EZRA LEVANT ｜ Trudeau's exhaustive lip service no longer resonates with Canada's youth
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Summary
Why is it so hard for young people to make ends meet in Canada? Ezra Levenant explains why, and why only Justin Trudeau seems to have it figured out. He explains why the rest of us don t have it so easy.
Transcript
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Hello, my friends. I'm looking at a few liberal statements echoing the budget earlier this week,
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a crazy statement by the liberal mayor of Calgary, who basically says you'll own nothing and you'll
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be happy. I'll show you the video clip. She really does come close to saying that. And then the
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outrageously foolish cabinet minister called Seamus O'Regan. I'll take you through one of
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his tweets. And we'll have a great chat with my friend, Lauren Gunter. That's all I had. But
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please, before you listen to the podcast, consider getting the video version of it because I really
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want you to see Jody Gonnick's video and you got to see it. It's so crazy. To get the video version
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of the podcast, go to rebelnewsplus.com. Click subscribe. It's eight bucks a month. You get
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all my video shows every weekday and you support Rebel News because we don't take any money from
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Trudeau. We rely on you. That's Rebel News Plus. Okay, here's today's podcast.
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Tonight, why is it so hard for young people to make ends meet in Canada?
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It's April 18th and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.
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You're fighting for freedom. Shame on you, you censorious bug.
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The left used to stand with the little guy, but not anymore. I mean, I'm speaking in terms of
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political parties mainly, but the movement in general. Trudeau, for example, I mean, he exudes
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privilege. He's a trust fund kid. No Trudeau has worked in three generations. All the money has come
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from his grandfather that he's never met. His grandfather was quite an entrepreneur. He had
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a chain of gas stations around Montreal. Trudeau inherited millions. He doesn't know what it's
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actually like to pay bills. He's always had daddy's accountants to pay them and daddy's lawyers
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to bail him out of trouble, like when he sexually assaulted Rose Knight some 20-odd years ago.
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Trudeau exudes wealth and privilege. Donald Trump's a billionaire, but he's got a working-class
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sensibility. He knows how to talk to the blue-collar folks. I mean, he's always at construction sites,
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at least in his previous life. Trudeau, by contrast, has the adornments, the accoutrements of luxury,
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private jets, billionaire vacations in the Bahamas, but without the sense of responsibility,
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without having earned it. In fact, Trudeau seems to be taking advantage. As you know,
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he separated from his wife, Sophie Trudeau, quite a while ago, but kept that secret so that he could
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continue to take her, which is really bizarre, on luxury vacations on the government jet. Here's a
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photo of Sophie Trudeau that she published before it was known that she was seeing another man. I'm not
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talking about prurient details here. I'm not talking about the sexual politics of that bizarre family.
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I'm saying she was no longer Justin Trudeau's wife in any meaningful way, but she was just coming
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along for the taxpayer ride. That's what I mean by luxury. Trudeau goes to Jamaica and stays in an
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$80,000 resort and said, oh, no, no, everyone does this, staying with friends. Just absolutely outrageous.
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That's Justin Trudeau. Jagmeet Singh, incredibly, is even worse. Before he became the leader of the
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NDP, he actually did glamour photo shoots showing off luxury goods, tens of thousands of dollars on
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a watch and luxury travel. I don't begrudge a guy money that he earns, but when you claim to be for
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the working man and when you rail against the rich, you should play the part in your own personal life,
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I think. Funny enough, of the three men, Justin Trudeau, Jagmeet Singh, or Pierre Polyev, he's the
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one by far with the most working class background. And I think he's doing well amongst people in the
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working classes, not just because he has policies that suit them, but because he's used to them.
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He's from them. I think he is a working class conservative. Justin Trudeau the other day was
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in a meeting in Calgary and he talked about, once I met the overall people, it's like he was in a
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museum and saw some freak curiosity. Look at that, someone in overalls. Did you see that clip?
