EZRA LEVANT | What did we learn from last night's Conservative leadership debate?
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 4 minutes
Words per Minute
168.29265
Summary
The Conservative Party Leadership Debate was the worst debate I've ever seen, and I'm here to make a case for why it was one of the worst debates I've seen in a long time. Here are some clips from the debate, including a few clips from our friends Candice Malcolm Malcolm and Jamil Giovanni.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hello, my friends. I go through the Conservative Party leadership debate,
00:00:04.220
which was awful. I have to say I've watched probably 100 debates in my time.
00:00:08.500
American presidential debates, Canadian debates, provincial debates, even municipal debates,
00:00:14.540
debates, debates, debates. This was the worst I've ever seen. And I think I'll make that case to you.
00:00:22.340
Boy, it's something. You can hear it if you're listening to a podcast, but boy,
00:00:26.720
I'd like you to see it. It's just unbelievable. Tom Clark, a liberal lobbyist, was the moderator.
00:00:33.000
I don't know how that happened, but it did. You got to see it with your eyes. That's why I want
00:00:37.180
you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus. That's the video version of the podcast. Just
00:00:42.300
go to rebelnewsplus.com. Click subscribe. It's eight bucks a month. You get my show every night,
00:00:48.140
plus four weekly shows. That's a lot of stuff for just eight bucks a month.
00:00:52.140
rebelnewsplus.com. Click subscribe. We don't get any money from Trudeau,
00:00:56.400
so we rely on these subscriptions. All right, here's today's video.
00:01:14.140
Tonight, the Conservative Party leadership debate doesn't tell us a lot about the Conservative
00:01:19.520
Leadership Candidates. They've told us a lot about the media. It's May 12th, and this is
00:01:27.820
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
00:01:31.500
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
00:01:35.560
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody
00:01:41.420
I'm not a member of any party, haven't been for more than 10 years, but I got to tell you,
00:01:51.180
I am very engrossed by the Conservative Party leadership race. I wasn't the last time around
00:01:58.660
when Aaron O'Toole slouched across the finish line, and I didn't even find it interesting
00:02:03.500
that much when Andrew Scheer squeaked by Maxime Bernier to take the party over.
00:02:10.040
But this time, it feels different because there's a genuine choice there, a strong clash of opinions.
00:02:17.120
I think it's great. And I think we saw this in not last night's leadership debates, but the ones
00:02:23.560
very recently held not by the party itself, but by Preston Manning's old think tank.
00:02:29.560
The moderators were our friends Candace Malcolm of True North and Jamil Giovanni. I want to show
00:02:35.860
you a few excerpts from them. It was a brawl. It was a rollicking debate, and that's the whole
00:02:43.000
point of debates. Show a clash of ideas. Show the clear choices. Here are some clips from that debate.
00:02:49.560
I'm going to begin with you, Mr. Paliyev, and I want to start with the trucker convoy. It's
00:02:54.620
something we've already been discussing. You've been criticized for your support for the trucker
00:02:58.900
convoy. One of your fellow candidates has even said you should be disqualified for leadership
00:03:03.660
of the party based on your engagement with the convoy. As we all know, public opinion on the
00:03:09.760
trucker convoy is sharply divided. The Trudeau government and the mainstream media have gone
00:03:14.340
to great lengths to vilify the truckers. And back in February, you said that you were, quote,
00:03:20.120
proud of them. That's right. Has your opinion on the trucker convoy changed since? And is your
00:03:25.860
support of the truckers a liability moving forward? No and no. My position has not changed.
00:03:33.400
I said at the very outset before they even arrived that I simultaneously stood with the
00:03:38.020
law-abiding and peaceful truckers who were fighting for their livelihoods and liberties
00:03:42.360
while condemning any individual who breaks the law, blocks critical infrastructure, or behaves badly.
00:03:49.620
That is the position I took then. It's the position I take now.
00:03:52.620
Now, Mr. Charest learned about the trucker convoy on CBC, like other liberals, and he misrepresented
00:03:58.720
them. He believes that I should be censored. He believes I should be canceled from this leadership
00:04:06.700
race and disqualified, in his words, because I don't share his liberal viewpoint. That is the
00:04:11.920
kind of cancel culture and censorship you would expect from Justin Trudeau, but instead we're
00:04:16.820
getting it from this liberal on this stage. And frankly, Mr. Charest, for you to talk
00:04:23.920
about law and order is a little bit rich given that your party, your liberal party, took a
00:04:28.700
half million dollars of illegal donations when you were the head of that party. The average
00:04:33.460
trucker has more integrity in his pinky finger than you had in your entire scandal-plague liberal
00:04:40.260
cabinet. So I do stand up for the freedoms of Canadians, and I acknowledge that the working
00:04:51.760
class has been demolished in this country over the last couple of years. We don't need elites
00:04:57.360
who have been able to rely on special contracts with Huawei to look down on them and call them
00:05:03.000
criminals. Instead, we need to stand up for the people who are struggling and give them hope
00:05:10.600
Next to you, Mr. Charest. You led a liberal government in Quebec, and your record as
00:05:16.080
premier includes raising taxes and introducing a cap-and-trade program. Many conservatives don't
00:05:21.880
connect with you, and frankly, some are wondering why you're running for leader of this party.
00:05:26.760
So I'm wondering if you can set the record straight. Are you a conservative?
00:05:31.380
Thank you very much. And Roman, thank you for your comments. And Leslyn, I have
00:05:37.140
a deep respect for the position that you hold on the issue of abortion. And I want to say
00:05:42.320
a word about social conservatives tonight, because we may not agree on all issues, but
00:05:47.740
who are the people who call themselves social conservatives? And I'm not a hyphenated conservative.
00:05:53.800
But who are they, if not people who have a faith-based life, believe in their families and their communities?
00:06:01.800
They sound like pretty good people to me. And they are part of our family, and they will
00:06:06.240
always be part of our family, and they need to be respected.
00:06:09.980
Now, in this room tonight is Preston Manning, who called before this debate that we act respectfully
00:06:17.320
in the view of uniting the party after the leadership race. Well, so much for that, Pierre.
00:06:25.020
In this race, I stand with a record as a conservative all my life. I'll give you an example, Candace.
00:06:32.660
I believe in fiscal conservatism. The Liberal government that succeeded me, Mr. Couillard
00:06:37.940
that followed, left an $8 billion surplus after 15 years to Mr. Legault. $8 billion. You're
00:06:44.780
not going to see that in your lifetime again. A higher credit rating in Quebec than Ontario.
00:06:51.160
We reduced taxes. In fact, I reduced taxes in 2007-8, income taxes for middle-class, lower-income
00:06:59.000
Quebecers, which actually allowed Quebecers to do better than Canada, the United States,
00:07:04.080
or Europe, or Ontario during the Great Recession. The credit rating agency says one of the key
00:07:09.500
decisions for us, having a better performance, more jobs, more economic growth, was the fact
00:07:15.260
that I reduced taxes, which was opposed by this person here, Pierre Pellievre. He was
00:07:20.040
opposed to it back then. So enough of the hypocrisy. On the Hill, I agree with Scott. This mess
00:07:27.780
that we've witnessed is the fault of Mr. Trudeau. But Mr. Pellievre, during that period, supported
00:07:34.020
an illegal blockade. You cannot make laws and break laws and then say I will make laws for
00:07:41.020
other people. I'm sorry, but that is a question of basic foundation in my life.
