EZRA LEVANT ｜ Russian economy surpasses Germany to become the largest in Europe — How is it possible？
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Summary
In the past year, Russia's economy has overtaken Germany's to become the largest in Europe. How is it possible? In part 1 of a two-part series on the Ukraine-Russia conflict, Ezra Levenrant explains why.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hello, my friends. I want to tell you two facts about Russia and Ukraine that I don't think you would know if you only consumed Canadian media.
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The first is a shocking new report about Russia's economic strength published by the World Bank.
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And the second is a Russian connection in a coup in Africa.
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But first, I want to make sure you're signed up for what we call Rebel News Plus.
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I'm going to show you some interesting footage from that African country of Niger or Niger.
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And you help support Rebel News because, as you know, we don't take any dough from Trudeau.
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In the past year, Russia's economy has overtaken Germany to become the largest in Europe.
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It's August 9th, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.
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I'm careful when talking about Ukraine, not because it's politically sensitive.
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We talk about politically sensitive things all the time, and hopefully we thread the needle correctly.
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But rather because there is so much propaganda out there, which is how wars go, I don't need help coming up with an opinion about the war.
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I need help coming up with facts about the war.
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As I've told you before, the only method I think I can really rely on is when either side, NATO or Russia, makes an admission against their own interests, as in when they tell you bad news about themselves.
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That's the difference between dog bites man and man bites dog, isn't it?
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But even then, by the way, it could be propaganda.
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I sense that Russia has deliberately published bad news about their state of affairs to give a false sense of confidence to the NATO side.
00:02:04.980
I'm still puzzling over that one-day mini-rebellion by the Russian mercenaries called the Wagner Group.
00:02:16.480
It looked like maybe a coup was going to happen, the humiliation of a local Russian general.
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And Putin and the Wagner Group's boss, his name is Yevgeny Prigozhin, apparently they came to some deal in some way.
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And the Wagner mercenaries moved to Belarus, Russia's ally.
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And by the way, if you look at the map, the Belarus border is a lot closer to Kiev than the Russian border is.
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And that's what I mean about the fog of war and propaganda.
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I think for a moment there, some in the West thought that Putin would undergo a regime change.
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I'm not embarrassed to say that I don't really understand.
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And I suppose the one thing I can think of, I don't know, is that by definition, mercenaries work for money, right?
00:03:06.040
And if the West has dumped in over $100 billion into Ukraine with very little oversight, wouldn't shock me if the CIA did the math and realized that paying, I don't know, a billion dollars to Prigozhin to rebel and embarrass Putin and maybe knock him off might be a lot more cost effective than spending a billion dollars on more weapons systems to fight against Prigozhin than Putin.
00:03:31.080
So I've been reluctant to weigh in, certainly not daily, like the mainstream media has done.
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As I mentioned, when I was in Hungary the other day, Viktor Orban, the prime minister there, was giving a keynote speech about the case for peace.
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And I was certain he was going to talk in depth about the Ukraine-Russia war.
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I mean, there's over 100,000 Hungarians in Ukraine that borders Hungary.
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I think most of the world is not as obsessed by the Russia-Ukraine war as our mainstream media is.
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But I think especially here in Canada, we have more war cheerleading than we have war reporting, which strikes me as sort of un-Canadian.
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I mean, here's the Trudeau we all thought we knew.
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But the onus is on Mr. Harper to demonstrate that a shift from a non-combat role that we've established right now to a combat role is the right thing for Canada, the right thing for Canadians.
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But also the right thing for the international community.
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There are an awful lot of things that Canada can and should be doing.
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I mean, think about Canada's reputation around the world and what we've done around refugees.
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Whether it be the Vietnamese boat people, whether it be the Ismailis in Uganda, in East Africa, whether it be even more recently the Tamil community fleeing a civil war in Sri Lanka.
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Canada has been a place that draws in and helps refugees in a significant and serious way.
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Now, in this situation, we're talking about hundreds of thousands of displaced peoples in the region who aren't looking to all leave the region.
