about retaking crimea which has been annexed by russia years ago actually and there's even
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talk about bringing the war to the russian main country as you saw there china sorry russia was
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referring to drone attacks within russia and there's been the attacks on that key bridge in crimea and of
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course the underwater attack on the nordstrom pipeline what is the end game what's the plan
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and is the plan of total victory even possible against russia which has a large conventional army
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but more to the point has more nuclear weapons than any other country in the world and even if we
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think that perhaps they're rusted or not working or that the operators are drunk or that even
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90 percent of russian nuclear weapons don't work or would fail in some way well that's still
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dozens of nuclear weapons that could god forbid explode in the west what is the plan
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that rishi sunak has for his long-range weapons what is the plan that zelensky or whoever is backing
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has for world war three and what will they do if china and russia simply don't follow along look at
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the jubilation at the munich security council look at the advertisers the the sponsors look at the
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young women posing for the boss girl photos they're very excited about this war a war that will have
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women and children as the victims but as men being the cannon fodder i don't know what the answer is i'm
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not a peacenik i'm not pro-russian i'm not a leftist i'm certainly not a communist but what do you do when
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every person in the west apparently is hungry for war either to make money or to act out some cold war
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fantasy that never came true what do you do when the west is running to war who would speak against
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it i saw this video online this weekend it's from a socialist named claire daly a member of the european
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parliament from ireland she's a socialist i don't know if i have anything in common with her i don't
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know if i trust her i don't know much about her but i listened to a couple of minutes of this speech
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and i thought i can't disagree take a listen one year on as the war in ukraine continues when voices
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everywhere should be calling for a ceasefire and peace this resolution is driving us in the opposite
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direction so i proudly voted against it it peddles the latest slide that this is not now about
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defending ukraine it's about ukraine must win what does that even mean last april there was a deal on
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the table which would have seen russia withdraw in return for ukrainian non-nato membership but
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ukraine's western friends killer clown boris johnson and nato rocked into town and told them to keep
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fighting the result six cities devastated four provinces illegally annexed 108 billion euros in
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aid which the people of ukraine are going to have to pay back over decades global food and energy crisis
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is this winning ordinary people don't win in wars they're cannon fodder in the games of others and
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ye can shout glory in here all you like but there's no glory in the grave and only graves come
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out of this folly it's time for people and the silent majority all over europe to take to the
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streets this weekend and demand peace and an end to the war yeah the problem with socialists like her
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is they don't have sponsors or advertisers willing to fly them to the munich security conference now do
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they stay with us for more hey let me read to you a uh a newspaper article actually it's from the
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mcdonald laurier institute and uh you tell me was this written last week or last year writing
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only in a country with fragile hysterical leadership could the trucker convoy
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be regarded as an emergency justifying the infringement of liberties of civil liberties
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and let me read you just a little bit more to help you with your guessing game
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the headline itself is actually there was no emergency but don't expect the commission to
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throw the government under the trucks bruce party for inside policy well i'll take you out of
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your suspense that was written december 6th of 2022 but it nailed it i'm afraid to say bruce party called
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it and of course last week the government's uh commission of inquiry judicial commission inquiry
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whitewashed the government's handling of the whole affair and actually said that bringing in martial law
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was justified after careful reflection i have concluded that the very high threshold required for