00:07:50.480
You could say it was bruising. That would be a fair term. Pierre Pelliev and Jean Charest
00:07:55.020
in particular. Going at it, the issue, in part, one of the many issues, of course, being the truckers.
00:08:01.280
Were they criminals conducting an illegal blockade, as Jean Charest said? Or were they
00:08:05.740
freedom fighters, as Pierre Pelliev would say? I thought it was a great debate, but the media
00:08:10.980
party didn't say so. They don't like rambunctious conservatives. They don't like all this talk about
00:08:16.420
freedom. They don't like any populism. They want people like Aaron O'Toole and Andrew Scheer.
00:08:22.400
Basically, they tolerated house conservatives of the media party, of the establishment. They
00:08:29.440
didn't like this much. You can see that in all the headlines. It was universally panned
00:08:33.480
by everyone other than the conservative party members themselves, who seemed to love it.
00:08:39.620
I thought it was a very clarifying debate, and congrats to Jamil Giovanni and Candace Malcolm
00:08:44.280
for chairing it. Well, last night was the first official debate. I don't know why there was such
00:08:50.900
a thing. Why wouldn't the party just allow any old group to have a debate? Well, the party has a
00:08:56.060
couple. One was last night, and they have another French-language debate coming up. But I understand
00:09:00.020
that it is mandatory for the candidates to participate, and if they don't, they are fined
00:09:05.540
$50,000, which is quite something. So they were all there. There were 1,000 people gathered at the
00:09:12.540
convention center in Edmonton. It looked like it was very exciting. I don't know if you caught our show
00:09:18.060
last night. Tamara Ugolini and I were sitting here in Toronto live-streaming the event, and we had
00:09:23.000
four reporters on the scene, on the ground in Edmonton. We talked to them a bit last night, and
00:09:27.880
they said it was very exciting at first, until things got really weird really quickly. Now, I sort of
00:09:35.400
had a premonition that they would when I heard the strangest thing. You're in Alberta, which is the
00:09:40.980
conservative heartland. It's the place where the Reform Party was built. It was where Stephen Harper and
00:09:46.520
Preston Manning and Jason Kenney and Ralph Klein, all these conservative people are from there.
00:09:51.900
It's where, pound for pound, the conservative party is the strongest. It's where conservative
00:09:56.300
media are the strongest. We are quite strong in Alberta, too. There's the Western Standard online.
00:10:01.460
There's even some conservatives left in the mainstream media. Our friend Lauren Gunter at
00:10:06.680
the Edmonton Sun, our friend Rick Bell of the Calgary Sun. But bizarrely, and this is what spooked
00:10:12.380
me from the get-go, I learned that they were going to fly in from Ottawa to Edmonton, a Liberal Party
00:10:20.020
lobbyist named Tom Clark, who almost a decade ago, you might have known him as a TV man. He was with
00:10:27.340
CTV, and then he quit them in a huff when they didn't promote him to National Nightly Anchor, and then
00:10:33.020
he worked for Global for a year, a few years. He was a very pro-liberal, not a particularly effective or
00:10:41.000
bright journalist, but he had a good look to him, and he had a nice voice. He was chatty.
00:10:45.820
So he was a liberal, and if you doubt me, look at this. Here is, I think, the defining moment of who
00:10:53.200
Tom Clark is and was. He's a pilot, and that's quite an accomplishment, and he has a little plane,
00:11:00.480
which is wonderful, and he had this shtick of going up in the air with a newsmaker and interviewing
00:11:06.840
them while flying in his little plane, and it's a little unusual. It's a bit of a show-off move. I
00:11:12.720
suppose if I was a pilot, I would absolutely want to show off that way, too, but it was actually
00:11:17.700
amazing in that the politician you're grilling cannot run away, can't say, oh, I'm late for
00:11:25.540
another appointment. There's no one else in the plane to interrupt and say, oh, the candidate has to go.
00:11:30.120
There's no storming off. You are stuck in that plane with a reporter. Oh, my God. Think of the
00:11:39.140
questions you could ask. You could ask the most personal things, the most daring things,
00:11:44.760
and you just would be trapped in there for at least, I don't know, if you're up in the air to
00:11:49.220
come down 20 minutes, let's say. Here is what Tom Clark thought. Everyone, in fact, he says it's what
00:11:56.660
everyone wanted to know. Here is the question he put to Justin Trudeau when he had Trudeau in his
00:12:02.780
plate. So I guess the first thing I should ask you is, are you feeling lucky? The entire country wants
00:12:08.620
to know, what shampoo do you use? What a disappointing answer this is going to be. Whatever happens to be
00:12:17.020
hanging around at the time. That is so deeply embarrassing. I can't even believe it. That's Tom
00:12:23.540
Clark. That was him at his apex. That was the great Tom Clark in his prime. Not long after that,
00:12:29.980
he left to join Global Public Affairs as a lobbyist. You can check. He is a registered
00:12:34.560
Canadian lobbyist. He hasn't done journalism for years other than he was hired by his old friend,
00:12:41.280
Justin Trudeau, perhaps as a reward for those softball shampoo questions. And he was hired to vet
00:12:48.180
people who were to be recruited by the CBC. So he was the person that Justin Trudeau trusted
00:12:56.740
to choose who would run the state broadcaster. That tells you exactly who he is. So when I learned
00:13:03.340
that he was going to be flown in from his lobby firm in Ottawa to Edmonton, because apparently in a
00:13:11.500
province of what's the population there now, almost five million, whatever it is, you can't find a
00:13:17.720
single person who could moderate this debate. You can't find a journalist. You can't find a
00:13:22.840
professor. You can't find some professional emcee. You can't find some party elder. You cannot find
00:13:29.360
anyone, not only in Alberta, but nowhere in the West. You need to go to Ottawa and pluck someone out of
00:13:36.940
the deep state, someone who has never shown any interest in conservative or Western things.
00:13:42.440
And the only time he's expressed himself on politics, he's a hard pro-liberal activist. I mean,
00:13:49.460
he hasn't tweeted a lot lately since he's joined the lobby firm, but here's a couple of them.
00:13:53.820
Here's one of them where he likes someone mocking the conservative party short-lived civil liberties
00:14:01.100
caucus. Why are you liking someone mocking civil liberties? Or are you mocking the conservatives?
00:14:08.180
It's tough to tell. Here's another one where he wants everyone to see, and again, he's just
00:14:13.720
retweeting and liking someone denouncing the truckers. All right, those are legitimate points
00:14:20.720
of view, and I'm not here trying to cancel Tom Clark. I'm just saying Tom Clark is exactly what
00:14:26.780
you think he is, exactly what he says he is. He is a registered lobbyist who lives his whole life
00:14:33.980
in Ottawa and works for the man. He literally works for Justin Trudeau. And someone in the
00:14:39.680
conservative party thought, he's the best person in this entire country to moderate amongst the
00:14:46.800
candidates. It was so bizarre. But as the debate started yesterday, I thought, maybe I've been too
00:14:54.440
harsh on him. Maybe he'll really do some homework here and he'll have great questions. I was
00:15:00.680
immediately disappointed, and it was actually worse than I thought. The first thing I heard
00:15:06.540
was a lot of Tom Clark. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if you added up the amount of talk time
00:15:14.000
that Tom Clark actually had more than some of the candidates on the stage. In fact, there were a few
00:15:20.200
very shocking sort of Joe Biden seniors moment moments when Tom Clark forgot to ask questions
00:15:29.680
of certain of the candidates. There were six candidates on stage, and Tom Clark on several
00:15:34.280
occasions just simply forgot that there were people there and had to come back to them. It was
00:15:38.740
very embarrassing. But the most embarrassing thing was that Tom Clark insisted on these bizarre rules.