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A few years ago, I was in Hamilton in a classic steel plant and I was meeting, you know, some of those
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overall folks who were proud to say that they were third and even fourth generation steel workers
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in Hamilton. Yeah, I really don't think anyone in the Liberal Party knows what it's like to be in the
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working world, to know what it's like to have to make payroll, to know what it's like to have to earn
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money and have it clawed back by the tax man and have to add more and more hours, but there's just not
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enough hours in the day. I don't think anyone in Justin Trudeau's circle is like that. Now, Trudeau uses
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some Marxist language. His budget was basically a soak the rich. You don't like the rich, do you?
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I don't know if that's working though, because I think people feel like they should be able to
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afford things, but the extraordinary inflation and outlandish housing costs and so many terrible
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things conspiring against them makes it impossible for them to live. Trudeau may be talking about
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punishing the rich, but it seems like everyone is being punished. Here's a video by Trudeau's right
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hand woman in Calgary, the mayor, Jody Gondek. I'm going to talk more about this in a minute with our
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friend Lauren Gunter, but just take a look at this and look at this rich woman of privilege, liberal,
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two houses, saying, oh, if you can't afford a house, well, you'll own nothing, but you'll be happy.
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Take a look. So we're starting to see a segment of the population reject this idea of owning a home
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and they're moving towards rental because it gives them more freedom. They can travel to different
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places. They can try out different communities. Their job may take them from place to place.
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And so people have become much more liberated around what housing looks like and what the tenure of
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housing looks like. But as municipalities, we haven't kept pace with that change. We're still stuck
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in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. The craziest part there is her implication that wanting a house
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is some old-fashioned, outdated idea. She didn't come out and say it's racist and bigoted, but
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I'm sure she wanted to. As if people, only people in the 40s and 50s wanted a house and a backyard and
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to be able to, you know, maybe have one parent stay home with the kids. I mean, isn't that crazy?
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We went from a time when dad could work in the factory and come home in time for dinner
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and they had enough to have a house and a happy house and maybe the occasional vacation. Those days
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are long gone. Judeau said it was a housing budget. What a laugh. I'll talk more about that with Oren
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Gunter. But in many ways, I don't think it's housing anymore. It's more like warehousing.
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900,000 foreign students, many of them from India or China, sharing a combination is meant
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for a fraction of that. I know, especially here in the greater Toronto area, you sometimes have
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one apartment or one house with four, five, six, seven, eight people in them just jammed in there.
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That's terrible for them, but it also drives up the price for anyone trying to have that old-fashioned
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style of living. And look at the solution. Like I say, warehousing people, 40 and 50-story sardine
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cans. That's not the dream. Here is a tweet showing some proposed and approved housing projects in
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Kitchener, including 40 and 50-story apartment buildings. In Kitchener? Well, yeah, when you're
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trying to absorb 2.2 million migrants a year, which is what Trudeau did this year, that's how it's got to be.
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In Calgary, Jody Gondek is proposing to rezone the entire city that way. Kate McMillan from the
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website Small Dead Animals had this tweet, making it look like, yeah, that's how they do it in China.
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It's just so out of touch. I don't think that they actually know how people live and that people do
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want a house in a backyard and they want to be able to afford it. I saw this from Seamus O'Regan,
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who is called Shameless O'Regan by his former colleagues at CTV. Look at this tweet. He said,
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the right to disconnect is coming to Canadian workers. Employees will have to let you log off
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at the end of your day. Well, boy, thank goodness for Seamus O'Regan coming to save all of us.
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But look at the community note. Do you know what that is? It's something that Elon Musk has really
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expanded on Twitter. It's letting ordinary people clap back at liars is really what it is.