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the invocation of the act was met in particular for reasons that i discuss in detail in the report
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i've concluded that when the decision was made to invoke the act on february 14th 2022 cabinet had
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reasonable grounds to believe that there existed a national emergency arising from threats to the security of
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canada that necessitated the taking of special temporary measures
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i do not come to this conclusion easily as i do not consider the factual basis for it to be overwhelming
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reasonable and informed people could reach a different conclusion than the one i've arrived at
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joining us now to talk about this and his prophetic column in the mcdonald laurier institute is
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bruce party senior fellow at the mcdonald laurier institute who is also the executive director of
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rights probe and a professor of law at queen's university bruce um i guess if you're pessimistic
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and imagine the worst will come you're never disappointed your your feelings are never hurt
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because you already accounted for the worst outcome i myself despite everything i'm a foolish optimist
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and i had thought that this judge would say no it was just there just was not enough of a factual basis
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for a national emergency that could only be resolved through the emergencies act because if i'm not mistaken
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that's the two-fold test required to invoke the emergencies act is it a grave national crisis
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on par with a revolution or a war and not or and can it only be resolved by invoking the emergencies act
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as opposed to existing laws and i thought this judge seems fair enough the process seems fair enough
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there's no way they will meet that high hurdle and yet here we are
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right if you were going just by what you heard at the inquiry the evidence that the witnesses gave
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that would be an entirely legitimate conclusion but this is not a court it was never a court it's supposed
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to look like one but it's not and its job is not the job of a court its job is ritual if you like
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the job is to show to go through a process that makes it look as though there is accountability
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but that accountability is not delivered by the result it's delivered by the process
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so its purpose is served by going through all the trouble of hearing witnesses and having hearings
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and and so on because it gives the appearance of accountability but we have we've had lots of
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inquiries and commissions in this country's history and and some of them lead to something but many of
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them do not and that's because they're not that kind of a process this commission like like others
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has the job of simply putting together a report it's not a binding report it can't find liability
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the report may or may not be put on the shelf and ignored uh but but it is a mistake and was a mistake
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from the beginning to think that this was going to be a court-like process there are applications
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outstanding challenging the invocation of the act and those applications hopefully will be heard
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in an actual courtroom and those courts will undergo judicial review of the decision to invoke the act
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and hopefully they will do so in a rigorous way comparing the facts to the threshold in the act
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and we'll and we'll find out legally whether or not the threshold was met but but that was first and
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foremost not the mandate of the commission both both in in black and white but also in in reality
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well i was fooled and maybe it was my hope maybe it was my romantic belief that part of our system
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isn't broken that not every in fact there were some there were some police chiefs who testified not all
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of them but most of them were and you even had the attorneys general of other provinces testifying
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before this commission saying look we did not need this martial law we did not ask for it
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um many of the blockades were resolved before it was invoked for example at the coots border crossing
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or at the ambassador bridge between windsor and detroit and again time after time cop after cop said
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we didn't need it sure it gave us extra tools but we were fine handling this on our own with some tow trucks
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and you know i mean they cleared the ambassador bridge without incident in two days i um
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um i'm just astonished and and i'm a little heartbroken and here's what i think
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here's what i'm most worried about bruce is that people like me who actually who are laboring to still