00:15:46.300
I don't know if he himself drafted the rules or the conservative party did, but the way he enforced
00:15:51.660
them was truly bizarre. He scolded and denounced any of the people in the thousand-seat auditorium.
00:15:59.920
If they gave any feedback at all, if they clapped, if they booed, if they cheered in any way,
00:16:05.580
he would stop the debate and scold them. You know, take a look at this when they cheered.
00:16:11.720
You'd be master of your own destiny and a captain of your own life. Thank you.
00:16:21.880
All right. Folks, here's the deal. Supporters of any candidate, the time that you cheer is going
00:16:28.360
to be taken away from your candidate. Just so you know, that's the way the deal works here.
00:16:34.360
But on this issue, let's, can we be clear on one thing? Every candidate in this race needs to tell
00:16:40.820
the women of Canada where they stand, whether they're pro or against. They, the women of Canada,
00:16:45.800
deserve to know where they stand. And Mr. Poliev's answer, quite frankly, does not fit that test.
00:16:55.640
And why in both cases was he penalizing Pierre Poliev and only Pierre Poliev? How did he know who the clappers were?
00:17:14.340
And look, if you don't want any noise from the crowd, why did you invite them? I've had the pleasure in my life
00:17:20.340
on occasion to speak before hundreds and even thousands of people. It's incredibly thrilling.
00:17:25.780
There's an adrenaline rush. You get energy off it. You rise to the occasion. I mean, you can just
00:17:31.560
imagine the difference between a performance in studio of an artist, a singer versus a performance
00:17:36.920
in a stadium. I mean, think of the greatest rock and roll concerts of all time. They're in large
00:17:42.100
stadiums when the energy is massive. Why would you have a thousand revved up partisans in a room and
00:17:48.460
then shush them like you're in some library? It was deeply embarrassing, but nothing compares
00:17:54.740
to this clownish, sad trombone sound. When I say clownish, that's not an insult. That's a description.
00:18:04.380
Tom Clark said that if these six candidates even mentioned Justin Trudeau's name or even mentioned
00:18:12.860
him as the prime minister, that he would interrupt them and play this sad clown sound. Take a listen.
00:18:22.460
But what we asked you to do was to finish this sentence. My vision for Canada is you will have 45
00:18:32.460
seconds in which to tell us what your vision is. And but there's a twist and you know it. You can't
00:18:40.660
mention any other candidate on the stage and you can't mention any other federal leader. If you do,
00:18:46.520
there's going to be trouble. And here's what you're going to hear.
00:18:53.320
Now, I know that Tom Clark loves Justin Trudeau. We saw the shampoo question. I know
00:18:59.180
that Tom Clark works for Justin Trudeau, that CBC gig. I know that. But at least for one night,
00:19:06.480
he was paid handsomely by the Conservative Party of Canada to, I don't know, to vet the candidates who
00:19:12.720
have a job, which is to defeat and displace Justin Trudeau. These six candidates are their whole
00:19:20.420
purpose, their mission. The reason this contest is afoot is they want to choose the one best able
00:19:27.200
to defeat Justin Trudeau in the election. That is the job description. It is not
00:19:31.580
a distraction. It is not an insult. It is the mission of the official opposition to become
00:19:38.260
the government. And it's the mission of the leader of the opposition to displace the prime minister.
00:19:43.640
Why on earth would a moderator of a Conservative Party debate say the one person you cannot mention
00:19:51.740
is the liberal prime minister? I mean, I know why Justin Trudeau would love that.
00:19:56.280
No criticisms of him. But why on earth would any debate moderator say that? Why of all things is
00:20:03.600
that off limits? Who says who? Isn't that exactly what the thousand people in that room and the
00:20:10.640
thousands watching on TV wanted to see? How would you take on Justin Trudeau? It's like a job interview.
00:20:16.180
Tell me how you would take on Justin Trudeau. What would you do to take on Justin Trudeau? That was the
00:20:20.780
one thing that the clownish Tom Clark would not allow. It was bizarre. And he played that
00:20:27.400
wah, wah, wah, wah trombone sound like it was, I don't know, The Price is Right or The Gong Show or
00:20:34.100
some goofy daytime TV show. Take a look. And all parties are guilty of it. I'll give you the most
00:20:41.380
obvious example. And I'm going to use the name of another party leader now because I think I'm allowed
00:20:45.220
to. But if you look at the way the prime minister used vaccine mandates and actually divided Canadians
00:20:51.000
by demonizing one great person. You know the rules. You just broke them. We're moving on. Okay.
00:20:55.620
All right. Oh, talk about clownery. There was this one moment where they handed out little ping pong
00:21:03.640
paddles and the candidates had to hold up the ping pong paddle when they wanted to speak, but they could
00:21:09.560
only do it a certain number of times. And once they had exhausted their paddle time, they were forced to
00:21:17.220
remain silent. Tom Clark would not call on them, even if they were, had something to say, even if they
00:21:23.920
were being debated about or attacked by another candidate. Once you used your paddle times, you
00:21:29.700
couldn't talk anymore. Take a look. Now moving on to the next segment of the debate, which is called
00:21:36.920
Faceoff. And before we start that, I'd like to bring Em up, who is going to give you all a prop.
00:21:43.800
And I'll explain to everybody what this is all about. So as we are handing these out, this in a way
00:21:51.640
is the segment that you've all been waiting for when the candidates can choose who they want to debate
00:21:58.180
on any particular issue. And here's the way it's going to work. I'll introduce the topic of the debate
00:22:03.660
to a candidate. Not the question, just the topic. And then you decide, you tell the audience who you want to
00:22:11.160
debate this with. Once you've chosen your opponent, I will then tell you what the question is.
