EZRA LEVANT ｜ What does the Canadian flag represent to you in 2022？
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Summary
Is the Canadian flag a symbol of pride or of shame? Is it something to take pride in? Or is it a symbol that is now too closely linked with the great unwashed masses who make up the Freedom Convoy? And as we all know by now, for rank and file folks who comprise the loony left, freedom can have negative connotations.
Transcript
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Tonight, is the Canadian flag a symbol of pride or of shame?
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I'm David Menzies, and this is the Ezra Levent Show.
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Well, folks, with Dominion Day just a couple of weeks away, the question arises,
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what does the Canadian flag represent to you in 2022?
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Because it seems in certain circles, the Canadian flag is deemed to be a symbol of colonialism and or imperialism.
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Or maybe our flag is a symbol that is now too closely linked with the great unwashed masses
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And as we all know by now, for the rank-and-file folks who comprise the loony left,
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freedom can have, you know, negative connotations.
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Now, if you think I'm exaggerating, I will now present the proverbial proof in the pudding.
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Consider what happened recently in Newmarket, Ontario, a town just north of Toronto.
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Donna Steffkos owns a SUV that is draped with several flags.
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She works at the Kortha Dairy Shop on Davis Drive.
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By the way, if you happen to be in the Newmarket area and you are craving for ice cream or a milkshake,
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I can think of no better place for those marvellous edibles than Kortha Dairy.
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Regardless, somebody took exception to those flags on Donna's vehicle.
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And this man walked into the shop and complained vociferously.
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Naturally, the state-funded Newmarket-era newspaper published fake news pertaining to what those flags were.
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But, hey, isn't that par for the course for a Torstar-owned newspaper slash birdcage liner?
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In any event, based on one solitary complaint from somebody who apparently is unable to read basic English,
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the executives running Kortha Dairy bent the knee?
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Really? Donna was ordered to remove the flags, as in all of the flags on her truck.
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Well, if the executives at Kortha Dairy thought this would get their company out of the 24-hour news cycle,
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Because, you see, last Saturday, a few hundred protesters descended upon the shop to voice their outrage regarding the ultimatum Donna had received.
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Now, we knew there was no way in hell that these demonstrators or Donna would get a fair shake from the mainstream media.
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So, my camerawoman Olivia and I also headed up to Newmarket on that day to chronicle the event.
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As the saying goes, I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream.
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It seems that some people these days are screaming for censorship.
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And that's the crux of the matter of this story.
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But, you see, what happened recently is the Newmarket era, yes, that's part of the state-funded mainstream media,
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reported that an employee here had her vehicle festooned with F. Trudeau flags.
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There was not a single F. Trudeau flag on her vehicle.
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And even if there was, I don't think there's any kind of rule against profanity.
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If that were the case, half the rap songs would have to be deleted from the radio.
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Certainly, the flags look like the infamous F. Trudeau flags.
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And you're quoting basically how the liberal government has described the Freedom Convoy people
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in terms of their ongoing demonization and vilification of this movement.
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Why did they think that you were displaying F. Trudeau flags in the first place?
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Well, in my opinion, I think the person had nothing better to do with their time.
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Like I said, my vehicle has been parked over there at my place of employment,
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which does not have anything to do with me and my personal stuff.
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We have somebody in our community that hates our country.
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Couldn't take two seconds to even walk over and lift it up.
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I would not be disgraced if anybody touched my flag to look at it.
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The store received one complaint, singular, one complaint, that this was offside.
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And she was ordered to remove the We the Fringe flags.
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My views do not reflect anything to do with the company.
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That one customer clearly should have done their homework.
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And they have ruined many people's lives by one comment that blasted up.
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The store was being called and harassed on a daily basis and still is.
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And there are a lot of freedom fighters out there.
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There are so many people that love our country that have been calling in support as well.
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She was ordered to remove even the Canadian flags.
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I feel that this has been an unjust and discrimination to our Canadian flag.
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It's been a rough few days, all because somebody wanted to post fake news.
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If you're showing pride in your country by flying a Canadian flag, this is offside somehow?
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People can flip things and turn things all around.
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Can you imagine, folks, that we, the fringe flags, are offensive to those who are presumably
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That fringe word emanates from the lips of the prime minister himself.
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We know the way through this pandemic is by getting everyone vaccinated.
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And the overwhelming majority, close to 90% of Canadians have done exactly that.
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The small fringe minority of people who are on their way to Ottawa or who are holding unacceptable views that they're expressing.
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Yeah, so fringe, as in, you know, lunatic fringe, was essentially a slur directed toward the truckers and their allies.