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They need support to get through this very, very difficult time.
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Canada has a capacity and an expertise in doing just that.
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Why aren't we talking more about the kind of humanitarian aid that Canada can and must be engaged in rather than, you know, trying to whip out our CF-18s and show them how big they are?
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You know, it just doesn't work like that in Canada.
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He likes to talk about peacekeeping even if he doesn't actually send peacekeepers around the world.
00:06:04.460
I mean, all liberals have been skeptical of the military.
00:06:07.060
Jean Chrétien refused to send troops to Iraq after 9-11.
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That may have unintentionally been the right choice.
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Of course, Pierre Trudeau was an underminer of the military.
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So, to see Justin Trudeau now chant the war chant is a little bit odd.
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Though, of course, we haven't really been able to follow through in action.
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We really haven't been able to help in any material way.
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We don't have any weapons to use, not even to train with our fellow NATO allies.
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Where would you put Canada in that as they're not?
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I don't even like what they say, Canada, but they'll be okay.
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Well, we'll put them on a payment plan, you know.
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The number we talk about is 70% increase over these past years, including, and for the coming years,
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including significant investments in our fighter jets, significant investments in our naval fleets.
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We are increasing significantly our defense spending from previous governments that cut it.
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Trump said it, and so does Joe Biden in his own way.
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The whole world knows that Canada doesn't really carry our fair share when it comes to the military issues of the world,
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Only trusted missions made by parties that embarrass themselves, but even be skeptical of those.
00:08:03.760
That whole mercenary revolt, I still don't know what that is.
00:08:12.880
I heard a rumor on TikTok, of all places, that Russia last year had overtaken mighty Germany to become the largest economy in Europe
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I mean, I honestly did not believe it at first.
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And if it were true, by the way, why hadn't I heard about it in the mainstream media?
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How could it be, though, given the sanctions against Russia and how close Russia was to toppling over
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and how this war was burning up all their money?
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That's what the news, that's sort of the narrative of the news.
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And it is nothing less reputable than the World Bank.
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Take a look at the World Bank's 2021 rankings of countries by gross domestic product measured using the purchasing power parity method.
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I'll use an example to explain what purchasing power parity means.
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Let's say someone earns $200,000 a year in Toronto or Vancouver, but someone else earns $175,000 a year in Red Deer, Alberta.
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Well, the obvious answer is the people in Toronto and Vancouver, right?
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They're making $200,000 a year, except that's just in nominal dollars.
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But taxes are lower in Alberta, and the cost of housing is much lower in Alberta.
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So on a purchasing power parity basis, the person making $175,000 a year in Alberta is wealthier in terms of what they can buy.
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It's basically taking a basket of goods and services and comparing how affordable that same basket is in a bunch of different countries.
00:10:07.060
Anyways, that's what gross domestic product purchasing power parity means, in case you were wondering.
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It's sort of a way of leveling different countries so you're comparing apples to apples.
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This is from 2021, before Russia invaded Ukraine.
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It had a GDP of just under $4.8 trillion using the purchasing power parity method.
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As you can see, the top countries were China, the U.S., India, and Japan.
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Now, obviously, this is the whole country together.
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So that's more than a billion Chinese people together are wealthier than the 330 million U.S. people.
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India is about the same population as China, but it's only about as one-third as wealthy.
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Lots of interesting stats in there, don't you think?
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And remember, this is all based on their ability to buy a car, a meal, a house, adjusted to purchasing power.
00:11:17.760
So let's use the exact same study, the exact same chart by the exact same World Bank a year later.
00:11:29.240
China is still the wealthiest country in the world.
00:11:32.240
In fact, China increased its lead over America a little bit.
00:11:47.220
How did that happen, given that the West, United States, UK, put sanctions on Russia?
00:11:55.400
Given that Russia is spending money on a brutal war, how did they get richer than Germany?
00:12:02.260
Well, that last part is easy to answer, isn't it?
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I think the first part is sort of easy to answer, too.
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If you're allowed to think critically, Russia has valuable things.