00:22:17.980
There will be three rounds of the person you have chosen to debate. The first round, each person gets a minute
00:22:25.080
each. The second round, you get 45 seconds each. The third round, you get 30 seconds each. Now this is where
00:22:32.400
it gets interesting and why you have the prop in your hand. After we've done the three rounds between
00:22:38.240
the two people, anybody else can answer this by simply raising your paddle. And you will have a guaranteed
00:22:45.500
30 seconds to put your 30 seconds in with. Here's the trick. There are six questions and you can only
00:22:55.380
use your paddle five times. You can use it all on one question if you want, or you can use it wherever
00:23:01.460
you think you have the greatest advantage. So there is some strategy involved here. And I wish you good
00:23:08.780
luck with this. I swear it was like some reality show or some goofy entertainment show. It was not
00:23:15.400
serious in any way. Everything was so short. There were some questions that were only given a 15 second
00:23:22.440
response time. It was also goofy and Tom Clark, I don't know, he really came across like he was a game
00:23:30.080
show host. And he started off by saying it was going to be a serious debate. And for the first few
00:23:36.760
seconds, I believed him. But whether it was lack of preparation, lack of imagination, or he was
00:23:42.280
literally a mole trying to undermine the conservatives, the largest section in the entire debate was not
00:23:49.760
about foreign policy, was not about economic policy, was not about political campaign tactics. It was
00:23:57.660
reality TV style, bachelorette TV style questions like, I don't know, what book are you,
00:24:06.760
reading? What music are you listening to? Who, what historical figure would you like to have dinner
00:24:14.180
with? If you binged watch a show on Netflix, what would it be? Those four questions, he actually
00:24:25.280
With Mr. Charest and Mr. Charest, the very first question I have for you is what book are you reading
00:24:29.960
now? What book are you reading now? Oh, I'm Mr. Charest and I wanted to ask you and give everybody
00:24:37.380
a chance. There's a question and there's a twist to the answer. I want to know who your political
00:24:43.340
hero is and you cannot say Winston Churchill. Thank you all very much. That was actually really
00:24:50.900
interesting to hear all that. Dr. Lewis, I'm going to start with you and then of course everybody else
00:24:56.680
gets a chance. I know you're all busy. I know that you've got, you've got stuff that you're doing
00:25:00.980
right now, but when you have the opportunity to sit down and listen to some music, what do you listen
00:25:06.700
to? I would say. I want to go to a question, maybe a little more lighthearted to getting to know you a
00:25:13.260
little bit more. I, and there were a lot of people who want to know this. It's not just me, trust me.
00:25:19.680
But, uh, Mr. Baber, what was the last thing that you binge watched on TV?
00:25:28.900
Um, what historical figure from any time, anywhere would you most like to have dinner with?
00:25:37.120
I think it was Patrick Brown last night who answered saying, look, I'm on a campaign. I'm
00:25:40.780
running around this country. I'm not curling up with a nice book to while away the time. It was a
00:25:45.920
bizarre question. I mean, have one of those just for a lighthearted moment to cleanse the palate,
00:25:50.840
but it was seriously the longest part of the entire show, the entire debate where these,
00:25:56.660
and, and it dawned on me that maybe that shampoo question that Tom Clark put to Justin Trudeau,
00:26:04.140
maybe that wasn't just softball. Maybe that's the true intellectual level at which Tom Clark operates.
00:26:12.100
I mean, seriously, the shampoo question, how is that any different from the, from the Netflix
00:26:16.600
question? Look at it again in the light of his disastrous performance last night.
00:26:21.020
So I guess the first thing I should ask you is, are you feeling lucky?
00:26:24.000
I mean, the entire country wants to know, what shampoo do you use?
00:26:30.620
What a disappointing answer this is going to be. Whatever happens to be hanging around at the time.
00:26:36.500
I think the only thing more embarrassing is that Justin Trudeau gave a thoughtful answer
00:26:40.620
to the shampoo question like he was ready for. Look, I'm not the only one that was criticizing.
00:26:45.140
The entire internet was just shocked with Tom Clark. The fact that he was exhumed and shipped in from
00:26:51.960
his lobby firm, no one could understand it. And everyone was appalled by it. I mean, you know,
00:26:58.820
whether it was Evan Solomon of CTV or Paul Wells, formerly of McLean's,
00:27:02.940
I think it was universally panned as the worst debate in Canadian history. And I'd have to agree.
00:27:09.100
Now, there were some substantive questions asked by Tom Clark. Now, again, you're in Alberta and
00:27:16.080
you're in Edmonton, a city I've had the pleasure of living in myself. Gateway to the North is one of
00:27:21.940
its nicknames, along with City of Champions. Gateway to North, what does that mean? Well, it means
00:27:27.560
exactly that. If you want to go to the Yukon and Northwest Territories, you're probably going
00:27:32.880
through Edmonton. And more practically, it means the oil sands. Edmonton is the gateway to the
00:27:39.220
world's third largest reserves of oil. Oil is very much in the news these days, what with Russia's
00:27:45.680
energy sales to the West, oil and gas and pipelines. And yet, instead of talking about the oil sands or
00:27:53.340
pipelines, instead of talking about other Western conservative rural issues, instead of talking
00:27:58.880
about, oh, I don't know, firearms, instead of talking about equalization payments for the West,
00:28:04.360
instead of talking about Alberta's place in the West or the Western, in the country or other Western
00:28:10.540
provinces, the questions that Tom Clark was obsessed with are the questions that Justin Trudeau would want
00:28:19.400
to talk about. He literally kicked off by talking about an American court case called Roe v. Wade,
00:28:27.220
a case that has not and has never applied to Canada, has no ramifications for Canada whatsoever.
00:28:35.280
But Tom Clark wanted to talk about abortion and smoke out where the conservatives stood on that.
00:28:41.080
And he was relentless on it, because that's what Trudeau would want him to talk about. I say again,
00:28:45.980
I don't know if Tom Clark actually was a Liberal Party mole. I now believe he's not actually clever
00:28:51.920
enough to do such a mission. But I should say, if he was a Liberal Party mole, what would he have done
00:29:00.520
differently other than talk about Roe v. Wade? There was another debate question that was so
00:29:11.200
out of place, it was bizarre. I'm interested in Indigenous issues. And you know what Justin Trudeau
00:29:15.420
says he is too. He said that giving drinkable water on Northern Indian Reserves was his top priority.
00:29:22.160
Well, it's been seven years since Trudeau was elected, and there are still dozens of boil water
00:29:26.860
advisories. Trudeau can't wait to ship billions of dollars to any foreign country that gives him a
00:29:33.300
reception in the photo op, but he still has not solved the problem of unclean drinking water in
00:29:38.160
Canada's Northern Reserves. So if you were going to ask a question about Indian affairs, about Indigenous
00:29:44.540
rights, I would think that that would be a place to start. You could talk about many issues. You could
00:29:50.680
talk even, if you want to, about reconciliation. You could talk about missing and murdered Indigenous
00:29:56.100
women. But I think that Tom Clark last thought about politics when he was working at Global
00:30:03.640
News. And so he asked a question about a 1995 study that's so obscure, it's called the Truth and
00:30:09.900
Reconciliation Commission. They had like 90 plus recommendations, some of which were very odd,
00:30:15.540
like having a national day off of work for, yeah, that's just one example. That's actually one of the
00:30:22.200
least odd ones. And instead of asking a genuine question, he put this weird question, do you accept
00:30:30.940
every one of the 90 plus recommendations? And if not, tell me the one you don't. So this is a document
00:30:38.060
that is seven years old. Really no one's talked about it in seven years. It was really a response to the
00:30:44.360
Harper government. You've had seven years of Trudeau in power, seven years of him making problems,
00:30:50.880
breaking promises. Tom Clark thinks it's 2015. So he's not just asking about the 1995, sorry, the 2015
00:31:00.520
Truth and Reconciliation Commission. His question is a pure gotcha question. He's not asking a
00:31:06.680
substantive question. He's asking, name one of the 90 plus recommendations. That's like the trick
00:31:12.400
question that they played on George W. Bush when he was running for office 20 odd years ago. Name the
00:31:18.660
president of Kazakhstan. What's the prime minister of Kyrgyzstan. It's more a jeopardy question. It's not a
00:31:26.600
question that goes to knowledge adjustment. Here, take a look. We're going to go to the final question now. It's
00:31:30.420
Mr. Polyev. Mr. Polyev, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission presented its final report in 2015. That is
00:31:37.400
seven years ago. And it contained 94 recommendations. Would you make all would you make a commitment to
00:31:45.220
implementing all 94 recommendations? Okay, and I just want to bring you and Dr. Lewis in because
00:31:51.100
there was just one thing I didn't quite understand. Would you, Dr. Lewis, implement all 94 recommendations?