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This was the first step by the Trudeau liberals in terms of vilifying and demonizing the Freedom Convoy.
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So when it came to that progressive nut bar who threw a temper tantrum when he saw Donna's vehicle at the New Market Kawartha dairy shop, what, pray tell, was the issue?
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Donna was simply identifying herself as a member of that despicable fringe minority, right?
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The complainant had no reason to be triggered, really.
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But as you also saw in the video clip, the Kawartha dairy VP, Dana Summerfield, also ordered Donna to remove the Canadian flags from her vehicle.
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Oh, by the way, just to let you know, while Canadian flags were banned from the personal vehicles of Kawartha dairy employees, no such ban was in place for, say, pride flags or Black Lives Matter flags or Ukrainian flags.
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Yes, this is beyond parody, folks, but it is also a telltale example of what happens when a corporation essentially melts like, well, ice cream on a hot summer day.
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Because what Kawartha dairy should have said to that hysterical complainer was simply this.
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Your disdain for our employees' flags is duly noted.
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And while we welcome your patronage, there are several other stores in New Market that can fulfill your dairy needs.
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In any event, yesterday, I did touch base with Donna.
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And I have an update to report regarding Flaggate, if we can call it that.
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Namely, Kawartha dairy VP, Summerfield, and CEO Brian Kerr, reversed the Canadian flag ban.
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The Canadian flag can be displayed at Kawartha dairy yet again.
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By the way, when Donna asked Dana why the Maple Leaf was banned in the first place,
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Dana reportedly said that in the past two years, the Canadian flag has become tainted.
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Like the Maple Leaf is akin to, oh, I don't know, a swastika?
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Also, Donna was told that the We the Fringe flags remain under the ban.
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Because given the colors and the font style, some passers-by might think that we the fringe flags
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If that's the case, maybe these delusional people need to see an optometrist or a psychiatrist
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In any event, is this where we are when it comes to bending the knee to the zealots who
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That now we must say sorry and ban things based on imaginary offensive images.
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Are we actually now acquiescing to those who are delusional?
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By the way, I reached out to both Ms. Summerfield and Mr. Kerr to get their side of the story.
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I posed five questions so that I could try to make sense of their warped logic regarding
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Here are the questions I sent to them verbatim.
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Number one, I am trying to understand why Donna was ordered to remove Canadian flags from
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Well, she remarked that you told her that the Canadian flag in the last two years has
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Two, I understand that the We the Fringe flags are still under the ban.
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Donna remarked that you told her that some people might think those flags state F-Trudeau.
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But clearly, Donna's flags do not state this phrase.
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It seems odd to me that a flag would be banned on the basis that people might think they are
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Again, can you explain your rationale for this decision?
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Three, when this flag flap began, you had issued a statement that read as follows.
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Quote, although there was no profanity on the flags, we have spoken to the employee who
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Kawartha Dairy prides ourselves on being an inclusive company who treats everyone like
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family and respects the personal opinions of our employees and our customers.
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Quote, the part of the statement that refers to inclusivity does not make sense to me, given
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that banning flags is actually an exclusionary act.
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Can you explain how banning something is indeed an act of inclusion?
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Four, as I understand things, this whole controversy erupted after just one customer complained about
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something that did not exist, namely the F-Trudeau flag.
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In hindsight, do you think that Kawartha Dairy bending the knee to this individual regarding
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Why did your company simply point out that the customer was wrong on what he believed to
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And five, Donna mentioned that both you and Mr. Kerr verbally apologized to her for the flag
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Well, folks, alas, at time of broadcast, neither executive had gotten back to me.
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As these banana splits continue to ban and unban and re-ban certain flags on almost a daily basis,
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I don't think Somerville and Kerr know what to say or know what to do anymore.
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But one thing is certain, it was prudent to allow the Canadian flag back on Donna's vehicle,
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because had they not done so, and worse, had these cowards disciplined Donna for flying
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the Maple Leaf, then me thinks we're talking a major lawsuit here.
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Oh, by the way, for an added slice of insanity, just consider the fact that Kwartha Dairy actually
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But sadly, Canadian flag delusional syndrome is spreading these days, folks.
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Case in point, the Sunderland Public School in Sunderland, Ontario, recently sent home a permission
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slip to parents, a permission slip that left many parents absolutely baffled.
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This was not a permission slip regarding students going on a field trip or taking part in a school
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dance. Rather, the local Lions Club in Sunderland thought it would be a nice gesture to give the
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grade one students a Canadian flag. Alas, these days, no good deed goes unpunished, it would seem,
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because in advance of the free flags being handed out, the school sent out letters to parents
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to see if it was, you know, okay to distribute this material to the youngsters.