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Lots of things that people around the world need, no matter what.
00:12:17.480
China and India will import oil and gas and food from anyone.
00:12:21.700
They don't care about social license or carbon taxes.
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I mean, the liberals in Canada lied to us, saying no one will buy our oil and gas if we
00:12:30.160
don't impose environmental policies like carbon taxes.
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OPEC and Russia dominate world energy markets, and they couldn't be more abusive to both
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China, we, North America buys oil from Saudi Arabia and Iran.
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So, yeah, Russia has things that people want and will pay for, things that we in Canada could
00:13:04.420
Imagine doing that while Russia is producing and selling what people need and want.
00:13:16.420
To most people who are convinced that Russia is teetering on the edge of a collapse and it's
00:13:22.560
going to rise up and depose Putin at any moment now, I don't think so.
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In fact, I think the economy in the West is worse.
00:13:30.480
Yes, we're richer than Russia per capita, sure, but they're growing their economy and
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they just leaped ahead of Germany's industrial might.
00:13:37.720
And that's in part because Germany is so obsessed with foolishly expensive alternative energy.
00:13:46.600
But this is contrary to Trudeau's narrative, isn't it?
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It suggests that Trudeau's virtue signaling is just virtue signaling.
00:13:55.800
I want to show you a second factoid, a second data point.
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It's from Sky News in the UK, which is actually a mainstream media source.
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But I think that the UK mainstream media, because it's very competitive over there and it's not
00:14:08.060
yet colonized by the government in the same way, I think it's still miles ahead of our media
00:14:15.160
This starts off about Niger or Niger, as they call it, as a country in Africa that just had
00:14:22.460
Now, this is three and a half minutes long, but I learned so much from this.
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Can I play for you this video about Niger or Niger, as I know in the country, and listen
00:14:34.760
to what they say about the American senior diplomat dispatched from the Biden administration,
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and listen to how they end and what they talk about Russia.
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Victoria Nuland was a very senior American diplomat, deputy secretary of state, second only
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She didn't get very far when she went into the capital of Niger.
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She couldn't get to see the previous president, the democratic elected president, President
00:15:06.380
And General Chiani, who's taken over, the militia junta, wouldn't even meet her.
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She got to see some representatives of Chiani, but not him himself.
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And so she made some blandishments and threats.
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She said that American aid would be suspended, and there was 230 million of that.
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The fact is that the coup leaders really don't care what the outside world thinks at the moment.
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They're not impressed by the Americans, the French, the United Nations, or the economic
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Niger itself is a big place, very big country, but it's pretty poor.
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It's 177th on the World Bank index of 196 in terms of wealth.
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And of course, with climate change, the Sahara Desert is expanding.
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Most of the people live in the southwest, where the capital is, in Naimei.
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About 25 million people, but they live on subsistence farming.
00:16:03.060
The only thing that Niger has really got is uranium, but uranium can be found in many
00:16:09.240
Meanwhile, Niger is surrounded by a very unstable region.
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The whole of the Sahel area is now increasingly unstable.
00:16:18.760
There has been a military coup in Mali, a military coup in Burkina Faso.
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And those three countries are now offering support to the military coup leaders in Niger.
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And the Malian and Burkina Faso delegations have arrived in Niger in order to offer their
00:16:34.640
And so three military leaders, in particular, are just standing together and defying the
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The only countries that could make a difference militarily would be Nigeria, which has quite
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a big military, but not a very good one these days.
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Or Chad, which also has quite a large military.
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Nigeria is pretty reluctant to get involved militarily.
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And so ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States, will meet on Thursday to talk
00:17:03.260
The answer is they won't be able to do very much physically.
00:17:05.960
They may well take some sanctions, but they will only hurt the population of Niger even
00:17:11.560
In addition to all of that, we've seen in the developments of Niger recently, Russian flags
00:17:21.620
That was a staged rally, but nevertheless, it was tapping into something which the Niger
00:17:27.140
leaders, I think, are on to, which is the French are very unpopular, the West is very
00:17:34.220
And Chiani, the leader of the military junta, has said he wants the help of Wagner mercenaries.
