Two weeks have gone by in a blink of an eye, and there's still no end in sight to the Alberta's "greenhouse gas lockdown. It's a good thing we're not in the midst of a climate crisis, because it could have been much worse.
00:00:50.940I think one of the things we all understand is just how frustrated everyone is.
00:00:55.940We're all frustrated. We're all sick and tired of restrictions, of mandates, of having to make sacrifices, of not being able to do the things we love.
00:01:06.560It's been two years, and it's really, really tiring for all of us.
00:01:12.040This government has been focused every step of the way on following the best science, following the best public health advice,
00:01:19.200to keep as many people safe as possible.
00:01:28.620We've seen quicker economic recovery because Canadians stepped up, because Canadians got vaccinated.
00:01:35.760And I can understand frustrations with mandates, but mandates are the way to avoid further restrictions or having to be restricted.
00:01:43.780I don't really know what it means either.
00:01:45.980His Quebec lieutenant, left-handed, I guess we say, quit over his mandates and his extreme smearing of the protesters.
00:01:55.300I can't help but notice with regret that both the tone and the policies of my government changed drastically on the eve and during the last election campaign.
00:02:05.340From a positive and unifying approach, a decision was made to wedge, to divide, and to stigmatize.
00:02:13.860I fear that this politicization of the pandemic risks undermining the public's trust in our public health institutions.
00:02:22.660Well, I'm shocked that Trudeau didn't call that MP racist, as he usually does.
00:02:29.520So that's Trudeau, but really, how different is that from Jason Kenney, the premier of Alberta?
00:02:35.440Kenney had a hastily scheduled press conference last night in direct response to the two-week blockade at the Alberta-Montana border in the little village of Kootz, Alberta.
00:02:47.020Just to recap, Kootz is a village right on the border.
00:02:50.580However, there are a few hundred truckers that are blocking the border right now, and they've been reinforced from time to time with farmers, which I think shows a lot of local support.
00:03:03.640Here's some video, if you forgot, from early on when the RCMP thought they would just walk up to these big truckers,
00:03:09.760and the truckers would, what, just bundle themselves into police cars or something, cry or something?
00:10:45.780Maybe it's because the UCP party is having its convention in exactly two months, April 9th, I think.
00:10:53.180And they'll take care of business there.
00:10:55.700So maybe that's why they're not doing it now.
00:10:58.080Well, Kenny is going to lose, whether he loses at the convention or in the general election, he's going to lose.
00:11:04.060But I think if he does, he will be well-suited to be a very highly paid Canadian vice president for Pfizer.
00:11:13.180I mean, what do you think of this, marketing whiz?
00:11:15.580I think it's quite likely that for the rest of our lives, we're probably going to need to take an annual COVID shot, much like the annual flu shot.
00:11:26.740Every year, as you know, there's a slightly modified flu vaccine that is made available.
00:12:26.600This and other road blockages constitute a safety hazard, a serious interference in the lives of others.
00:12:36.340It does economic damage, in this case particularly for ranchers, farmers and agri-food producers.
00:12:43.980I would point out to those involved in the blockade, I think there are about 38 trucks, I should say semi-trucks at the Coutts Border Crossing itself.
00:13:19.900The truckers wanted an end to all the lockdown laws, all the mandates, all of it.
00:13:23.340And to end the vaccine mandate in particular, that means forced vaccines.
00:13:27.300And indeed, Kenny said he was going to end the provincial vaccine passport, which he laughably calls the restriction exemption pass.
00:13:35.380Today, the COVID cabinet committee has approved a number of measures that constitute a careful and prudent plan to remove Alberta's public health restrictions
00:13:45.840and move on from a widespread pandemic response to get our lives back to normal.
00:15:26.620Well, he's not actually saying the emergency is over.
00:15:28.460The province is still in a legal state of emergency.
00:15:31.120And he could still renege on this immediately, like, for example, April 10th if he wins his leadership vote.
00:15:36.860But my point is he's pretending we're going back to the before times, except for now he's permitting discrimination that was illegal during the before times.
00:15:47.040A few minutes later, though, Kenny seemed to remember that.
00:15:52.060Treating fellow people as though they are somehow unclean?
00:15:54.920Listen, I've been amply clear that I think everybody should avail themselves of the protection of safe and effective vaccines and that the choice not to get vaccinated is not just a personal choice.