00:31:57.200
I will implement any recommendation that uplifts the lives of Indigenous people. We have let them down.
00:32:05.920
Even our missing and murdered Aboriginal women, we have not committed to even dealing with that issue,
00:32:12.020
which is a fundamental issue that affects the core of the society on reserves.
00:32:18.520
Okay. Mr. Brown, if we don't implement all 94, what ones would we not implement of the 94? Choose one
00:32:27.880
that you would not implement. I think there should be questions about Indigenous issues, including
00:32:32.360
economic opportunity. They're in the city. That's the gateway to the oil sands. The oil sands are the
00:32:38.140
largest employer of Indigenous people in the country. Tom Clark doesn't know that because
00:32:43.600
he's an Ottawa lobbyist. He doesn't know anything about the West. He didn't prepare. He killed time
00:32:48.700
by asking about TV shows and music and movies. He doesn't know any conservative issues or Western
00:32:55.680
issues, and he couldn't be bothered to try them. There was actually moments where they were booing
00:33:01.320
Tom Clark. It was deeply embarrassing, but not embarrassing enough for him to stop.
00:33:08.080
You know, it put the candidates in a pickle because after one, two, three inane questions
00:33:13.220
more suited for a daytime game show, what do you do as a candidate? Do you go along with it to show
00:33:19.900
you're a good sport, or do you sort of take on the moderator and stink up the joint and object?
00:33:25.800
It's a tough call because you don't want to seem to be uncooperative within the party, but the party
00:33:32.160
threw them into this barrel with this liberal activist. What's so telling is that Tom Clark
00:33:39.500
didn't talk about certain things. He didn't talk about anything that could possibly embarrass Justin
00:33:47.240
Trudeau. He didn't talk about the fact that the price of housing in Canada has doubled under Justin
00:33:54.280
Trudeau's watch. In fact, in the last year alone in some cities, it's up nearly 30%.
00:33:58.280
He didn't talk about the price of gasoline at the pumps, which is partly due to world forces,
00:34:07.360
global forces, but largely due to Trudeau's taxes, including his carbon tax that he raises year after
00:34:12.960
year. He didn't talk about inflation, and he didn't talk about other issues like China and China's
00:34:21.640
seizure, for example, the two Michaels, China's threats to Canada in terms of industrial espionage
00:34:27.560
and economics. Any question that could possibly embarrass Justin Trudeau was simply ignored by
00:34:35.000
Tom Clark, or maybe he's never heard of them because he lives in that Ottawa liberal bubble.
00:34:40.340
I think the only interesting moment of the debate, if I may say so, was afterwards when there was a
00:34:49.300
scrum. Now, unlike the debates, the journalistic, the media scrum was not a requirement of the
00:34:56.740
candidates. They were not fined for not attending. And interestingly, Pierre Polyev did not attend the Q&A
00:35:03.520
afterwards. But the other candidates did. And the most absurd thing was, the only question the CBC
00:35:11.380
asked, and I heard them ask it again and again, in French, by the way, was about global warming and
00:35:17.720
how can you win if you're not in deep with the UN's global warming plans. Here, look at how many times
00:35:23.740
they asked the same question again and again and again and again. It's all they wanted to talk about.
00:35:29.560
Take a look. How can conservatives win if they don't have an environmental plan, if their members
00:35:35.540
don't vote for a motion recognizing climate change? But how can conservatives win on the environmental
00:35:42.880
plan if those members are not backing up any kind of plan on climate change? And if you can also try
00:35:48.820
to answer in French. As for Mr. Aitchison, I'm Audrey with and everyone French CBC. How do you think that
00:35:55.660
conservatives can win on the environmental aspect if a majority of their members vote against a motion
00:36:01.900
recognizing climate change? Mr. Charest, how do you think that conservatives can win on the environmental
00:36:08.640
plan if a majority of members vote against a motion that recognizes the existence of climate change?
00:36:15.920
Tom Clark, actually, was obsessed by the same thing. They're a perfect match, the CBC and Tom Clark.
00:36:21.460
I think the best reporters there, if I may say so myself, were from Rebel News. We had four reporters
00:36:28.240
there and we asked five or six questions. Here's a montage we prepared of the Rebel questions. I don't
00:36:35.520
think any of these were actually raised during the debate itself. But look at some of the talent of our
00:36:42.100
reporters. They're talking about everything from censorship to carbon taxes to firearms rights to the
00:36:49.220
embassy in Jerusalem. Take a look. Hi, Mr. Aitchison. Selene Gallis for Rebel News.
00:36:55.600
The liberals have imposed a backdoor gun registry through an order in council which changes regulations
00:37:01.060
to require retailers and sellers to collect data on purchasers. New rules come into force May 18th.
00:37:09.160
I will. Canada has among the most regulated firearms industry in the world. The problem
00:37:16.120
that we have in this country is the issue of illegal guns coming across our border and getting
00:37:20.500
into the hands of gangs. That's a much more difficult challenge to deal with. And you see
00:37:26.240
the liberals time and again using firearms and legal law-abiding firearms owners in this country
00:37:31.760
as a whipping tool to try to lather up their base and generate votes while not dealing with the real
00:37:38.800
issues. It's the wrong approach for Canada. What we need to do is address the real problem,
00:37:49.140
Hi, Mr. Sherry-Adams-Souls from Rebel News. I know this is a question you've been asked a number
00:37:53.260
of times and I completely respect and appreciate your sentiment that no one should have to apologize
00:37:57.920
for work that they have done in the past. But I just wanted to give you an opportunity to address
00:38:02.820
the fact that Huawei was developing AI technology to enforce the CCP's social credit system and to
00:38:09.380
identify weak years for internment. In light of this, do you have any apprehension or criticism
00:38:14.080
of the company aside from the work that you yourself were doing?
00:38:18.340
All the work that I've done in my lifetime has always been aligned with the interest of Canada.
00:38:24.340
Private, public sector, period. It's that simple.
00:38:27.920
And for Huawei, I would ban Huawei. I'm very clear on that.
00:38:33.440
And just to remind you how things evolved, it was a Conservative government that brought Huawei
00:38:38.540
into Canada. A Conservative government of which Mr. Putty-Ebb was a member of.
00:38:43.460
I mean, Huawei was actually a sponsor on Hockey Night in Canada.
00:38:50.220
Adam Sos here for Rebel News. The Allen Inquiry found that foreign funding for Canadian-based
00:38:56.000
environmental initiatives totaled $1.28 billion from 2003 to 2019, most of it largely untraceable,
00:39:03.900
and a substantial amount of it was dedicated to blocking Alberta oil and gas development.