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And the Wagner mercenaries have said, yes, they will help.
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They seem to have been slightly repulsed by al-Qaeda, of all people, but they certainly will
00:17:50.640
The point about the whole region is that there are power vacuums developing all across the
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And when there are power vacuums, the only people who will gain from those vacuums will
00:17:59.240
be jihadists like al-Qaeda and Islamic State, who are very active in the region, and Russian
00:18:06.180
It's all very destabilizing and it doesn't look good for the future.
00:18:09.520
Victoria Nuland really is the big deputy boss of the U.S. foreign policy.
00:18:19.000
She flies all the way to Niger, and they send, what, the intern to meet with her?
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I think American prestige around the world is falling.
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And that breaks my heart because I love America.
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I think they're the most noble country in the world, really.
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He was in command, and even when he was eccentric or even erratic, it redounded to his benefit.
00:18:43.900
What I mean by that is the world was sort of scared of him, if nothing less.
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It's different with sleepy Grandpa Joe Biden and certainly his deputy deputy.
00:18:59.520
No one even cares to meet with her, and certainly not wagging their finger at Niger and Niger,
00:19:04.700
whose coups seem to be rooted in part in shucking off Western influence in the name of anti-colonialism.
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They're mad at France, but they're mad at all the West.
00:19:14.580
I'm not sure that Joe Biden has any place in Niger.
00:19:16.980
But the Russian flag at the end, that's an interesting statement of allegiance, isn't it?
00:19:32.660
And yeah, by the way, Joe Biden is acting like a banana republic boss,
00:19:37.580
trying to criminalize and jail Donald Trump, his rival and former president.
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And yes, Trudeau acted like a banana republic authoritarian, too,
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when he put our whole country under martial law and started seizing big accounts.
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Maybe Niger sees that and says it'll join the other team,
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one that's getting economically stronger, China and Russia,
00:20:17.060
It seems that Beijing-controlled media in Canada was used to enable election interference.
00:20:24.920
Now, I know that sounds preposterous and outrageous,
00:20:28.640
until you consider the fact that there are or were Chinese police stations
00:20:36.180
And so, if there is unofficial Chinese law enforcement occurring here,
00:20:41.860
then, hey, why not Beijing-orchestrated propaganda ploys, too?
00:20:49.220
And joining me now for more information on this story is Rebel News contributor,
00:21:02.660
You know, I remember back in the 80s, I used to listen to a band from England called China Crisis.
00:21:09.080
But China Crisis is more than a title for an English new wave band.
00:21:15.660
It's what's happening right now in Canada would appear.
00:21:21.500
Andy, what is this latest affront all about in the first place?
00:21:27.400
Yeah, I don't know if it's getting worse and worse, more that it's coming to the forefront.
00:21:34.400
I think it's been going on for a very long time.
00:21:38.000
So, Sam Cooper has, you know, received some more CSIS documents, leaked some CSIS documents
00:21:43.400
that outline that there is a, you know, a campaign, a probation campaign.
00:21:52.660
And we've done some work and some original reporting on some of those media outlets that
00:21:56.900
are tied to the Chinese Communist Party and the United Front Work Department.
00:22:00.940
So, we did put out an article, and I'm going to put out more on one establishment that's
00:22:07.320
The president of Red Maple News also works for Russia Today.
00:22:14.360
She goes to the political conferences for the United Front Work Department.
00:22:17.520
And she also volunteers for Justin Trudeau and has got some, you know, personal, some
00:22:23.060
personal invite to Parliament Hill from Justin Trudeau.
00:22:28.060
So, but I mean, this isn't, again, it's not shocking.
00:22:36.820
Behind the scenes, they work with Jinhua and China News Service and things like that.
00:22:44.420
Now, these are entities, of course, that are considered foreign missions in the United States.