00:16:09.160It does have social consequences, but it's never okay to treat people like that, to stigmatize people in that way.
00:16:19.120In a way, it kind of reminds me of the attitudes that circulated in North America in the mid-1980s about people with HIV AIDS.
00:16:29.300That's actually an apt comparison, not comparing the two diseases, but comparing the segregation, the demonization, the violation of privacy, the hatred.
00:16:40.280So, yeah, I think it was an apt comparison.
00:16:43.300But I guess he forgot that he just approved that discrimination and invasion of privacy just five minutes earlier.
00:16:48.940And he will continue to provide the QR code and the surveillance database so that any bartender, any restaurant, any storekeeper can discriminate like that.
00:18:48.980I'm not sure if Kenny will be around long enough to see it.
00:18:51.720I mean, it is true that the government prosecuted farmers for selling their own wheat a generation ago in violation of the Canadian Wheat Board.
00:18:58.940I think the reverberation of that political punishment continues to this day.
00:19:03.100By the way, it was at that same border between Alberta and the United States.
00:19:06.660So, yeah, a lying, flip-flopping, nervous, intellectually incoherent premier at around 20 percent in the polls, who will likely be thrown out by his own party if they have any sense of a survival instinct.
00:19:19.120Or literally thousands of truckers and farmers standing up to these unscientifically liberal absurd health edicts.
00:19:25.360Those are basically your choices right now.
00:19:27.080Now, it's tough to say you support civil disobedience.
00:19:32.100This feels like a general strike in a way, but unlike Canada's last general strike in Winnipeg almost exactly a century ago, this one isn't a communist general strike.
00:19:42.220It's actually pretty anti-communist when you get down to it, which is why we believe in telling the other side of the story about it so forcefully.
00:19:50.660So, the only news you're getting isn't from the CBC state broadcaster, which is why we're crowdfunding lawyers for these men.
00:20:00.360My thinking on that is if Omar Khadr, the Al-Qaeda terrorist and war criminal, can get a free lawyer, then these salt of the earth Canadian patriots can too.
00:20:13.320We're helping them crowdfund lawyers at truckerlawyer.ca.
00:20:17.220Feel free to chip in if you agree with me on that.
00:20:21.020See, if you had to guess, who's going to be the next Premier of Alberta?
00:20:25.300Is it going to be Jason Kenney who's going to win next time?
00:22:34.040And I think, you know, especially the Canadian truckers, they actually really did give hope to a lot of people around the world.
00:22:43.700And that's what we desperately needed.
00:22:46.020Because I will have to say, it is simply not enough for just a handful of politicians to stand up and raise their voices against this whole COVID madness.
00:23:35.520The pandemic has been a lonely time for so many people.
00:23:39.660It's been one of the tools of the lockdown, banning us from gathering, banning us.
00:23:44.660And even if we're gathering, banning us from seeing each other's faces uncovered.
00:23:49.100I think the loneliness and the separating us from our families and our friends is a psychological tactic.
00:23:56.320I know that in cults, for example, removing people from their regular support groups is a tactic to weaken someone to, frankly, reprogram them.
00:24:05.080That's the language that they would use in a cult.
00:25:10.520But it has nothing to do with any of that.
00:25:13.520You know, it's just labeling it, discrediting it.
00:25:17.540So people would, you know, maybe look at the truckers, you know, some anti-democrats, which they are not.
00:25:25.940The only anti-democrats that I see are sitting in Canadian government.
00:25:30.560That's where the anti-democrats are, you know.
00:25:34.240So I think it was it was a really important movement because I will have to say, you know, I mean, setting aside military coups, you know, tyrannies never start out with rounding up people and, you know, having them incarcerated in camps and what have you not.
00:25:51.800You know, once this is happening, then the totalitarian regime has been fully established.
00:25:58.400No, it starts with little things seemingly inconsequential in the beginning, even rational steps.
00:26:05.440You know, first, they're being ridiculed.
00:26:07.960You know, some people are getting ridiculed.
00:26:14.400Like, you know, no, you're not allowed to sit on that bench over here and you may have to sit in a specific area in a restaurant.
00:26:24.420So really nothing big in the beginning.
00:26:27.620But eventually you're being denied participation of social life altogether.