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It's when you get to add context, particularly to a politician's lives. So here's the community note
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that corrected Seamus O'Regan, or at least made it less misleading. Quote,
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the federal government has jurisdiction to enact employment law only in a few federally regulated
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industries. Only about 910,000 Canadians would be impacted by such a measure. Right to disconnect
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is not coming to the vast majority of Canadians, I'll say. So if you work for Air Canada, they're
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federally regulated. If you work for one of the national railroads or the banks, or if you work for
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the federal government itself, I guess you'll have the right to disconnect, as in you won't have to
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answer your boss's emails at 8 p.m. Fair enough. But when you put yourself in the position of the
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hardest hit group of Canadians, millennials, if you're a millennial, those industries I just mentioned,
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that's not you. You're probably trying to get as many hours as you can to make your keep. Maybe you're
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doing Uber or DoorDash on the side just in your downtime to make a few extra bucks. You're stringing
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together gigs and contracts. You're not making enough to stop work at 5 o'clock sharp. Who works
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9 to 5 anymore? Well, government bureaucrats do. I've never worked just 9 to 5 in my life. I don't
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think most people can afford to only work 9 to 5. I don't think that Seamus O'Regan is saving workers
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from anything other than in the public sector when they have nothing to worry about anyways.
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By the way, what has Seamus O'Regan ever done for a living? I looked him up, and his entire life he's
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only done politics and that period of time when he hosted a talk show on a government-regulated TV
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channel. How did he get his job at all? And how did he get a cabinet position where he's actually
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supposed to be making big decisions? What's his credential? What's his authority? What did he
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study in school? What's his experience? Has he ever done anything in life? Oh, right, right, right, right.
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Here's his credential. He was a part of Justin Trudeau's wedding party, along with other liberal
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cabinet ministers to come. Yeah, that's how. Stay with us for more.
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Well, it's been a couple days since Justin Trudeau and his finance minister,
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Christian Freeland, introduced the budget. Taxes are up, including carbon taxes. Justin Trudeau
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is absolutely set on that. Capital gains taxes and other things. Basically, as various former
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liberal finance officials have said, it's the most brutal budget in 40 years. It's a tough one for
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liberal proxies around the country to sell. Let me show you what the Calgary mayor, who is a liberal
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by every measure, even if she's not officially a liberal mayor, listen to her talk about life
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when houses are no longer affordable for the ordinary person. Take a look.
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So we're starting to see a segment of the population reject this idea of owning a home,
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and they're moving towards rental because it gives them more freedom.
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They can travel to different places. They can try out different communities. Their job may take them
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from place to place. And so people have become much more liberated around what housing looks like
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and what the tenure of housing looks like. But as municipalities, we haven't kept pace with that
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change. We're still stuck in the 40s, 50s and 60s. You know what? The World Economic Forum said it a lot
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briefer when they said you'll own nothing and you'll be happy. Joining us now from Edmonton is our friend
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Lauren Gunter, senior columnist at the Edmonton Sun. Lauren, I'm not sure if it's true that people are
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rejecting home ownership. I think it's sort of the other way around. People are not qualifying
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for home ownership. They cannot afford home ownership because prices are high, mortgage rates
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are high, prices are rising faster than incomes are rising. I think she's trying to pretend that
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it's a good thing that people are voluntarily choosing, that they're positively rejecting home
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ownership. I think she's fibbing there. Well, I think she's fooling herself. That's the problem
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with progressives is that they will concoct these narratives in their head and tell it to themselves.
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It's not like she sits down with a message massager and says, oh, how do we deal with this?
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You know, nobody can afford a house. So how do we make it look like a positive? She actually believes
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that it will make you freer. The same way that I've given up trying to have meat. So I'm freer in
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my diet now. I don't have to worry about where my next beef is coming from. It's ludicrous. It really
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is. It's the end of the Canadian dream as brought to you by progressive elites who have so messed this
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up. I mean, there are two facts on this that I think bear keeping in mind. One is in their commentary
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on the federal budget, the Canadian Taxpayer Federation said that in the time the Liberals
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have been in power, it's not quite nine years yet, 2015 until now, rents and mortgage payments in Canada
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have doubled. Now, whose income has doubled in that amount? No one's income has doubled. The economy
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hasn't doubled in size. So what you're looking at is housing eating more and more and more into
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the average family's budget. And that is seen in something from the Royal Bank that came out
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about 10 days ago, where they said in 2015, when the Liberals took over, it took 44% of the median
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income to afford a home. Now that's still too steep. In the United States, it's about 37%. And in some
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places, even in Canada, it's below that. But it was on average about 37% in the States, 44% in Canada
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in 2015. Manageable, little hard, but manageable. Now in Canada, it's 63% of the median income in order
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to qualify for a home. So that's why you have both mom and dad working outside the house. That's why
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both of them may have second jobs as well. I mean, if you're just going to afford to get the kids into
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soccer and hockey, go on a short little vacation in the summertime, own a home, you have got to be out
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there earning well in excess of $100,000 in Canada. It is insane. And that's what Gondek is trying to
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justify in a sunny way. I mean, this is Trudeau's old sunny ways. Well, what's the sunny way of
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describing how hard it is to buy a home in Canada? Well, you'll be free. You'll be freer. Think of
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that. It's like, what was, I'm sorry, what was the motto over the concentration camps?