00:22:50.320
These are the kinds of establishments that definitely, in one instance, this particular
00:22:56.320
volunteer for the Liberal Party who met with Justin Trudeau, she did go to Parliament Hill
00:23:02.020
and then she went and reported that back to China News Service.
00:23:05.680
So she's obviously working for foreign missions.
00:23:09.080
So these are the kind of people who could be subjected to a foreign agent registry if we
00:23:18.280
But Sam Cooper's documents outlined something a little bit new.
00:23:23.220
And that was that mainstream media has also been targeted in what he called a massively
00:23:35.040
And again, not surprising that we've got, you know, Chinese-based news outlets.
00:23:40.460
And this volunteer who works for Trudeau, she does have an office in China.
00:23:45.240
And so, you know, she is partly based out of China.
00:23:48.440
So not entirely shocking that she would be cozying up to political leaders and trying
00:23:54.000
to push some pro-Beijing messaging and things like that.
00:23:57.280
And, you know, doing some work for the United Front.
00:24:00.160
Not shocking, but a little bit shocking to find it in our domestic stations right here at
00:24:07.780
First of all, I won't even get into the abhorrent conflict of interest here with this
00:24:14.180
But, you know, I think it's all making sense, Andy.
00:24:18.260
Some 10 years ago, Blackface said at a meeting with exclusively women in Toronto that he had
00:24:26.180
admiration in his heart for the basic dictatorship of China in terms of getting things done.
00:24:32.040
I mean, the idea that a future Western leader would have admiration for the tyranny of China.
00:24:40.200
Trudeau's meeting last week with a group of Toronto women was an example.
00:24:46.960
Even with Sun TV watching for any slip, he was asked which country he most admired and referred to China.
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There's a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is
00:25:04.220
allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say, we need to go green
00:25:09.140
as fast as we need to start, you know, investing in solar.
00:25:12.060
I mean, there is a flexibility that I know Stephen Harper must dream about of having a
00:25:16.440
dictatorship that he could do everything he wanted that I find quite interesting.
00:25:23.700
But when it comes to getting things done, you have to wonder, what did he mean by getting
00:25:28.620
Like, you know, electoral interference that's going to benefit blackface in the long run?
00:25:39.200
All this tinkering and meandering, as far as you can tell, Andy, has it been effective
00:25:55.980
They say that it wasn't enough to affect the election results.
00:25:59.720
I think it's very, very hard to gauge again, because there is, you know, a lot of these
00:26:05.360
electoral and campaigns and things like that that are pushed by people who might have ties
00:26:12.200
to the Chinese Communist Party or ties to the United Front.
00:26:15.780
And when I say that, I mean that this isn't under dispute.
00:26:19.080
Some of them have got personal invitations that I've seen from Xi Jinping inviting them
00:26:25.940
So this isn't in dispute that they have dual loyalties if they're not outright here working
00:26:35.240
We know that they stem from some main ones and then they branch off.
00:26:40.700
I mean, they consist of tens of thousands of members who are probably sympathetic to those
00:26:47.380
I'm not going to say that every tonight's community association is a united front operation.
00:26:53.980
And a lot of them literally do good work in the community.
00:26:57.080
And that's how they sort of get away with this is they fall into this gray zone where
00:27:01.360
maybe they're not outright committing something that might be criminal in our country yet,
00:27:07.680
unless we get some sort of stronger legislation.
00:27:10.160
But they do definitely have some underlying motivation and some, you know, some loyalty to
00:27:18.020
So we know that that's how many members, tens of thousands.
00:27:25.260
They usually throw their weight behind the Liberals.
00:27:32.740
They'll fall behind whoever they think is supportive of their cause.
00:27:37.340
And one of them that they threw their weight, of course, behind was Mr. Key.
00:27:47.340
And so a lot of these community associations have thrown their weight behind them.
00:27:51.920
They also throw them behind Conservative Senator Royo.
00:27:55.320
So, you know, they'll throw their weight behind who they think will, you know, fulfill whatever
00:28:00.440
their needs are, which are usually to get more sympathetic views towards China.