00:26:32.980And then government may even pass legislation that requires a specific part of the people to fulfill some kind of requirement.
00:26:43.220So it's little steps, you know, and when you make people believe your opinion, you're a loner, you know, you're a small French minority, you know, people, well, they don't want to speak up with this.
00:26:59.300But let me tell you, any resistance in any totalitarian regime and any dictatorship, it always, per definition, starts out with a small French minority.
00:27:11.800But that is no reflection on the possible invalidity of their concerns.
00:27:17.240No, that is a reflection of people fearing government.
00:27:23.740And I should tell you that although Trudeau's name calling them fringe, poll after poll says that 30, 40 or more percent of Canadians see themselves in the convoy.
00:27:38.720You were saying some very thoughtful things.
00:27:40.480I just want to know what the media coverage like is like in Germany, because in Canada, the legacy media, the corporate media has been almost uniformly critical and disparaging.
00:27:52.840They've really echoed those accusations of racism and sexism and whatever.
00:27:58.060I think that the visual image of the truckers is more powerful than the angry, you know, characterizations of them by the media.
00:28:30.400And, you know, of course, they showed all the pictures of, you know, possible violent outbursts that a swastika flag, of course, you know, it was being flashed all through media, you know, day after day.
00:28:43.140Yeah, they were trying everything to discredit these people.
00:28:48.040And, of course, they're trying to frame it as, you know, some anti-democrats that are trying to take down democracy and all of that.
00:28:56.280But in reality, it's, you know, the truckers are the ones defending democracy.
00:29:03.200They're not there to take it down, you know.
00:31:42.000Well, true is an answer to that question, that's for sure.
00:31:45.140Well, I'm thrilled to hear your personal support.
00:31:48.360And I know the AFD, your party, is a freedom-oriented party.
00:31:52.480What's it like in terms of pandemic rules in Germany?
00:31:56.420And you would be familiar with those around the European Union since you were a member of the European Parliament.
00:32:01.400For example, these truckers, one of their specific grievances is that they're not allowed to travel from Canada to the United States or back without a vaccine.
00:33:09.440But this digital green certificate, it's like a vaccine passport.
00:33:14.260It's been now, you know, applies to whenever I want to go to a restaurant or, you know, to a shoe store or, you know, get my hair cut.
00:33:24.360So it's actually been abused for other purposes than it was actually put into place.
00:33:32.260And during my speech in June of last year, I already pointed out this is going to be something they will use to keep to strip citizens of their of their fundamental rights.
00:33:44.580And that's actually what we have been seeing.
00:33:47.000So in terms of the measurements going on over here, well, the European countries are, you know, kind of divided as far as that is concerned.
00:33:56.720You have countries that are opening up because it's just so utterly ridiculous to continue with this narrative.
00:34:03.920But lo and behold, Germany, you know, great nation, our Secretary of Health is absolutely convinced that then the next wave, you know, is so horrible.
00:34:18.940You know, there is going to be millions and millions of people dying once again.
00:34:23.700So he continues to push the vaccines and the mandatory vaccines on everyone.
00:34:29.400The problem we are having right now is that there is an imposed vaccination mandate on health care workers or, you know, caregivers for the elderly people.
00:34:45.700And up until now, the narrative was, well, we have a shortage in, you know, the medical health care workers because they're fed up with having to care, give care to unvaccinated people.
00:34:57.340That was the narrative. You know, the shortage we are having is because they're fed up having to deal with unvaccinated patients.
00:35:04.920And now it turns out, no, we have this shortage because they do not want to get vaccinated.
00:35:12.060Well, that's the same thing we have here. I mean, just the health care system was damaged by the response to the pandemic more than it was damaged by the virus itself, I think.
00:35:22.080Exactly. Absolutely. So, but, you know, they keep pushing it over here in Germany.
00:35:28.880And like I said, our secretary of health, he is, he is quite something.
00:35:33.060I mean, I just, you know, put out a tweet if he, you know, checks under his bed every night, if there really aren't any monsters, you know, regardless, they haven't been any in the last 58 years of his life.
00:35:44.820But you never know, you know, the next months to wait, maybe really, really bad, you know, he's, quite frankly, I consider it to be insane.