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Arbeit mach frei, work makes you free. Hard work will make you free. Exactly. And this is a saying
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like that, you know, rentership will make you free. Rejecting owning a house will make you free.
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I don't think she, her statement was serious enough to warrant a serious rebuttal. But your
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comment about how much of a paycheck goes towards housing, it's true on both the mortgage side and
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the rental side. So renting is expensive too. Renting does not set you free. It's extremely expensive.
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You just don't build up the equity. You're working for the landlord. And her idea, oh, you go traveling.
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What does that mean? You pack up all your stuff, put it in storage. Like, what does it mean you can
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travel when you rent? Is she saying that you'll stop renting, put everything in long-term storage?
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Like it doesn't even make any sense on its own terms. You've spent so much money on rent. How can
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you afford to travel? That's the reality of it. This is a let them eat cake mentality. And she has two
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homes in Calgary herself, according to disclosures that she's made as a politician. So she, maybe she
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should liberate herself from the burden of having two houses before telling the rest of us.
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It's not just Gondek. I mean, I saw an announcement about 10 days ago where Chrystia Freeland, the deputy
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prime minister and finance minister, was in Victoria to open a new apartment tower that had been built
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largely with federal loan money. About $100 million in federal loan money went into this place and the
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cheapest apartment in it. Now, Freeland said, this is the way Canadians are going to live. So densely
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packed into high-rise towers, not owning, but living in an apartment in this tower. And the crazy thing
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about this is that she never even bothers to check what the heaven's name she's talking about. So
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this tower is called Hudson House. The cheapest apartment was $1,600 a month, which is 11% higher
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than the average apartment price in Victoria. So even with all this federal help, so you remember in the
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budget, $15 billion to build apartments. But even with all this money, this one in Victoria,
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the rent is higher than average. How is that going to deal with the housing affordability crisis?
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And that was for a suite. It's called a micro suite.
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330 square feet? I mean, we've got some video of that. Can I show some video of that? Here's
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Chrystia Freeland bragging about, I mean, it's sort of like if they were to brag about the Arrive
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Can app, which they spent, you know, I mean, this government can't actually do anything. Here,
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let's just watch a minute of this propaganda reel that Chrystia Freeland put up about this
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extraordinary government run apartment. Take a look.
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I am so glad to be here in beautiful Victoria, British Columbia. And I am here at Hudson House.
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You can see amazing views all around me. This is an apartment building that has 227 apartments
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for low and middle income Canadians. And it was built thanks to our apartment construction loan
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program. I am really, really glad that we have that program in place that has built great apartments
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like the ones here and is building more apartments for Canadians from coast to coast to coast.