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You know, I'm not making this up. Were the Lions handing out Canadian flags or pornography?
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Or is our red and white symbol tantamount to porn in certain circles these days?
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Well, here's what Principal Jennifer Fisher said in her bizarre letter to parents, quote,
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On June 28th, our grade one students will have the opportunity to meet with a member of the
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Sunderland Lions Club to learn a little about the history of Canada and why we celebrate Canada Day.
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Students will also have the opportunity to receive a Canadian flag from the Sunderland Lions Club.
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If you prefer that your child does not receive a Canadian flag, please return the bottom portion
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of this letter to the school prior to June 28th. If you do not return the form, your child will receive
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a flag, end quote. Principal Fisher then noted to parents that if they had, quote,
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quote, concerns about the presentation or the flag, end quote, then they could contact their child's
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teacher or the office. Now, I reached out to Principal Fisher but was told she was in a meeting.
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But check out my brief conversation with the nice receptionist at Sunderland School.
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It looks like the principal's letter really stirred up a hornet's nest.
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Yes, good morning. Can I speak to Jennifer Fisher, please?
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She's in a meeting at the moment. Can I take a message?
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Oh, sure. My name is David Menzies and I'm with Rebel News in Toronto.
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And I'm just calling her about this Canada flag permission form.
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Oh, okay. You can call the board office in regards to it.
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Well, no. It was from her but she's not taking the call.
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Oh, that's interesting. Why would she put out a permission form but I would have to direct
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my calls to the board that had nothing to do with this?
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I don't know. I've just been getting a lot of calls and a lot of angry people and yelling at me and...
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No, no. I know. I can already tell you're not going to yell because you're very calm.
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But believe me, the amount of calls that I have taken and the amount of angry citizens that are out there
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and the yelling and the swearing that I'm hearing from the other end is...
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I just am tired of taking them, so I'm just going to direct them to the board office now.
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You know what? I'm very sorry you're getting verbally abused. I know it's not your decision, so...
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No. No, I hadn't. That's the thing. I had nothing to do with it.
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Do you know why the permission is being asked in the first place? I mean...
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Okay, yeah. And so, I guess because of the amount of angry people, this is why Ms. Fisher isn't taking calls on this issue, or...?
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I'm going to assume that's the reason why. So, like I said, she's also said you can voice your concerns at our website, centralnps.dbsb.ca.
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Wow. You know, I suspect Principal Fisher is not in a meeting, but rather she's curled up in the fetal position in the staff lounge these days.
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Nevertheless, I did reach out to the Durham District School Board, and according to spokeswoman Rachel Matheson,
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the ostensible policy reason for the permission slip was to essentially be environmentally friendly and to avoid offending indigenous people?
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Schools don't often distribute Canadian flags, and we wanted to ensure that we weren't wasteful in terms of families already having one or not intending to make use of them.
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We also recognize that for some indigenous families, the Canadian flag may represent something else in terms of their relationship,
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and that we are being respectful of their rights as we support reconciliation efforts.
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The letter home was simply designed to provide choice to students and families in the class about receiving the flag
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after a presentation from a member of the Lions Club about why we celebrate Canada Day
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and was in no way intended to diminish the importance of our national flag or cause harm, end quote.
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Wow. You know, I never thought I'd see this, folks.
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This idea of the Canadian flag in Canada in 2022, that it could somehow be deemed both environmentally unfriendly and politically incorrect.
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I wonder if the Durham District School Board sends out permission slips if schools are staging, you know, drag queen story times.
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That might come across as, oh, I don't know, being homophobic or transphobic or biphobic or some sort of phobia.
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So, hey, kids, sit right back and check out a striptease show courtesy of a fake female.
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And, hey, maybe Kortha Derry would like to cater such events.
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And in the meantime, let's shield the kids' precious eyes from that vulgar red and white piece of fabric known as the flag of Canada.
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Folks, are we all collectively trapped in a nightmare right now?
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Is the alarm bell going to ring any second now?
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And we're all going to finally wake up and realize that the events of recent weeks are akin to season nine of Dallas?
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You know, that it was all a bad dream, this whole business of Bobby dying in season eight.
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And this is indeed the new perverse reality that we are living in.
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That Canadian flags are somehow offensive to some people, maybe, perhaps.
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And another thing, what Miss Somerville allegedly said about the Canadian flag being tainted these days, isn't the polar opposite the truth?
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At other trucker protests and at other freedom rallies the world over, from the United States to India and Australia,
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It's an acknowledgment of how Canadian truckers and their supporters stood up when their democratic rights were being threatened.