00:35:53.060I wish we had members of the Canadian parliament who were so energetic and freedom oriented as you and your AFD colleagues.
00:36:02.940And I thank you very much for joining us. I mean, I obviously we're across the ocean from you.
00:36:07.120So I know that it's not your job to talk to Canadian journalists, but I think it's very important for Canadians to know that our trucker rebellion is giving hope and inspiration to people around the world.
00:36:17.620And it's very, I was delighted when I saw you refer to it. So thanks for making the time for us today.
00:36:23.120If I could just say, I will have to disagree with your last comment.
00:36:27.480It is my job to speak to everyone all over the world because freedom, that is what we all want.
00:36:36.220So it doesn't matter whether it's Canadians or Germans or Italians or whoever, freedom of the people.
00:36:42.700This is what we all want. And this is what I fight for.
00:36:45.240So, yes, I do consider it my job to speak to you.
00:36:49.900Well, that's beautifully put and that's very generous. And I appreciate your public spirit.
00:36:54.760Thank you very much, Christine Anderson from Alternative for Deutschland, a member of the European Parliament, and look forward to talking to you again soon.
00:37:02.100Thank you so much for having me. Take care.
00:37:04.820All right. There you have it. Christine Anderson. Stay with us. More ahead.
00:37:15.240Hey, welcome back. Your viewer feedback.
00:37:21.720Rick White says, I don't have a rich history of watching Trudeau clips, but the man seemed genuinely frightened in his last presser.
00:37:30.240Could be. I mean, he's he's is a dramatic actor.
00:37:33.400You got to give him that. And he's good at never apologizing, never showing any self-doubt.
00:37:40.460He's manipulative that way. I whenever I think of him, I think of him as, you know, these these guys who were pickup artists.
00:37:48.320They write books on how to psychologically manipulate women to get a date.
00:37:52.380He that that's his chief skill, I think he's manipulative like that and he hides his true feelings.
00:37:58.720So it's weird when that approach doesn't work, like never, never apologize, never admit doing anything wrong, brazen it out.
00:38:07.020I'm not sure if that's working now. Insult. Project your own flaws on someone else.
00:39:23.420That's not something you go to court over.
00:39:26.380I know the instincts. Sue, I mean, believe me, we do.
00:39:29.220But not everything will be solved in the court.
00:39:32.800By the way, if you think judges are conservative, I got some news for you.
00:39:36.980But even if you had a fair court, you don't want everything to be handled by judges.
00:39:42.000Certain things have to be left to the people in a democratic way.
00:39:46.380You don't want a court to have the power to tell someone to report things in a certain way.
00:39:51.100It's just like whenever I object to people who say, arrest Trudeau for treason.
00:39:57.120No, you don't want to start criminalizing political differences because you want these differences aired transparently and let the public decide.
00:40:07.620You don't want a judge to say that's an illegal thought or act.
00:40:11.540There are real crimes, and prosecute a guy for that, but not for getting things wrong politically.
00:40:16.860And by the way, if you don't think that would be used on conservatives first, I think you're wrong.
00:44:40.980You think there's going to be all this angst and anger and frustration, and yet you're met with so many men and women who are here realizing we've got to fight again for our freedom.
00:45:10.240We can smile at each other and have a conversation and talk and not be in fear of one another anymore, right?
00:45:16.140So, yeah, it's just been a real eye-opener.
00:45:18.800It's like coming to a family reunion and realizing all these relatives you've never met before.
00:45:22.300But for a common purpose, we've got to fight for our freedom.
00:45:25.600We've got to stand up for our freedom in a just way.
00:45:30.180And it's awful how it's being painted and portrayed around the world.
00:45:33.220You know, I've lost the respect of family members, my own son who's disowned me, thinking that this is a horrible thing, what we're doing.
00:45:41.100Is this a horrible thing to be gathered here of like-minded people for a common cause, for our freedom?
00:45:47.300So we're speaking to some folks here at the RCMP blockade.
00:45:50.920I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but given the lack of response from Jason Kenney, the boys down at the Coutts blockade, farmers have once again actually shut down the border.
00:46:02.560They're blocking the roads entirely due to the lack of response.
00:47:13.000Now, what do you make of some of the media narratives out there, all the way from the media to the prime minister of the country, trying to categorize a violent movement, a racist movement, or a hateful movement?