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There you go. You know what? I mean, the government that can't get your passports
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on time, the government that they really can run nothing. Chrystia Freeland herself before she became
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an MP was a disaster in the one business thing she tried her hand at Reuters next, which was like a
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high tech project. It it's just, it's shocking. It's gross. Do you think anyone's persuaded by it,
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Lauren? No, no, I don't. Because if you're a real family, you say you're a young family with a,
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kid or two, and you're out looking for some place to live, you've outgrown the place that you're in,
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you run up against the reality of this all the time. Every time you go apartment or house shopping,
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you run up against a reality that contradicts what Jody Gondek and Chrystia Freeland and Justin Trudeau
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say about all of this. It's, you know, you don't always run up against it if you happen to live in
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Tabor, Alberta, or Antigonista, Nova Scotia, or some of the smaller communities around the country
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where housing affordability is still there for for a lot of people, maybe even for most people. But if
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you're now in the seven, eight, 10 largest cities in Canada, it's becoming less and less affordable
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all the time, because of government program. Let's take take a look at this $15 billion that the liberals
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are going to give away to help apartment construction in the country. There is so much
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green garbage in it, so many regulations to benefit the environment, to create net zero housing, to
00:22:00.740
create sustainable housing, that there is no way these units are going to cost less than the units
00:22:09.980
that already exist, which means that the rents are going to have to be higher, which means you're going
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to drive the prices up, not down. It has nothing to do with affordability. It has to do with all of
00:22:19.320
their woke dreams in the Liberal Party. And I think that we must mention corruption, because when they
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shoveled billions out the door in a pandemic fuss, oh, it just so happened a lot of it went to former
00:22:31.380
MPs, the husband of a cabinet minister. You know, we're seeing, I mentioned the arrive cam, because
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you know, to make an app, there are companies that make apps for tens of thousands of dollars.
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To make an app with the same functionality for $63 million takes a liberal, because everyone's
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getting a cut, everyone's getting commission, everyone's subcontracting. And I simply do not
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believe that that $15 billion or whatever that's being shoveled out the door will actually go to
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home building. I think maybe a quarter of it will, and the rest will go to every scheme and scam
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out there. And Lauren, I want to say that, of course, what determines a price? Well, supply and
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demand. And what Christopher Phelan was talking about there is providing some supply in the form
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of overpriced apartments, but demand is the issue. Candace Malcolm recently calculated that the total
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number of immigrants to Canada last year was not half a million. It was 2.2 million. 900,000 of them
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were students, foreign students. More than half a million were temporary foreign workers. So right
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there, you've got 1.5 million before you even have people who are on the permanent immigration or
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refugee track. 2.2 million people. Canada added a million people in the last six months. You cannot
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build faster than that. And what's happening, and let me give you the report from Toronto, and I bet it's
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the same in Vancouver and Montreal and probably Edmonton and Calgary, you have three, four, five,
00:24:03.180
six, seven, eight people living in one place. You have houses that are not, it's, and no single
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family units are affordable in places like Toronto. You cannot put 900,000 foreign students in a country
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country and not expect housing to go up faster than anyone can afford. I don't know. I think that's
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a huge issue, Lorne. That is an enormous cause behind all of this, and I'm not anti-immigrant. I'm quite
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happy for us to have a strong flow of immigrants every year, but I am anti-bad arithmetic. These people
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simply can't do the arithmetic. Canada, if it's lucky in a year, builds enough housing for 300,000 people.
00:24:49.560
Okay? So what happens if you add 2.2 million, and you've built enough housing for 300,000? Gee,
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I don't know. Maybe those people start bidding the price up, and it's not their fault. Like,
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you know, we made foreigners the boogeyman in rising house prices for the first eight years of
00:25:10.460
the Liberals' tenure. And, you know, yes, there are some foreign investors who buy mansions and don't
00:25:18.100
live in them, and that sort of inflates the market a bit. But nothing compared to 2.2 million people
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coming looking for a home. And they have every right to look for a home. They didn't ask us to
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invite them in. The Liberals went to the door and went, welcome. Welcome. You know what? I saw a new
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Leger poll saying that new immigrants are actually harder line on immigration than what they identified
00:25:46.220
as white Canadians. It's an interesting survey. I'm going to do a show on it tomorrow. It's not often
00:25:51.440
that you see polling questions broken down by race, ethnicity, national origin. This breaks it down by
00:25:57.220
Indians, Southeast Asian, Chinese. Like, they really get into it. They're not shy. And it's amazing to me
00:26:04.040
which groups are saying, stop. And any white politician that's worried about talking about
00:26:10.180
this issue will have some courage because the people who are clamoring the most for the brake
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pedal here, frankly, they're Chinese Canadians, according to this poll. I'll give all the details
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tomorrow. And I just think it's woke white folks who are saying, keep the floodgates open.