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Yet here in our great dominion, the maple leaf is deemed to be something that we need to apologize for, that we need to keep in the closet.
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The Canadian flag represents freedom, yet for the progressives that champion big government and big tech and big lockdowns, freedom is the new F word?
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Don't know about you, folks, but it seems that life in Canada under the Justin Jagmeet regime is increasingly resembling a South Park episode.
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Well, folks, unfortunately, not a day goes by in which someone or something isn't eradicated by the social justice warriors who make up team cancel culture.
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Perhaps it's a broadcaster who allegedly said something offensive.
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Maybe it's a company getting boycotted for God knows what.
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But for the progressives and the Marxists out there, it's their way or the highway.
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And to answer this question and other queries, I'm joined now by Nicky Bellew, who, along with Wayne Allen Root, wrote the great patriot protest boycott book subtitled
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The Priceless List for Conservatives, Christians, Patriots and 80-plus million Trump warriors to cancel, cancel culture and save America.
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So, Nicky, as I mentioned, cancel culture is everywhere these days.
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Heck, even the Canadian flag is being canceled in certain circles in Canada, as I mentioned in my monologue.
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But first and foremost, what indeed can be done to fight back against this insidious trend?
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Well, David, I got to tell you, for me, I think there's a lot that can be done to fight back.
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We live right now in what is still the freest, greatest society on Earth.
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Canada, the United States, the free West still offer greater freedom for everybody than any other place on Earth.
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And even though the forces of totalitarianism have gained a foothold, they have not yet managed to completely eradicate freedom.
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And that gives me a ton of hope and a ton of belief in what we can do.
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Now, Wayne Allen Root and I decided to write this book, The Great Patriot Protest and Boycott book, because we believe that we can use some of the tactics of the Alinskyite left against him.
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If you've heard of Saul Alinsky and his book, Rules for Radicals, you know that when they were in the fringes of society, they used a very specific series of tactics and strategies in order to push back against bourgeois society, put people back on their heels.
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And they used that to get themselves into power.
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And hey, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
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We put together this incredible book, which is a list of 116 companies that, generally speaking, are capitalistic companies, but they've been browbeaten by the left into adopting their mantras and their model of the world wholesale.
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So this book essentially is a call to polite, persistent activism, where people that really are the base customers of these organizations can go up to them and say, hey, you're doing X, Y, and Z that I disapprove of.
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For example, you're trying to sexualize five-year-old children, which I disapprove of.
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So I'm no longer going to be giving my business to you.
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And I got to tell you, I don't know if Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida actually read this book, but he certainly was inspired by the spirit embodied in the book because he took a page out of what we're doing.
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And when Disney decided to start putting their family programming toward sexualization for five to eight-year-old children, they took away Disney's tax-exempt status, which immediately cost Disney over a billion dollars a year.
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And that cost Disney over $63 billion in market capitalization.
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So other companies took notice in the United States, and right now their advisors are telling them, stop being political, stop jumping into issues that are controversial.
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And many companies that were being kowtowed by the left are no longer going down that path.
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And, you know, Nikki, I mean, if we can just go back a little bit about why this is a thing with corporations these days, why they are bending their knee to basically a lunatic fringe.
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We had basically those in the radical transgender community demanding that Disney no longer refer to their guests, their paying customers, that is, as ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls.
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Now it's friends, you know, so we don't misgender anyone.
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And what I understand is that people for that and other things, you know, that Disney has promoted recently, they're staying away from the park and droves.
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And what I'm just trying to get to the bottom of here, Nikki, is why?
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Why is it that a corporation would acquiesce to these people?
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One, they figure if we agree to their insane demands, they'll leave us alone and go on to company ABC and make life difficult for them.
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And B, many of the executives, the younger executives, that is, they've been indoctrinated.
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Have I got the right picture on what's going on, Nikki?
00:29:22.540
Well, definitely the first part, I 100% agree with you.
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They're plain afraid of being targeted by folks.
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They don't believe in standing up for themselves.
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And that's just a shame because, you know, a lot of corporations go out there and they give everybody this great big song and dance that they stand for things, that they believe in things, and it doesn't matter if it costs them money.
00:29:44.260
Well, that's really not true because they're bending the knee to people because they're afraid.
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They're not standing up for the values that they truly, maybe privately even believe in, but they think they need to stand up for these values that they don't really buy into.
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Now, yeah, there are a lot of younger executives that buy into some of this woke ideology, but I believe that number isn't as big as you think.
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So I'll give you an example of what happened at Netflix.
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Netflix basically said to their employees that we're going to be bringing in content from conservative and traditional voices.