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believe in the system will become disenchanted i'm i still believe in the system uh i because i don't know
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what i would do if i didn't believe in the system i don't know how i would handle that i i still believe
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in non-violent solutions to problems i still believe that our system uh may get it wrong at
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first but eventually gets it right i believe that the checks and balances you know the pendulum will
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swing back i believe those things but it gets harder to believe those things this felt like an
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inside job felt like a stitch up well well yes i mean i know it feels that way and and you may have an
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argument there but but what i'm suggesting is that that's not really what it was designed for in the
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first place so i'm i'm for example i'm not accusing this judge of of doing something he didn't believe
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was true now you could disagree with that and i do i completely disagree with the conclusion
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but that's not because necessarily the judge was biased in the way that we might say that
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what i'm saying is this process as imagined in the act itself and as put in place by the government
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was not one that would logically lead to the kind of outcome that a lot of people were hoping for and
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as you say if you had taken the trouble to to watch the testimony over this over those weeks
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there were some really interesting moments and some very good testimony including by some of the the
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police officers and officials that that appeared i was i was quite impressed with some of them and they
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made the point that you refer to and in particular they were some of them were very specific about the
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fact that they in their opinion there was not the kind of violence that the government alleged that
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there was that justified the implication of the act there was one opp officer in particular who said
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that that that in the context of the ottawa uh convoy he said that that he found the lack of violence
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shocking you know in that kind of situation he would have expected violence but but there
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wasn't any and so in in that respect and in the testimony of so many others uh the justification
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based upon the use or threats of serious violence which is one of the causes that the government itself
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cites in his in its invocation of the act for my money the the evidence was simply not there there were
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lots of references to violence but and one of the best i think was um the acting out of a police chief
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steve bell who testified of violence experienced by the local community during the convoy
00:30:58.100
but brenda miller who was acting for the for the for the convoy cross-examined him and asked him well what
00:31:03.620
he meant what do you mean what do you mean by the violence felt by the local community and and
00:31:09.060
and uh the interim police chief said well i don't mean actual violence i don't mean violence as
00:31:13.780
defined in the criminal code i mean the violence that people felt from the culmination of actions
00:31:21.380
that the occupiers engaged in like honking horns
00:31:24.420
let's take a listen to that outrageous clip take a look
00:31:30.260
so is it fair to say that when you use the phrase violence you're not actually describing any
00:31:34.180
form of physical assaults are you i'm i'm well physical assaults do contribute to what i'm
00:31:40.500
describing i was specifically describing the violence that our community felt as a result of
00:31:46.420
the culmination of actions that the occupiers engaged in so the violence that they felt not actual violence
00:31:53.940
is that what you're saying that is correct not not the criminal code definition of violence but the
00:31:58.660
violence that they felt by having an incessant horns blared right and not having trucks run 24 7 a day
00:32:05.860
right by having people intimidate them and follow them and by having people rip masks off their head
00:32:11.700
by feeling sheltered in their homes well i i thank you i understand what you mean but
00:32:17.300
you're not talking about violence under section two of the cesus act are you no i'm not thanks
00:32:22.980
you know that's not a real cop that's a political activist wearing a badge
00:32:27.140
there was one government official that was sacked during this whole affair and that was
00:32:34.260
chief bell's predecessor chief slowly who if i'm not mistaken was the first black police chief in
00:32:40.100
ottawa which generally is regarded as a progressive milestone like president obama being the first
00:32:46.020
black president was something that a lot of people took a lot of pride and joy in
00:32:49.780
the city of ottawa celebrated when they had that milestone which they thought was a sign of
00:32:54.980
progress and inclusion chief slowly was not willing to take the hard line against hot tubs and bouncy
00:33:06.020
castles and horn honking that chief bell was uh it reminds me a little bit of jody wilson rabel the
00:33:12.260
first indigenous justice minister who refused to bend the knee to justin trudeau so he fired her
00:33:16.980
and replaced her with david lamente who would literally do anything chief slowly was fired because
00:33:24.100
he wouldn't do the in fact we saw testimony that parliament was interfering with this city police