00:39:08.540
Do you see this as a problem? And if so, what will you do to change it?
00:39:11.780
Absolutely. I think it's important that we have the courage and conviction to develop our natural
00:39:18.520
resources, even in the face of foreign interference. And where we can detect that foreign interference does
00:39:27.880
exist and that it's preventing us from realizing our potential, building pipelines, developing our natural
00:39:37.300
resources, getting our product to market, offsetting foreign dictator oil. We should definitely ensure
00:39:46.160
that those individuals and those organizations are stamped out and comply with our laws, which means
00:40:00.080
Sheila Gunn-Reed, Rebel News. You have given some confusing statements around moving the embassy
00:40:07.240
to Jerusalem. Will you commit to moving the Canadian embassy to the Israeli capital of Jerusalem?
00:40:15.940
No, I will not move the embassy. I support the position that was articulated under Stephen Harper's
00:40:21.560
government, which was not to move the government as it would make the peace process more difficult.
00:40:26.380
You have said that now is not the right time to raise the carbon tax. However, you have been a proponent
00:40:33.700
of the carbon tax. So when then would be the right time to raise the carbon tax?
00:40:38.100
So I don't support raising the carbon tax, period. And I believe that we should respect provincial
00:40:44.160
jurisdiction. What I would say is I think there needs to be a serious conversation about carbon tariffs
00:40:50.180
at the border, given the fact that we continue to see product dumped in Canada from China and India
00:40:56.700
that competes with Canadian goods, and frankly, product that doesn't have the same environmental
00:41:04.220
Former Conservative Party heritage critic MP Alan Reyes actually pushed for more censorship from the government,
00:41:09.480
calling out the Falun Gong-founded Epoch Times by name, calling it a conspiracy site.
00:41:14.420
Now the party opposes Trudeau's call to regulate the Internet. What changed, and why didn't you speak sooner?
00:41:21.040
I apologize. I'm having difficulties hearing you, but I think I understand the general tone of your question.
00:41:25.440
Look, I think that there is no freedom of speech in Canada without a free and independent media.
00:41:30.300
And that means that we need to be, we need to stop subsidizing mainstream media.
00:41:35.160
We need to stop the bailouts. We need to defund the CBC.
00:41:37.740
And also, we should not having some sort of lip and test test by government bureaucrats saying who's a journalist
00:41:47.000
and who's not a journalist. I think that, excuse me, independent media provides available perspective
00:41:55.620
Rebel News had more questions to these candidates than any other media outlet.
00:42:01.840
There were a few other independent journalists there.
00:42:12.220
And of course, the four rebels I've just shown you.
00:42:15.200
I was very proud of it, and I think it stood in contrast to the absolutely atrocious media party.
00:42:20.880
I think that that's this country going forward.
00:42:26.640
I think you have the deep state, professional lifers, insiders like Tom Clark,
00:42:33.240
who get sweet gigs even with the establishment elements of the Conservative Party.
00:42:39.780
You've got the journalists and the debate moderator, Tom Clark,
00:42:43.260
obsessed with global warming in the United Nations,
00:42:46.120
topics a million miles away from regular people who care about inflation,
00:42:50.620
cost of living, and frankly, there's civil liberties.
00:42:54.580
You've got the deep state, the permanent establishment, the elites.
00:42:58.840
And on the other side, you have the grassroots, citizen journalists, and populist candidates.
00:43:09.360
If you think about what would have happened last night without the citizen journalists,
00:43:13.900
it would have been like more and more and more Tom Clarks afterwards.
00:43:17.040
I think, if I had to guess, I think that Pierre Polyev is going to win this election.
00:43:24.400
He has the largest crowds, the most momentum, and he seems to have the most excitement.
00:43:30.000
Jean Charest, I think, is one of the most seasoned operators, and his argument is simple.
00:43:35.160
He's won before, he knows about government, and he is a more moderate face that might make liberals vote for him.
00:43:44.120
Patrick Brown was pretty slick, but I just don't think he has the horsepower outside of Ontario,
00:43:52.760
I think, in the end, if I had to guess, I'm going to guess that Pierre Polyev is going to win this leadership.
00:44:02.460
What does he do to a party that is used to the Aaron O'Toole, Andrew Scheer way of campaigning,
00:44:10.840
the Aaron O'Toole, Andrew Scheer way of talking to the media,
00:44:14.560
of obsessing with pleasing the CBC and talking about global warming?
00:44:18.920
Will Pierre Polyev, if he wins, will he continue to be the conservative populist?
00:44:25.560
Talking about challenging the Bank of Canada for their inflation.
00:44:33.160
Will he continue to do the things that pleased the audience last night?
00:44:43.660
We'll talk to our friend, Adam Sose, who put two questions to the candidates last night.
00:45:01.480
And joining us now, live from the streets of Edmonton,
00:45:04.600
where the Conservative Party debates were held last night,
00:45:10.540
So I understand you are at the March for Life today,
00:45:13.760
and I'm going to talk to you about that in a minute.
00:45:15.620
But first, we just finished talking about the conservative leadership debate.
00:45:19.880
Give me two minutes on that before we talk about what you're up to today.
00:45:24.480
First of all, what was it like to actually be there?
00:45:27.180
From my vantage point, it was very distracting having a terrible format
00:45:38.300
You know, I have to say, when we first arrived there,
00:45:43.400
People seemed extremely happy to be gathering under a new
00:45:49.700
many interested to see some specific candidates.
00:45:52.620
But effectively, as soon as the actual debate started
00:45:55.260
and that awkward format with Tom Clark unfolded,
00:46:01.120
It seemed like people couldn't get an argument going
00:46:03.120
or make a point for more than 30 seconds without being cut off.
00:46:06.380
And there was a long segment of questions that were about silly things
00:46:10.220
like, what Netflix series have you been binging?
00:46:17.180
And people were basically leaving throughout the course of the evening.
00:46:21.980
they very much intended for people to speak with the leadership candidates.
00:46:27.120
We couldn't even speak with people to get their opinions after the debate
00:46:30.080
because frankly, no one was left in the building.
00:46:31.700
So it started off on a positive note, but it just dwindled as the evening went on.
00:46:36.420
And that's a sentiment that was shared by virtually everyone we spoke with,
00:46:41.520
I mean, last night when I was doing the live stream with Tamera here,
00:46:45.680
I was following on Twitter Evan Solomon, who's a pretty straight shooter.
00:46:53.360
He said, silly questions, very short speeches, as short as 15 seconds,
00:47:02.280
I don't know if Tom Clark was actually a Liberal Party mole.
00:47:08.200
But if he was, I don't know if he would have done anything differently.
00:47:14.240
Literally, that clown sad trombone, wah, wah, wah, wah.
00:47:21.000
It was, I don't know, I was deeply embarrassed for him
00:47:24.460
and for the Conservative Party who selected him.
00:47:28.820
But, hey, not my circus, not my monkeys, as they say.
00:47:34.540
You stayed overnight in Edmonton, and I see behind you some protesters.
00:47:40.220
Tell us what's going on in the streets of Edmonton today.