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And a whole bunch of their employees just were up in arms and saying, oh, my God, you can't do this.
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Well, the head of content at Netflix sent out a very famous internal memo and said, hey, I appreciate.
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Thank you for sharing your views, and Netflix is committed to a diversity of voices in the content that we create.
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And if you can't abide by that, maybe this isn't the place for you to work any longer.
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And when he said that, Netflix, which had been losing subscribers at an alarming rate because of their insane commitment to some crazy programming,
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they had a program that was sexualizing 11-year-old girls.
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This puts young girls at risk in a huge, huge way.
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And now it seems like they found their cojones and their ovaries if they're female.
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And they've gone in there and said, nope, no more of that.
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The employees that were up in arms have either resigned or they've shut up because they know that the corporation isn't really going to put up with this.
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And that's really one of the reasons we wrote this book is we want to encourage corporations to stay out of controversial issues,
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to stop putting their finger on the scale for either side.
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You're not here to support a particular ideology.
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Now, I appreciate that there are certain universal values that are good for every corporation to be in favor of.
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I'm 100% on board with all those things because we can all agree on those.
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But there are many, many things that they're getting involved in that we don't all agree on.
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And in fact, the vast majority of their customer base is diametrically opposed to.
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So, look, I have a ton of sympathy for somebody who's going through gender confusion.
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One of my best friend's brother decided, you know, that he was not decided.
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Was confused about who he was, was confused about his sexual identity, his gender identity.
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And after living as a woman for 10 years, took his own life, took her own life.
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Robert, when I met, met the person and Julia later.
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And this confusion caused all kinds of angst for this individual.
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I got a ton of sympathy for my friend and his family.
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And, you know, the, his mother and father to see their own child commit suicide.
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You know, and we need to, as a society, deal with people who are genuinely dealing with
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these types of issues, with sensitivity, with compassion, with plenty of space to make
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What we don't need is some nut bar activist forcing a particular view down people's throats.
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So these folks are worse than the people that said, no, no, no, this, this is not a thing
00:33:38.960
at all, because those people that had no sensitivity for the real issues some people are going
00:33:43.340
through. These people have no sensitivity or nuance for the fact that, that young people
00:33:48.600
that are questioning their identity, questioning their gender need to be given all the room in the
00:33:54.200
world to come to their own decision, their own understanding and pushing them in one way or
00:34:00.300
another is terrible. And there's hundreds, if not hundreds of thousands of stories, well,
00:34:05.920
maybe not hundreds of thousands, but hundreds, thousands of stories of teenagers who felt pushed
00:34:10.920
in a particular direction by activists to make a decision to go on puberty blockers, to have
00:34:15.780
gender reassignment surgery, who now regret it. And I got to tell you, that's not right.
00:34:21.460
You've got to give space for people, especially teenagers, to be able to understand that they're
00:34:26.900
going through a time of confusion being a teenager period. And if this issue is particularly
00:34:31.380
an issue that they're dealing with, they need to be dealt with with sensitivity. What they don't
00:34:35.800
need is these crazy left wing activists coming down and forcing them to do something that they'll
00:34:40.980
regret later. And that we all got to take a stand against that. We all got to say is wrong. It
00:34:46.420
shouldn't happen. And we definitely, definitely need to say that, hey, sexualizing children,
00:34:52.860
any child is wrong until a child is of age 16, 17, 18 years old. These are not issues that adults
00:35:00.840
should be forcing down their throats. And I'll, I'll die on that hill. You know what, as far as I'm
00:35:05.460
concerned, Disney as a corporation has lost all my respect, all my trust. I won't be going to their
00:35:11.520
theme parks because I was planning on doing that. I won't be going to watch their movies. I won't be
00:35:16.480
supporting them. I definitely won't be investing in their corporation. And I'll be encouraging every
00:35:21.540
person I know who's a parent to stop doing business with Disney until such time that Disney wakes up
00:35:28.120
and says, hey, you know what, maybe sexualizing kids isn't a good idea for a family oriented
00:35:32.720
company. Couldn't agree more, Nicky. And I also say, as I'm a bit of a theme park aficionado,
00:35:39.080
if you are in Florida, or California, for that matter, don't go to Disney World or Disneyland,
00:35:44.520
go to Universal if you want some really good rides to have fun on. I, what I'm getting at is I think
00:35:50.620
Disney is vastly overrated. But getting back to the book very quickly, Nicky, you provide a list of
00:35:58.100
more than 100 companies, as you say, for conservatives and patriots to protest, boycott and hound. And
00:36:07.340
I'm looking at the list. It's everything from Coca-Cola and Costco to Hyundai and Toyota. First of all,
00:36:15.700
Nicky, what are some of the reasons that you've targeted, say, the four companies I just mentioned
00:36:22.540
there? And do boycotts work? I mean, you really need a critical mass. Last time I went by my local
00:36:30.500
Costco, it was like, you know, half an hour lineups to buy your merchandise. Is there any hope of,
00:36:38.720
you know, basically initiating boycott movements in the first place?