00:26:26.600
Look, look who is the most determined to have the Chinese interference in our elections
00:26:32.400
uncovered. It is diaspora organizations. It's Hong Kongers, Uyghurs. It's all sorts of people
00:26:41.980
who are themselves victims of the Chinese government's surveillance and intimidation
00:26:48.460
who want this out there. And yet, every time somebody else raises this as an issue, the liberals say,
00:26:55.460
oh, you're racist. It's racist to think that China was interfering. It's not. It is simply
00:27:01.960
practical. And these people have messed up so much. They've messed up their dental care program.
00:27:08.480
They messed up their $10 daycare program. They haven't started their pharma care program yet,
00:27:13.540
but I guarantee you it will be messed up too because they simply don't know how to organize
00:27:19.860
things. They can spend money. They can ship the money out the door, as you were saying,
00:27:23.440
but they don't know where to put it. Yeah. I want to leave you with a clip from Newfoundland.
00:27:29.960
Newfoundland is a liberal government with a liberal premier, Andrew Fury. I keep saying Anthony Fury
00:27:35.700
because there's a great journalist in Toronto. He's a good friend named Anthony Fury.
00:27:39.960
That's right. By the way, you know, we see all these polls, but a poll is just a guess. It's a snapshot in
00:27:46.280
time. It's not a prediction of the future. So when you actually have a by-election,
00:27:49.880
a special election, you can't read too much into them because by-elections free people.
00:27:55.760
They can vote strategically. Like rent. Yeah. They free people the way around.
00:28:00.420
That's right. I mean, what I mean by that is in a by-election, people can be a little wilder
00:28:05.180
than if they were thinking, oh, I don't want to mess things up for a general election.
00:28:08.880
So, but just a few days ago in the Newfoundland and Labrador district of Fogo Island,
00:28:16.060
which has been liberal since forever, the conservative candidate won pretty handily.
00:28:22.600
Now, maybe that's a protest vote. And remember, that's a provincial district.
00:28:26.000
So can you really hang it around the neck of Justin Trudeau? Well, I think these days,
00:28:30.480
the word liberal is tainted by Justin Trudeau. And so much so, take a look at this. Here is the liberal
00:28:37.720
premier of Newfoundland, not just saying he's against carbon taxes, but sort of accusing Trudeau
00:28:45.620
of being nasty. Here, take a look at the clip for yourself. Take a look.
00:28:48.980
On the carbon tax in particular, the prime minister has tried to bait me at times with
00:28:53.960
certain ad hominems and name calling almost. But look, we have a very different opinion on the
00:29:02.480
carbon tax. It's not right for the people of the province right now. I wish the prime minister
00:29:07.480
would understand that. He's being very sclerotic in his approach on this ideologic marriage that
00:29:12.120
he has, this principle. That's not to say that we don't believe in fighting climate change. We
00:29:18.760
You know what? I don't know much about Premier Fury, but the fact that he feels politically
00:29:26.380
comfortable taking a few shots at Trudeau and taking a stand against the carbon tax tells me he's
00:29:32.220
been listening to the ground. He's been listening to his people. He doesn't care about Trudeau or the
00:29:37.500
Ottawa clique or the Ottawa media. He's more worried about Fogo Island. And he's decided that going with
00:29:44.100
affordability is more important than going with ideology. I thought that was hopeful.
00:29:49.060
Yeah. Yeah, I think it is too. And I think you would find that just about every premier in the
00:29:56.180
country is prepared to take a run at Trudeau right now. And that's how unpopular he is.
00:30:02.220
You know, our mutual friend, Lori Goldstein, had a piece today that ran in the Sun papers that said,
00:30:08.860
Trudeau used to be Teflon. Now he's Velcro. And you're starting to see that in all of the interactions
00:30:16.500
between other politicians and him. You know, you even I think you even see that from a couple of liberal
00:30:22.280
senators who have who have said things that are anti the government in a very mild way, but still
00:30:30.220
something you would never have seen under Chrétien, for example, who was the whipcracker.