00:28:07.760
And we also got a little bit of a taste of what they can do during the recent protest against
00:28:16.600
So this was, you know, it was an event, a demonstration that was planned on Parliament Hill on June 24th.
00:28:23.060
It was done in commemoration, apparently, of the Chinese Exclusion Act, the 100th anniversary
00:28:33.780
So it was sort of used as a front, this celebration, to also say that we should reject all modern
00:28:44.800
And what they mean when they say that is that we should reject a foreign agent registry.
00:28:49.220
And, of course, a foreign agent registry would apply to a lot of these people.
00:28:58.820
And they got a number of a couple of thousand people.
00:29:01.060
So that gives you an idea of how quickly and how many people they're able to mobilize.
00:29:13.880
So when you look at the campaign against Aaron O'Toole, and I have looked into that network
00:29:19.320
a little bit and found some foreign media outlets that were picking up on negative WeChat
00:29:23.720
posts against Aaron and amplifying those messages.
00:29:27.500
And Aaron, by most means, was a moderate conservative leader.
00:29:32.120
I wouldn't say he was a hardliner or that anybody would expect him to take a particularly
00:29:38.020
And we know that Pierre has the potential to be a much maybe firmer leader, I would say,
00:29:44.940
and a lot more aggressive in his foreign policy and things like that.
00:29:48.160
So when you look at the attack campaign that went up against Aaron O'Toole, and that's not
00:29:57.460
I think we can expect a much stronger reaction against Pierre.
00:30:01.300
And I can expect it to be in the tens of thousands.
00:30:04.860
I mean, geez, what a waste of effort having a campaign against Aaron O'Toole, given how
00:30:15.140
It reminds me of the knock against the Los Angeles Police Department in that the in the
00:30:21.740
case against OJ Simpson, the LAPD framed a guilty man.
00:30:25.780
But anyway, enough about yesterday's man, Aaron O'Toole.
00:30:30.120
Well, you mentioned we don't have a foreign agent registry.
00:30:45.900
The last one who tried the last person who tried to introduce one, of course, was was
00:30:51.000
Mr. Kenny Chu, and he was a conservative MP, and he ended up becoming a victim of a WeChat
00:30:58.320
disinformation campaign himself and ended up being unseated in the federal election,
00:31:06.160
And that piece of legislation that he had introduced died with him.
00:31:10.080
Now, that's not a coincidence that they happened to go after him so vehemently.
00:31:13.540
And again, you have to understand a foreign agent registry, it is it's a piece of common
00:31:17.360
sense legislation, and it doesn't necessarily say that these activities are legal.
00:31:23.920
What it says is that if you take the case of, say, Justin Trudeau's liberal volunteer,
00:31:34.000
If she is reporting on behalf of foreign missions like China News and China News Service, and
00:31:40.660
if she's going overseas and, you know, meeting with the United Front, meeting with Xi Jinping
00:31:45.560
and not just meeting with him, she actually gives speeches in the Great Hall and direction
00:31:52.240
So she's, you know, got very, very deep ties to the regime.
00:31:56.040
What it says is that you need to register and let us know what you're doing, if you're
00:32:01.080
getting money from the government, how you're interacting with them, give us your disbursements.
00:32:08.640
It's saying you have to, you know, be upfront about those activities.
00:32:13.940
And if you're lobbying on behalf of a foreign government, it doesn't mean it has to be the
00:32:19.620
And if you don't let us know, and if we catch you doing it, then we'll subject you to
00:32:23.920
And this is how, of course, New York was able to nail the people who were running their overseas
00:32:31.160
Chinese police stations as they used to FARAH against them, which is something that we don't
00:32:39.960
And when it comes to all this Chinese interference, Andy, I mean, we have a brand new mayor in Toronto,
00:32:48.300
And I believe it was the National Post and very few others that reported that she was
00:32:53.960
at a, I guess, at an organization that was pro-Beijing government, received a gift from
00:33:01.500
And it was astonishing because to her credit, Ms. Chow, once upon a time, was going to bat
00:33:09.040
But I guess if there's an election on the line, sorry, guys, it's strictly business.