00:36:42.900
Look, I would say conservatively in Canada and the United States, a good 70 to 75% of consumers
00:36:52.120
are against radical leftist woke ideology against sexualizing children, you know, against forcing
00:36:59.820
teenagers to make life altering decisions that they can't walk back. If later on, they get to some
00:37:07.020
clarity against pushing forward Marxist ideology, against going into schools and saying that one
00:37:16.100
ethnicity or one race is bad. I mean, we all, we used to call that racism back in my day, you know,
00:37:22.180
if you were against one ethnicity, we called you a racist. Now the left is trying to rebrand racism.
00:37:26.960
Well, the left have always been racist. Let's be honest. In the United States, the history of racism
00:37:31.120
is the history of the progressive left. The Democrat Party has always been the racist party.
00:37:35.980
They're the ones who have the slaves. They got really mad when us Republican types went,
00:37:40.260
took away their slaves and they got smart, you know, evil got smart. And they said, you know what,
00:37:46.140
we can't be open about our racism anymore. Let's, let's call the other people racist,
00:37:50.380
but we know we're still really the ones who are the racist because, you know, we're Democrats and
00:37:53.620
we're progressives and, you know, they've always been racist. Every progressive in the past has been a
00:38:00.380
racist. They've put racism at the center of their thinking and they're doing it again. They're just
00:38:04.880
pretending they're not. And it's very important for us to understand that. Now I'm not talking about
00:38:09.800
good, ordinary people who may be progressive in some of the things. Those people are not racist.
00:38:14.560
I'm talking about the activist ideologues. Those people absolutely are racist. The average person
00:38:20.280
isn't. 75% of people can be persuaded that they should not with their dollars be supporting
00:38:27.420
organizations that are absolutely destroying their children. They're absolutely, you know,
00:38:32.440
crapping all over their values. And if you think about this, if we can only get about 75%,
00:38:38.360
30%, which is less than half to switch their buying habits away from these organizations,
00:38:43.800
we're talking about seven and a half trillion dollars in Canada, in the United States that
00:38:50.480
will be taken away from these corporations. Trust me, that's a lot of revenue to divert elsewhere.
00:38:56.760
And if Coca-Cola lost 30% of its revenue in any given year, the CEO would be fired,
00:39:03.680
the shareholders would revolt, and they'd say, enough of this crap, let's get back to what we do
00:39:08.140
best, which is, you know, creating fizzy, sugared water, which is bad for you and bad for your teeth
00:39:12.480
and all that stuff. You shouldn't be drinking Coca-Cola in the first place for other reasons.
00:39:16.360
But the fact that they've gone crazy insane woke is another great reason not to do business with them.
00:39:20.820
And I really believe that if we have these organizations in the spirit of the great Ronald
00:39:26.060
Reagan, the happy warrior himself, we can absolutely beat these folks. Reagan had a simple strategy,
00:39:31.340
a simple philosophy when it came to fighting the Cold War against the Soviets. I have the same
00:39:35.980
philosophy when it comes to fighting progressive wokest ideology. You want to hear it? Shall I share it
00:39:42.360
with you, David? Absolutely. Don't hold back. Here it was. Here it was. Reagan's philosophy was,
00:39:48.060
it's simple. We win, they lose. We win, they lose. We win, they lose. That's what it's all about,
00:39:55.800
baby. And listen, in my other work, I'm a businessman. I teach the mindset of champions.
00:40:00.780
I work with men. I'm all about helping people have powerful, strong mindset. And that's what it's all
00:40:07.260
about. You got to have the people on our side stop being snowflakes too. Stop being victims. Stop
00:40:12.300
blaming other people. Get in action. Take extreme ownership, as Jocko Willink and Leif Babin say,
00:40:18.060
in their great book, Extreme Ownership, take extreme ownership. Stop blaming the other folks.
00:40:22.820
Get into action. They can give money to organizations like yours. They can actually
00:40:26.900
write letters or go on social media with the CEOs of these organizations. I bet you if the CEO of
00:40:32.220
Coca-Cola got 300 people on his Instagram saying, we're leaving you because you're woke, he'd notice.