00:33:29.540
chief and he was sacked and they put in chief bell who would literally do or say anything the only guy who
00:33:35.620
was fired for this whole thing was the only honest cop around i find that heartbreaking
00:33:44.820
yes well but there's well there's so much there was so much testimony
00:33:48.340
about what was going on behind the scenes it was it was very interesting uh but it
00:33:54.660
it gave the impression of a comedy of errors and and failure to coordinate and failure to
00:34:00.580
administrate and what you ended up with were a lot of big trucks parked in downtown ottawa that weren't
00:34:06.820
going anywhere and through the whole thing one one one of the inescapable facts basically was this
00:34:18.820
there was an illegal act going on that act was parking the trucks were illegally parked
00:34:27.140
and yet nobody saw fit to do anything about it or perhaps they weren't able but that was the pretty
00:34:35.780
much the extent of the illegality at one point a uh a private group of citizens brought an injunction to
00:34:43.060
the court to stop the trucks from honking and the court issued an injunction against the honking and the
00:34:50.020
truck stopped so at the time the emergency act was invoked the only illegal act that was actually
00:34:57.060
happening was illegal parking and if you put it that way you can see how absurd this is that we would
00:35:04.100
invoke a national emergencies act because somebody has illegally parked that was the bottom line and
00:35:10.100
the rest of it is simply sort of making stuff up about what might have happened if you know they didn't
00:35:17.060
take action that they should have been able to take without invoking the act in a sense one of the messages
00:35:23.460
that rouleau delivers maybe somewhat between the lines in his report is this emergency situation even if you want
00:35:31.540
to if you want to call it that occurred because of the failure of all these agencies together to act and
00:35:40.980
coordinate and to administer properly to do their job in other words if there was an emergency it was created by the
00:35:47.460
incompetence of those bodies and lo and behold if you create a situation of an emergency i'm not
00:35:55.940
i'm not accepting that it was one but if you accept that it was then that will serve now as a justification
00:36:02.500
for invoking this act trudeau's own incompetence his own inability to to govern i mean he chooses his
00:36:09.460
cabinet so obviously based on uh you know tv metrics who's you know women minorities uh he's about
00:36:19.380
everything other than substance and experience um i i i think that so much of the cabinet is actually
00:36:27.060
controlled by the pmo that when in this case you had to have a just a defense minister doing defense
00:36:33.380
things and a uh public safety minister doing public safety things they they you know in the case of
00:36:39.380
marco mendocino they i remember there was testimony that his own staff wasn't even briefing him on
00:36:46.420
because they they knew he wasn't actually the de facto public safety minister they they were there
00:36:52.180
were serious plans and and briefings being circulated and they knew why bother showing it to the cabinet
00:36:58.260
minister he's just a joke and but i i don't know i find it so frustrating and but what you're saying is
00:37:06.740
exactly right their own incompetence their own inability to do with a park deal with a parking crisis
00:37:11.060
turned it into a civil liberties bonfire but there was one moment there was one fascinating moment for
00:37:16.180
me in february right around the time that the act was being invoked just just just afterwards when mendocino
00:37:22.820
was doing a a scrum i believe or a press conference and he was asked by a reporter what what the reason
00:37:30.260
was they were invoking the act and you know did you know i think i believe the reporter said you know did
00:37:36.180
you did you do you have intelligence reports that there are weapons in the truck and mendocino said well
00:37:42.420
no no it's not that he said the cause is rhetoric of an ideological position
00:37:53.460
now i think in that moment he's probably telling the truth yeah that was actually the real cause of
00:38:01.140
the emergency and it was an emergency a political emergency for the government because what you had
00:38:07.460
was like coming together of people of all different kinds who were together in their resolve that government
00:38:14.020
policy was wrong and that represented an ideological or political emergency for the government now of course
00:38:21.780
that is not the kind of thing that the emergencies act is designed to respond to so what they had to
00:38:27.300
do instead is try and fit you know the the the the round peg into the square hole but just imagine the
00:38:34.660
implications um you've got an emergency act being invoked essentially on the basis of what people have
00:38:43.700
said in other words on the basis of their speech there's no violence there's no threat of violence
00:38:49.140
everything is fine except for the parking but it is the rhetoric the free speech of people
00:38:55.140
is essentially mendocino is suggesting the cause that constitutes the emergency you know there was
00:39:02.420
also testimony that of course trudeau was embarrassed abroad the diplomats were remarking on how this was
00:39:09.780
being covered around the world and we know that this was one of the first times that canada
00:39:13.860
had the riveted attention of the world um sure right right and christian friedman uh testified about
00:39:23.220
receiving you know a note from her american counterpart at one point worrying that canada
00:39:27.620
sort of looked like a banana republic there was no question the government was embarrassed no question
00:39:33.380
but again the the trick was in in translating that embarrassment into what would constitute a national
00:39:41.220
emergency under the act and and of course based upon the evidence that i heard and i didn't hear
00:39:45.460
every single minute of the testimony during those weeks but i heard a lot of it
00:39:49.300
and i heard nothing that would in my mind have justified invoking the act yeah
00:40:01.140
i meet a lot of people uh in person and i meet even more people through emails and online social media
00:40:06.420
and i meet a lot of people who are acting in good faith who want to do the right thing want to be