00:33:19.700
You know, Andy, we're running out of time here.
00:33:22.680
But what I want to, first of all, my take on this, I think in the big picture, there is
00:33:30.980
a tragedy afoot here because we don't have great turnouts at election time in the best
00:33:38.240
of times, but I'm worried that people hear about all this election interference and it's
00:33:45.240
like they think, oh, you know what, as they say in Vegas, the fix is in, it's all predetermined.
00:33:57.400
So I'm just wondering if you think, as I do, this might lead to so much voter frustration
00:34:04.020
that they won't show up at the ballot box on Election Day.
00:34:09.000
And finally, if you had the ear of the authorities in terms of doing something to prevent this
00:34:16.820
or to be at least transparent, what would the Andy Lee plan be?
00:34:22.020
Yeah, well, that's, I mean, that is the frustrating part about all of this is it is undermining
00:34:29.080
voter confidence and the integrity of our democratic processes and our election systems.
00:34:34.560
And, you know, our national security advisors have tried to assuage some of those fears and
00:34:40.000
things like that and say that our elections were secure.
00:34:44.240
And like I said, I don't believe that even if some writings were maybe overcome through
00:34:49.640
some kind of dissolution campaigns, it would make a difference in the last election.
00:34:56.780
So it's not supposed to be discounted or taken lightly or dismissed any longer because new
00:35:05.020
When I see there's hundreds, I mean, like there's new ones coming up every day.
00:35:10.140
And a lot of times they do have pro-Beijing messaging and they'll find councillors or provincial
00:35:17.140
MPs or mayors or federal candidates and they'll throw their weight behind them.
00:35:22.540
So, you know, I think the first thing to do is get some more of this information out there
00:35:35.420
I think that even if we can't see the information and some of it will be classified, it will shine
00:35:44.580
a little bit more light and it will also restore public confidence in the process, which is
00:35:56.100
So I think that that's part of it and to do it in a nonpartisan way.
00:36:00.060
And unfortunately, the last choice I felt for the special rapporteur was a poor one.
00:36:07.420
And he obviously had a long history with Justin Trudeau and China.
00:36:12.280
And when pulled in front of committee, it was acknowledged that he had not seen all the
00:36:18.900
And he had put out some conflicting information in his report that contradicted what CSIS told
00:36:25.060
Also contradicted some of these leaked CSIS briefings, which brings, you know, the point
00:36:43.640
Like, if we had one, that would have cut so much off right before it started.
00:36:52.920
Because they're not going to bother if they know that they're openly conducting activities.
00:36:57.680
They're not going to be risk going through what the fellows in New York went through,
00:37:02.940
We know who's running these so-called overseas police stations.
00:37:08.520
But they certainly could have been subjected to more serious action if we had a FARA type
00:37:16.920
And also, politicians need to stop engaging with these news outlets.
00:37:21.940
I'm not the first person to figure out that most of these foreign media outlets are just
00:37:27.680
covers or satellite stations for state TV sources, right?
00:37:37.020
Of course, these briefings have passed through the PMO and, you know, have come to somebody's
00:37:44.220
But they continue to engage with them, you know, and they understand that, you know, these
00:37:53.520
are news outlets that in other countries are designated foreign agents of the Chinese government.
00:38:00.520
So I think that we can expect them to quell their activities a little bit and cool their
00:38:06.740
Or I'd like to see that anyways from our politicians being a little bit more responsible.
00:38:21.040
I actually believe that she's firmly pro-democracy.
00:38:26.420
I don't think that she's working for the Chinese state, but she's a great example in how she
00:38:30.580
had no qualms at election time of tapping this association, this association, which is
00:38:39.420
The people who run it are not everyday Canadian citizens.
00:38:42.900
These are the sort of people who go overseas, get invited to political conferences, and go
00:38:48.320
Okay, so this is not your standard behavior for a Canadian citizen when you're invited
00:38:53.120
overseas to go meet the supreme leader of China.