00:40:38.640
You know, and the proof is in the proverbial pudding, Nikki, because I go back to the Kortha
00:40:45.120
dairy story that we covered in which the employee was ordered to remove the Canadian flags from her
00:40:52.400
vehicle, a vehicle parked in Canada. And there was an enormous Patriot counter demonstration at the
00:40:59.140
dairy shop on Saturday. And lo and behold, the executives have reversed themselves and said, yep,
00:41:06.480
you can put those Canadian flags back on. You know, Nikki, we're running out of time. One last
00:41:11.860
question. And since you mentioned Disney and since we've seen this corporation take a financial knee
00:41:18.240
capping on so many fronts, here's the big picture question I want to ask you. Will Disney change its
00:41:25.660
ways? Because with any big corporation, as they say, the bottom line is the bottom line. And if they're
00:41:32.100
going to lose millions, even billions in revenue because of these crazy, you know, social justice
00:41:40.960
positions they've adopted and alienating their base in the meantime, will we see this company change
00:41:49.380
and reverse some of its policies like Kortha dairy did here in Canada? Or are we, is it going to be
00:41:55.980
more of the same just for waving the flag of wokeism? Well, listen, one of the things I can tell you is
00:42:03.100
I don't know if they will, and I don't know if they won't. But if we keep up the pressure, then we have a
00:42:08.680
better chance of having them change their policies. And if they don't, if they lose 30 to 50 percent of
00:42:14.500
their current revenues, then they're going to go out of business. I'd rather they don't go out of
00:42:18.780
business. Disney's a great American company started by a great American patriot. Walt Disney is now
00:42:23.380
rolling in his grave because he loved America and everything it stood for. If you read about this
00:42:28.020
man's story, my God, it'll, it'll give you goosebumps. It'll make you want to stand up and salute. He was
00:42:32.740
such a great man. Now he had his flaws. There were things about him that weren't great, but there were
00:42:36.600
so many things about him that were great. And the folks at Disney right now are led by weak and
00:42:42.520
competent leadership. There's a poem a friend of mine wrote, his name is Jeff Michael Hopf. And it goes
00:42:48.080
something like this, hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create
00:42:53.900
weak men, weak men create hard times. Well, we're living in hard times right now because weak men
00:42:58.780
have been in charge. We've had people in charge of Canada who are weak, like Justin Trudeau. We've
00:43:03.500
had people in charge of America that are weak, like Barack Obama and Joe Biden. What we need right
00:43:10.280
now is we need some of those hard men. Those are the men that need to come up and save the world. And
00:43:14.480
yeah, we need, we need, and listen, just in case there's anybody here who's going, oh, what about
00:43:18.160
women? Well, yeah, we absolutely need hard women too. My favorite leader of the last half of the
00:43:22.980
20th century is the late, great Margaret Thatcher. Lady Thatcher, the Iron Lady, inspired me even more
00:43:29.940
than Ronald Reagan, more than Pope John Paul II. She had big ovaries and she got them done. We need
00:43:36.820
women and women to their credit are stepping up. I mean, in the United States and even in Canada,
00:43:41.380
they're the ones that are going to school boards more than the men and fighting back against these
00:43:45.960
wokest and God bless the women. The mama bears are what we need to, but I'm talking to the men right
00:43:50.960
now. Cause you know, I'm a man and there's a lot of men right now that are acting like a bunch of
00:43:54.560
wussies. Uh, you know, and there's another word that rhymes with wussies and I'll just leave it to
00:43:59.000
your imagination as to what that word ought to be. These men need to get up off their duff. They need to
00:44:04.520
stand up and they need to say enough of this, stop buying from Disney, organize other people to stop
00:44:09.220
doing it. And you know, you got to push back against these corporations and their institutional
00:44:14.420
investors like BlackRock Corporation, who really is a pushing a woke agenda. I don't understand why
00:44:20.360
someone who's made, uh, trillions of dollars for his organization is pushing wokeism, but for whatever
00:44:25.220
reason, he's decided this is the thing to do. We need to push back against these organizations.
00:44:29.120
We need to find our own champions who are wealthy. And it looks like Elon Musk is coming over from the
00:44:33.840
dark side to the side of the angels. So let's really work with people like Elon. If Elon watches the show,
00:44:39.120
are you listening to this? Elon, my name is Nicky Ballou. Look me up, man. Let's talk. Let's work.
00:44:43.400
You're a man with a big voice. You know, I'm a man with some masculine cojones. We can work together
00:44:47.840
and make a lot of good things happen in the world. And we ought to, the world needs for us to do this.
00:44:53.320
And I say this to every progressive thinker, to every liberal person, a fair-minded person,
00:44:58.520
I'm on your side. I believe in that I want to free Canada and I want everyone to be tolerated.