00:40:13.060
good citizens and do what's right that they believe their whole life was right but they no longer
00:40:19.780
see a country that makes sense to them and so i see the growth of alternative
00:40:26.420
world views alternative explanations for things i see people reaching out for obscure
00:40:33.700
legal theories yes like yes yes that they don't actually have a bait like there's just even this
00:40:38.660
there's this lady i've forgotten her name she's a filipino-canadian lady um who calls herself uh the
00:40:44.180
queen i've just forgotten her name right now who's saying i know i i i've heard of this yeah i'm the true
00:40:50.260
queen of canada i have the legal authority and and like there's all sorts of uh i would call them bizarre
00:40:57.860
um alternative conspiratorial i i don't want to use that word a lot because that's a word that
00:41:04.260
liberals used to denounce anything that that right that they don't like but i see yeah i see good
00:41:11.460
people giving up on the courts giving up on the police giving up on political parties giving up on
00:41:16.980
every single establishment system that has proven them wrong giving up on doctors who they once trusted
00:41:22.660
above all else giving up on the courts who they thought well at least they've got my back when it
00:41:26.820
comes to civil liberties i i see the the worst that you're right this judge judge rollo it was uh
00:41:34.340
just sort of like at the airport you have security theater and the masks were public health theater
00:41:40.660
it was for sure not for and this judge was accountability theater we'll go through the
00:41:46.180
process you'll expiate your emotions everyone will have their say and testify and we'll have a lot of
00:41:52.100
attention but at the end of the day it's a foregone conclusion and it's not really as you say it's not
00:41:56.580
really a court case but the problem is i i think that people were hoping that there would be some
00:42:05.780
reaction some correction and and they're going to say well what is the point and and who can be trusted
00:42:12.180
and what can be trusted and some people will just retreat into non-political lives some people will
00:42:16.740
become sort of sullen i think but others will actively try and find an alternative explanation
00:42:22.820
for this mad world we're in and and by the way this madness of the invoking martial law
00:42:29.620
comes at the same time we've had other madnesses in this country lockdowns curfews in quebec
00:42:35.060
what's going on with world war iii is that coming what's going on with the world economic forum what's
00:42:40.420
going on with with the economy i mean all of a sudden you have this confluence of chaos and the things
00:42:46.980
we could rely on we can't anymore that's the worst part about this uh judge rulo to me is that he just
00:42:54.660
helped bring the administration of justice into disrepute and he probably he didn't convince any
00:42:59.860
trucker that the martial law was fine he didn't convince a single skeptic that what trudeau did was
00:43:05.860
right what he did is he confirmed for them the belief that the entire establishment is rotten that's my view
00:43:11.140
right right right well this is both the downside and the silver lining right so the downside of all
00:43:17.940
of this all this coping stuff including the the process afterwards the the the the downside is that
00:43:26.340
that people's faith in our institutions will crumble because of what they perceive as you described
00:43:33.140
that's also the silver lining because they will be able to see in a way they've never seen before
00:43:40.980
how it actually works because how things are working now they may seem more extreme and more
00:43:48.820
strange and more inexplicable than they ever have and there's certainly truth to that but on the other
00:43:54.820
hand we've been going down this road a long time and people just haven't been paying attention it's
00:44:01.060
simply that they haven't seen what's going on it's not that that wasn't happening it's that they haven't
00:44:05.220
seen it and so we we're now in a period i think especially with respect to covid where where the
00:44:11.300
authorities have reached too far and it's apparent that they've reached too far and people can see it
00:44:17.380
now and that that is a good thing well i hope you're right because i tell you justin trudeau certainly
00:44:24.900
looks like a man who feels vindicated let me play you a clip when he was asked if he regretted talking
00:44:30.100
about fringe minority for about five seconds it looks like he's going to say yes i regret it but
00:44:35.700
then watch this bruce he then immediately rephrases it to say it again to say there's a group there's
00:44:41.620
a small group of people who and and his accusation is quite telling right he says they're spreading
00:44:48.500
misinformation and disinformation again ideas rhetoric peaceful words so so his dress justification is not
00:44:55.300
violent acts but their ideas are wrong right but then but then he says that they're wrong deliberately
00:45:02.980
now i think justin trudeau is wrong most of the time but i don't think he's deliberately wrong i
00:45:07.300
think he's got a i think once in a while he lies and does something deceptive but most of the time it's
00:45:11.380
just an ideology or a worldview that i think is wrong but i'm not going to stand here and say most of the
00:45:16.340
time justin trudeau is wrong and knows it and lies on i'm just not going to say that because i don't
00:45:20.500
believe that i think he's he does lie sometimes most politicians do but trudeau when asked if he
00:45:27.700
is sorry obviously doesn't say i'm sorry or i apologize rephrases the insult a second time
00:45:35.060
and actually accuses his opponents of knowingly and willfully lying to kill people here watch this clip
00:45:44.180
following today's report do you have any regrets about calling ottawa protesters a fringe minority
00:45:58.020
i you know as i look back on that and and you know as i've reflected on it over over the past
00:46:04.340
months not just um freshly from this commissioner's report i i wish i had phrased it differently
00:46:12.100
the fact is there is a very small number of people in this country who deliberately spread misinformation
00:46:23.540
and disinformation that led to canadians deaths that led to excessive hardship in people who believed them
00:46:33.780