00:38:59.200
So Olivia, a great example of somebody who got caught up tapping these networks.
00:39:03.660
And when she got caught, she was very, very sorry.
00:39:05.600
She actually put out an apology video, but it's too bad.
00:39:12.940
I actually asked her, I want to reach out to her and ask her if she could read it in English.
00:39:17.700
But this is what people say, and some of the articles and her supporters say, well, this
00:39:21.960
is a necessary evil for politicians to tap these networks, to win that support.
00:39:28.000
Well, why is this a necessary evil to support a group that you know is pro-Beijing and maybe
00:39:36.520
As I believe that it shouldn't be a necessary evil in a democratic country, right?
00:39:43.680
You shouldn't need to tap that network to feel confident that you're going to be able
00:39:49.140
And a lot of the stuff that I go through is done with Chinese Canadians who are pro-democracy.
00:39:55.300
And, you know, we go through this stuff and they're appalled to see their leaders,
00:39:58.980
you know, using these, you know, these United Front organizations and things like that to win
00:40:06.460
Well, Andy, I got to tell you, in the here and now, in the short term, at least, I remain
00:40:12.700
very pessimistic that blackface is going to do anything tangible because I personally
00:40:18.580
think the primary beneficiary of Chinese interference is indeed the blackface liberals.
00:40:26.020
And so I think we might need regime change here in Canada before we get any traction on this
00:40:40.280
So thank you very much, Andy Lee, for joining me today.
00:40:56.940
Special thanks to my friend David Menzies for doing the guest segment.
00:40:59.960
Hey, let me just leave with you with a final thought on Ukraine.
00:41:03.800
I, like I say, I stumbled across that statistic about its economy growing.
00:41:09.660
I didn't retweet it or anything until I chased down the original source, the World Bank.
00:41:16.600
And I mentioned that to another senior journalist I bumped into in town, very senior at a very
00:41:26.900
He said, no, no, their economy's in a shambles, he said.
00:41:33.340
I think it's because we have been told only one side of the story.
00:41:37.360
I, by the way, I later sent him the documents and I had a bit of a back and forth with him.
00:41:41.900
But my point is, there's a smart guy in the media, skeptical guy, often a contrarian.
00:41:48.520
And he was certain that Russia was just on the brink of collapsing and that, of course,
00:41:55.360
And, of course, it's absurd to think that Russia could even exceed Germany.
00:41:59.360
Germany has been an industrial heartland for 100 years.
00:42:02.680
And it was incredible to watch him realize that he, everything he thought he knew was wrong
00:42:09.940
if these World Bank figures are correct, and I'm quite sure that they are.
00:42:14.220
And to watch him sort of recalculate a disillusionment there, because I think that so many people,
00:42:21.200
and this guy is not a bad guy in any way, he's not an ideologue.
00:42:28.880
I could see other questions in his mind, like, oh, so maybe victory isn't just around the corner.
00:42:34.120
And maybe, maybe a diplomatic solution might be something we should even consider.
00:42:40.060
And maybe when we say we're going to stick with this war till the end,
00:42:44.400
what does that mean when your enemy is actually getting stronger?
00:42:49.680
I think we need a lot more truth about Ukraine.
00:42:52.420
And I think we need to do what's best for the Ukrainian people.
00:42:56.160
Obviously, our interest as Canadians is to do what's best for us.
00:42:59.240
But if we're going to meddle overseas, and it looks like we are,
00:43:02.540
what's actually the best thing for Ukrainian men and women?
00:43:07.060
Is it to continue to send them in as cannon fodder to be chewed up by Putin's military?
00:43:12.840
I just can't think that doing the same thing for another 18 months is the way.
00:43:18.280
You tell me if wanting peace, if you can want peace without being a Putin shill.
00:43:24.840
In fact, isn't peace something you only make with your enemies?
00:43:28.420
I don't think you make peace with your friends.
00:43:32.200
But watching my counterpart at another media company see the scales fall off his eyes was quite something.
00:43:41.020
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night.