00:47:42.480
Yeah, so we're right at legislature, actually, today,
00:47:45.180
and the March for Life is taking place, even before the event kicked off.
00:47:49.220
A number of counter-protesters, among them MLA, or NDP MLA, Janice Irwin,
00:47:54.300
dancing, playing loud, very profanity-laden music,
00:48:00.020
even sort of bumping an evidently pregnant woman.
00:48:03.000
So I've seen counter-protesters at every March for Life I've attended.
00:48:06.500
But things with the situation with Roe v. Wade in the United States
00:48:10.700
I must say the crowd itself for March for Life here
00:48:15.360
There's loud music blaring there in the distance.
00:48:19.520
We're a little bit away, so you can actually hear what we're saying.
00:48:22.600
But, yeah, not a massive turnout, but already some altercations.
00:48:25.860
Security has also been involved with some of the action
00:48:32.120
which is something that doesn't really tend to happen at March for Life.
00:48:34.720
So already some shocking action just as this event is underway.
00:48:39.920
You said that Janice Irwin, an NDP member of the legislature,
00:48:43.320
was part of the counter-protest, and she was...
00:48:52.520
She's always at March for Life with these people.
00:48:54.680
We actually spoke with her just before we ran into her,
00:49:02.080
I can't recall what the message was on the sign.
00:49:04.640
But she was dancing with the group of counter-protesters,
00:49:07.500
kind of moving towards the March for Life crowd.
00:49:13.800
but she very much, the counter-protesters, cheered when she arrived.
00:49:17.480
And then she was holding a sign and kind of counter-protesting this peaceful gathering.
00:49:21.400
On the other side, however, we do have presently right now,
00:49:26.640
Emily Dan Williams from the UCB giving an address with his family, I believe.
00:49:33.420
So two sort of opposite sides of a coin, certainly.
00:49:37.800
And listen, I believe in the right to protest and counter-protest peacefully.
00:49:47.440
She was not involved in any physical altercation.
00:49:50.860
I don't believe so, but we did have two or three cameras rolling on the incident there.
00:49:55.300
I know she was within that crowd, but I don't believe she engaged in any of those answers.
00:50:00.120
because that would have been very disappointing otherwise.
00:50:06.980
Like, are there March for Life rallies in other cities and towns as well?
00:50:13.140
I believe we're going to have our team heading out to a number of the March for Lifes across the country.
00:50:19.560
There's obviously, a little bit later, a massive one in Washington and the United States as well.
00:50:23.940
I believe these have been going on for something like 30, 40 years.
00:50:28.940
I don't know how many there have been in Alberta, but there's a long tradition of these.
00:50:33.720
And one of the things that I did want to comment on is the fact that there's very often very little media coverage.
00:50:39.100
But these are very often the largest protests and gatherings.
00:50:41.880
And other than maybe these new COVID-19 mandate gatherings that we've seen,
00:50:47.080
these are the largest gatherings and protests in the country very often.
00:50:50.160
And there's next to no media coverage of them, unfortunately.
00:50:55.540
It's, you know, let me just check the time, the time zones.
00:50:59.560
It's lunch hour out there in Calgary as we're talking to you right now.
00:51:03.940
Is this a, is, is, did this just start or is it wrapping up?
00:51:15.780
I don't, I don't have the exact times and dates for all of the different events.
00:51:19.540
I believe there's one in Ontario on Friday as well.
00:51:22.360
I'm in the one in the United States, I believe is later in the month.
00:51:24.680
So they're not necessarily all in the same days.
00:51:26.360
Very often that comes down to when they can book the space for protest and gathering.
00:51:38.400
And past years, it has actually been a march through the streets.
00:51:41.180
But I guess there's some delays in scheduling with COVID-19 apparently.
00:51:44.860
So they're just going to remain here for two hours.
00:51:47.000
It will not be the traditional marches through downtown Edmonton.
00:51:50.960
Well, I guess what's interesting is just a few days ago, a judge in Calgary ruled that these
00:51:57.340
COVID rules against quote, private gatherings cannot be used to stop public protest.
00:52:04.260
So that was, I think, really the first time a judge in this country has pushed back on these
00:52:14.700
And so just to clarify, so people don't get the wrong impression, that specific order pertained
00:52:20.360
to the CMOHO health order that their CMOH health order that extended from December 2020
00:52:28.560
But any other health orders that have very similar language may eventually fall under
00:52:34.380
But it was certainly the first time that a judge ruled effectively that public protests
00:52:41.120
So there are likely to be wider range of precedents set from that.
00:52:45.420
You know, what's pitiful is that it is literally May 2022.
00:52:49.960
So we're like, what, almost 30 months after these lockdowns began.
00:52:55.180
It took more than two years for our judicial system to rouse itself from its slumber to
00:53:03.120
defend civil liberties and only in the meekest of ways.
00:53:07.720
Well, Adam, listen, it's great to see you in the field.
00:53:15.880
We had more questions, better questions than anyone else.
00:53:18.600
You were there and I appreciate you staying up there today.
00:53:25.740
A little bit windy, but we'll say goodbye to Adam there.
00:53:42.840
Your viewer mail, Aaron Calla Lindley says, look into the white gold rush and what they did
00:53:48.660
to China after that melanin scare in formula, it's big business.
00:53:53.620
Just like masking, this was done in China first.
00:53:56.900
I tried to get into the formula business, tried to make a healthier version than Nestle.
00:54:04.520
Well, I don't know much about that, but I know it's bizarre that in the 21st century,
00:54:10.860
in the wealthiest country in the world, there is a shortage of baby formula.
00:54:16.040
I was looking at some Trump advisor on Twitter saying this would never have happened under Trump.
00:54:23.220
But he said if Trump, if it did happen under Trump, Trump would have called the CEOs of
00:54:29.380
the companies to a meeting, an emergency meeting in Washington, where he would have tried to sort
00:54:36.660
He would have ordered the FDA to put that factory back online.
00:54:39.720
He went through a sort of a checklist of action.
00:54:42.820
And I read that and I said, that is exactly what Trump would have done.
00:54:47.080
He would have taken command and he would have approached it like a hotel construction boss
00:54:55.540
Joe Biden doesn't even know what day of the week it is.
00:54:59.560
Chris Black says, thanks, good show, but very sick.
00:55:09.840
They only knew about the meat, which is in our stores now.
00:55:12.800
Don't buy anything that's already cooked from the freezer section in stores.
00:55:19.260
I mean, I suppose in some ways, baby formula is sort of a manufactured thing.
00:55:25.540
But the fake breast milk, there's just something really gross about it.
00:55:31.000
And I'm just learning about a World Economic Forum idea called transhumanism,
00:55:35.680
where they sort of hack the human body and mind.
00:55:41.340
And I feel like this artificial milk and artificial meat and eat bugs and live in pods thing.
00:55:50.480
And I don't know why these billionaires are so obsessed with it.
00:55:56.360
Arana Nation says, I would love to see a debate with just Jim Carahalios and Derek Sloan alone.
00:56:04.880
Yeah, well, I don't think there would be much to disagree on substantively.
00:56:09.940
You know, Randy Hillier, Derek Sloan, Jim and Belinda Carahalios.