i um continue to be very very firm against those individuals but that is a small subset of people who
00:46:46.980
who were uh just hurting and worried and wanting to be heard and as much as i tried to emphasize
00:46:57.620
throughout the time that of course we're always going to stand up for freedom of speech and freedom to
00:47:03.220
protest peacefully um i wish i hadn't said something that was able to be spread larger
00:47:11.700
um if i had chosen my words a bit careful have been more specific i think things might have been a bit
00:47:16.420
easier yeah look at how slippery he is no he would he has never apologized the only apologies justin trudeau
00:47:23.380
has made in eight years as prime minister is to apologize for what other people have done to apologize for
00:47:30.340
the genocide committed by other people to apologize for things stephen harper did to apologize when when he
00:47:36.500
himself commits a mistake it's a learning opportunity for you but certainly not an apology moment for him
00:47:42.820
he's he's quite something i i think there's a skill there i i might diagnose it as a sociopathy but
00:47:49.700
there it is sure well no listen justin trudeau is very good at what he does he he was one of the best
00:47:58.260
witnesses at the commission he's very very smooth very practiced that whatever it is he's peddling he's
00:48:05.300
peddling it well but look there there's a there is a real problem as people probably are aware with
00:48:12.500
this idea of misinformation and unfortunately this is this is a term i believe that shows up in the in
00:48:18.980
the report as well which is even more concerning but but we are also sort of playing this game too look
00:48:26.500
here's the idea as far as i'm concerned in a free country you're not entitled to the truth
00:48:35.860
the truth is your business to work out the the fact that somebody says something that's not true
00:48:42.180
is is is going to happen if they have free speech that's the way free speech works so when we accuse
00:48:48.900
other people or when they accuse us of disinformation that's not saying anything you're allowed to say
00:48:56.180
things that are not true in a free country politicians lie all the time and you know nobody likes it i don't
00:49:02.980
like it but i wouldn't expect otherwise if you're a citizen in a free country your job is to hear
00:49:10.660
what everybody's saying to assume that they are maybe not telling you the truth
00:49:17.220
and then to work out the truth for yourself you cannot blame people whoever it happens to be
00:49:22.580
for saying something that might not be true that's not the obligation you're allowed to say
00:49:27.140
what you think not because they're true but because that's what you think and so i i i i think we i would
00:49:33.940
like to shift the framework of this truth-telling idea and and i i would like that these two words
00:49:43.540
misinformation and disinformation to be expelled from our public discourse because they they don't
00:49:50.500
make sense if we are pretending to live in a free country well i think you're going to see those words
00:49:55.860
those are the words of the year for 2023 but no doubt c11 and c18 and other proposed bills the
00:50:03.540
the old c36 the un the online harms act which hasn't even been introduced yet those are four
00:50:10.020
pieces of legislation that trudeau has lined up and that's exactly what i mean that's that this is
00:50:15.860
this is this is the path we're on we are on the path of of trying to enforce a government you know
00:50:22.340
the government is trying to enforce the idea that your obligation is to tell the truth
00:50:28.100
according to their definition of course but even that first notion that you are obliged to be truthful
00:50:35.300
is incorrect if we are living in a free country yeah interesting bruce it's great to catch up with
00:50:41.700
you as always we've been talking to professor bruce party he's the executive director of rights probe
00:50:46.260
of course he's a senior fellow with the mcdonald laurier institute where he wrote his
00:50:50.820
prophetic piece in december and he's a professor of law queen's university great to see you again
00:50:56.100
thanks ezra all right there you have it stay with us more ahead
00:51:07.700
hey welcome back well i don't mean to be depressing but i think both of our main topics today were
00:51:11.860
depressing um listen i think military equipment is cool and neat i mean the the teenage boy within me
00:51:18.900
still finds it amazing to look at fighter jets scorching through the sky and to look at the
00:51:24.820
technology and sheer explosive power of weaponry i think for all time since the time we were hunters
00:51:32.580
people have found weapons interesting men and boys used to and as you can see from the munich security
00:51:38.020
conference apparently a lot of girls think it's pretty cool now too that said what are we doing
00:51:44.020
escalating having a brinksmanship game with vladimir putin and now xi jinping xi jinping who is going to
00:51:50.660
moscow to formalize an alliance undoing one of the greatest successes of the cold war whatever else you
00:51:56.340
think about it breaking china away from russia was probably one of the reasons the cold war ended when
00:52:02.740
it did rather than lingering on for decades more now other things came about that including china's
00:52:08.500
economic prowess but what are we doing pushing those two enormous powers back together and what
00:52:14.340
are we doing talking about long-range weapons to attack russia in world war three what are we doing
00:52:20.740
shouldn't there at least be a parallel track for diplomacy and is it too much to ask what is the
00:52:27.620
end of this story look like do you really think russia is going to be defeated without using its nukes or
00:52:35.140
chinese conventional weapons i literally do not know who is in charge but maybe the answer was that
00:52:42.660
list of sponsors and advertisers this is the worst of times don't get me started about how depressing
00:52:49.700
our friend bruce party was i'm sure he's right on everything which is what makes me so sad about it
00:52:54.500
but listen we can't run away from these facts we keep on fighting we'll do our best we'll shine a light
00:53:00.100
of scrutiny on these issues and that's why the rebel is here to tell the other side of the story
00:53:06.020
until tomorrow on behalf of all of us here to you at home good night and keep fighting for freedom