00:30:35.940
Yeah. Well, very interesting times, Lorne. Great to see you. Thanks for taking the time with us.
00:30:41.960
There you have it. Lorne Gunter, senior columnist with the Edmonton Sun. Stay with us. More ahead.
00:30:46.220
Hey, welcome back. Your letters to me. Trish Herskorn, if I'm saying that right, says,
00:31:03.700
was stunned with the guilty verdict when days prior, it appeared that the prosecutors didn't
00:31:08.440
really have any valid grounds for their indictments against these three gentlemen.
00:31:12.240
You're talking about the case of the Coutts three. I have to admit, I was surprised as well. I was
00:31:19.460
surprised for two reasons. I didn't think that the charges had substance to them. I didn't think that
00:31:25.580
the whatever the case against the men was, it didn't rise to the burden of proof required to be
00:31:31.720
convicted of a crime, namely, proof beyond a reasonable doubt. And I thought the jury, which I saw
00:31:39.000
being empaneled, I thought the jury looked like good, solid Southern Alberta folks, severely normal
00:31:47.200
folks, not pernicious and vendetta-driven prosecutors. Well, I guess the jurors had a different point of view.
00:31:55.640
I was surprised. We'll have to see what the sentence is. Could range from anything like a slap on the wrist
00:32:02.160
to actual jail time. William Telefee says, bring this to the Supreme Court now. This is empowering
00:32:12.400
this tyrannical government. Well, like I said before, in about 90 days, there will be a sentencing hearing
00:32:20.700
and the verdict could be appealed or the sentence or both. Now, I honestly don't know how it works
00:32:30.540
in the case of a jury trial. I'm sorry, I just don't have that much experience and it's been
00:32:35.340
about 20 years since I myself practiced law. But I think, you know, I don't know what the grounds would
00:32:43.620
be. By the way, you can't go straight to the Supreme Court in Canada. You have to go to a
00:32:49.240
provincial court of appeal first and the Supreme Court only picks and chooses what it wants to hear
00:32:56.180
because it's just one court. And unless you're appealing a murder conviction, you really don't
00:33:03.020
have the vast majority of cases that seek to be heard at the Supreme Court are rejected.
00:33:10.140
I think that really the controversy will be what is the sentence?
00:33:14.580
Theoretically, a mischief charge could yield as much as, I think, 10 years in jail.
00:33:21.920
I think that the Crown will probably be asking for a period of months in jail. I think that the
00:33:28.320
defense will ask for no custodial time, just a suspended sentence. If I had to guess, and I hate to do it,
00:33:36.520
I hate to say it, and I don't know what's in the mind of this judge, I would say it's not unlikely
00:33:44.500
that there could be a 30-day sentence the men would be out earlier than that. I hope that doesn't come
00:33:49.900
to pass, but that's just if you were pressing me to make my guess. Elmo says, have them walk across
00:33:58.120
the border into America and claim political asylum. Yeah, it's not a bad idea, but these men are rooted
00:34:04.340
in Alberta. They have families there. They're not running away. And as you heard Alex Van Herc say
00:34:11.520
the other day, in a way he accepts the verdict of his peers. He doesn't agree with it, but these are
00:34:18.800
not men looking to shirk their punishment. That's the style of Mahatma Gandhi's civil disobedience.
00:34:26.440
You break the law knowingly and peacefully, and you don't try and run away from the consequences.
00:34:31.540
You bear the consequences because you feel it would be unjust to obey the law and also inappropriate
00:34:41.360
to dodge the consequences. It's a very unusual thing what Gandhi did, and I saw a little bit of
00:34:47.120
a whiff of that listening to how Alex Van Herc talked about he disagrees with the verdict, but he'll
00:34:52.080
bear it. I don't know. I thought that was actually touching how he talked about that, but hopefully there
00:34:56.320
will be no custodial sentence. We'll see. That's our show for today. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all
00:35:02.860
of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night, and keep fighting for freedom.