00:56:13.560
These are all people who generally have a freedom orientation and are critical of Doug Ford.
00:56:21.620
And I think they're just going to, I don't know if they have a chance to win anywhere.
00:56:26.820
But I think they're going to cut into each other.
00:56:35.080
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, see you at home.
00:56:41.720
And let me leave you with our video of the day of Drea Humphrey at the B.C. Supreme Court hearing a vaccine passport challenge funded by our friends at the Democracy Fund.
00:56:55.760
Drea Humphrey here with Rebel News standing next to the brave and strong.
00:56:59.900
And hopefully you will be free of the discrimination you face from vaccine passports.
00:57:09.600
You came with your husband to be here in court today, long awaited after seven months of being segregated and discriminated because you medically cannot get the vaccine passport.
00:57:19.440
How are you feeling walking out of the courthouse?
00:57:21.660
Uh, well, like you said, medically, I medically feel very happy that I'm here because, um, you know, the last couple of weeks I, I wasn't feeling very well and, uh, I was in bed a lot.
00:57:34.620
And I thought, oh, I hope I'm better for the big day so that I can go.
00:57:38.840
And, uh, I just rested up the last couple of weeks and I'm happy to say that I'm here and I, I hope to see, you know, and, and, uh, an end to this that includes never having to endure a winter in isolation, complete isolation again, like that segregated.
00:57:58.420
I hope that that's something that I can put behind me.
00:58:02.320
Well, that reminds me of something that one of your amazing lawyers, uh, William Cates from JSS Barrister, both Cates, as well as Mr. Robert Hawks flew, uh, from Alberta to be here today to fight for your medical freedom and other British Columbians.
00:58:17.700
But one of the things Cates pointed out is yes, the vaccine passports are dropped, but the three plaintiffs are living in fear that they will return.
00:58:30.440
Um, I, I think we've learned that there's no telling what may happen.
00:58:34.880
I mean, even over the winter, I was, there was an end date that was initially given to the passport system when it was put in, in the fall.
00:58:46.600
And then when they extended it, uh, I mean, really, uh, I don't mind saying I cried cause I was, I was so upset because here you are counting down for something and then it gets, it's further.
00:58:58.220
And so I think we've all been able to see how just unpredictable this entire thing has been and we just don't know what's coming.
00:59:05.620
And, and of course my fear is fall winter will roll around and cases or variant or something happens and we're back to where we were before.
00:59:16.100
And I'm back to where I was before at home, possibly away from my family.
00:59:21.260
And I, I, I just hope that I do not have to go through that again.
00:59:25.840
Well, we'll have to wait to see what happens from this case.
00:59:28.180
This is the second case that challenged the vaccine passport in British Columbia.
00:59:32.740
You can find the details on the first case, which took place on April 19th and 20th.
00:59:38.220
Uh, from what I could see, I was the only reporter at the time.
00:59:41.800
I haven't looked in the last week or so who reported on such an important case.
00:59:45.800
And both of those cases sort of challenged the vaccine passport and the strict exemption regime, which started off with zero medical exemptions for people like Lee.
00:59:57.640
Lee's story is also linked below and you have, uh, rare illnesses that prevent you from being able to take the vaccine.
01:00:04.200
Then there were other plaintiffs like Mr. Prendiville, who has one of the recognized, even the government says, yes, this is one of the categories of adverse reactions, which is perichiditis, the swelling inflammation of the sack around the heart.
01:00:18.660
Now, one of the things that Mr. Cates also brilliantly brought up is that, so even though once he had this exemption, British Columbia didn't make any changes to the QR code to allow people like yourself or him that had that paper saying Bonnie Henry says that I'm exempt to be able to just peacefully walk into a place and scan the code.
01:00:41.420
Even though they did make an exception when the government decided that children with only one vaccine would be able to get into events.
01:00:50.340
What was something else that stood out for you today in court?
01:00:53.800
Well, it was just, even with that, I thought just, just because, um, the government lawyers are saying something existed, meaning that there was exemptions just because you say, you know, they say existed, but in the form it existed in it.
01:01:10.400
You can tell me I can get an exemption all you want to tell me, uh, but here I am months and months.
01:01:17.540
I'm the whole time months later that I've, that I've been trying to seek a recognized exemption.
01:01:22.560
And I would think and hope that I'd have one by now, if that was something that was obtainable, considering I've got lawyers and, and, and, and my doctor and we're standing in front of the Supreme court.
01:01:33.960
So, um, if it was something that was just accessible, wouldn't I have it by now?
01:01:40.420
Well, that's another thing that was definitely brought up in court today.
01:01:43.360
Also very similar to what was brought up in the first case brought on by the Canadian Constitution Foundation, which just how difficult it was for doctors to a, uh, be brave enough to write an exemption when one is warranted, um, and be figure out how to.
01:02:02.360
Um, now I'm going to rant for just a little bit here.
01:02:06.400
One thing I thought was very strange, almost hypocritical possibly was that in the first case of a similar challenge, like I just mentioned, uh, justice, chief justice Hinkson, who's ruling over all of these four cases that are coming up.
01:02:20.820
He really emphasized and questioned the council there about why the council hadn't provided an affidavit from a doctor stating that they had fear about writing medical exemptions.
01:02:35.120
Instead, it was just the plaintiff saying my doctor was scared to write an exemption.
01:02:41.880
And I know that because I've done so many reports on the other side of the story with COVID-19.
01:02:46.340
That type of fear is a real thing, um, who eventually signed an affidavit and said, yes, part of the struggle, even though he did advocate and say, you know, you medically, you shouldn't get it.
01:02:56.800
Part of the struggle was the fear of what would happen to me if I wrote that medical exemption.
01:03:01.860
And then justice Hinkson is like, well, what kind of doctor is too afraid to write a medical exemption?
01:03:07.400
And I'm like, you got the affidavit you wanted.
01:03:14.840
Uh, I assume justice Hinkson is going to preside over all or wait to hear all of the matters before he makes a judgment.
01:03:24.780
We have an interview coming up with you with a gentleman who is representing himself in the third case.
01:03:31.620
And there is also the organization, which is challenging some of the vaccine mandates as well.
01:03:37.500
I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing that, uh, chief justice Hinkson is going to listen to all of the cases together.
01:03:43.900
But what I do know is that Rebel News will be bringing you the reports you can trust on what actually takes place in court today.
01:03:52.360
What do you want to say to the people who made this day happen for you?
01:03:56.960
Um, being here today, uh, I, I am so grateful and I don't take a second of it for granted.
01:04:04.380
Um, you know, like I said, I didn't even know if I was physically going to be able to get here.
01:04:09.520
Um, and so, and, and just fighting for, for this, uh, it's, it's given me hope, uh, through what was a very, very trying, uh, time.
01:04:26.400
And, and so the whole time I've just been thinking about today's the day that I get to be heard.
01:04:31.400
I get to hear my voice heard and I just hope that, um, I hope for a good outcome.
01:04:36.760
Well, don't we all, this is just one of around 20 vaccine related cases that we have helped the Democracy Fund take on by your generous donations at fightvaccinepassport.com.
01:04:49.400
Please continue to donate there to keep those cases going strong.
01:04:53.880
I'm Drea Humphrey with Rebel News and this is Leah Liason.