00:45:03.940
I am a brown man from the Middle East. I've actually experienced real racism. When I was a
00:45:09.820
young boy in Iran, a Molotov cocktail was thrown through my window. The note on it said,
00:45:15.360
die Christian scum, a shuri scum. It was based on my ethnicity and my religion. So for all you people
00:45:21.320
who think you've actually experienced racism, tell me if you got a better story than that,
00:45:25.180
then we'll talk because I bet you don't. Right? So I'm nobody. And I mean, nobody is more opposed
00:45:32.500
to racist, true racist behavior than Nikki Ballou. But I also am not going to put up with the wokest
00:45:38.920
and the left-wing activists co-opting opposition to racism because they really aren't opposed to it
00:45:45.080
and trying to smear people, fair-minded people, and getting them to shut up by falsely claiming
00:45:50.000
they're racist. If you want to come after Nikki Ballou and call him a racist, bring it, buddy.
00:45:54.580
Bring it. Because I'll eviscerate you. I will destroy you, you leftist, woke piece of garbage
00:46:02.120
lying sack of you-know-what. Don't you dare. We are the party of the people who freed the slaves.
00:46:09.040
You're the ones who took the slaves and you got mad at us for taking them away from you.
00:46:13.900
So get over yourself and let's go. Let's go. Let's make this world a better place for you.
00:46:18.700
Normal people who are left of center, hey, you're with us. Pretty soon they're going to come after
00:46:22.680
you too. We're all going to be right of center. Just like Elon Musk with his beautiful little graphic
00:46:26.680
that he placed it on Twitter. Before yesterday, he'd never voted Republican. Yesterday,
00:46:30.940
for the first time in his life, he voted for a Republican.
00:46:33.640
There you go. Well, Nikki, I love your enthusiasm and hope abounds. And my goodness,
00:46:38.280
that list of leaders of decades gone past, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul.
00:46:44.340
I really wish there was a Delorne with the flux capacitor option so I could go back in time to the
00:46:50.700
80s. It seemed like a hell of a lot normal time than we're living in today. And Nikki, one last
00:46:57.100
question quickly, because we are out of time. If somebody wants to get a copy of the great
00:47:01.980
Patriot protest and boycott book, how do they get it, my friend?
00:47:06.360
It's on Amazon. Go on Amazon, Amazon.ca. You know, if you're elsewhere, Amazon.com,
00:47:12.600
go grab yourself a copy. And, you know, you can contact us. Our emails are in the back cover,
00:47:17.940
back page of the book. So you can email me and Wayne and we'll respond.
00:47:21.320
Fantastic. Nikki, it's a pleasure. Maybe we'll have you back in the future, especially if Disney
00:47:28.100
does indeed reverse its ways. Thank you so much for your time, my friend.
00:47:33.120
Thanks for having me on. It's an honor to be here.
00:47:35.380
You got it. And that is Nikki Ballou, who, along with Wayne Allen Root, is the co-author of
00:47:42.080
The Great Patriot, sorry, The Great, yes, The Great Patriot Protest and Boycott book,
00:47:47.720
required reading, folks. You'll really enjoy this one. Keep it here. More of the Ezra LeVent show to
00:48:06.300
Well, folks, plenty of mail last night regarding Ezra's monologue on the travel restrictions
00:48:12.000
finally being lifted or suspended, as the government likes to say. Kevin Charbonneau
00:48:18.180
writes, I'm so glad that Canada has rebel news or else this country would be left to the idiots
00:48:26.280
entirely. Well, you know, Kevin, we strive to bring the other side of the story. The fact remains,
00:48:32.280
the vast majority of the mainstream media is on the government take in one form or the other.
00:48:38.620
We depend on you, our viewers, to fund rebel news. And for that, we are forever grateful.
00:48:47.380
Ron Fowler writes, did you ever in your life think that Canada would be in a group with North Korea
00:48:54.740
and China? Well, yes, Ron, I did. And I started thinking that way several years ago. I think it was
00:49:01.480
2014 before Prime Minister Trudeau became Prime Minister Trudeau, when he was just Citizen Justin.
00:49:07.800
And he remarked at a female-only meeting in Toronto that he has admiration for the basic
00:49:18.320
dictatorship of China. The very fact that he said that a future leader of a Western democracy
00:49:26.260
is unbelievable and egregious. But he said it himself. Those were his own words. So yeah,
00:49:33.740
the idea that Canada is increasingly resembling communist China, no surprise whatsoever, my friend,
00:49:41.260
sadly. And Dave Sobrani writes, I think they ended the mandates because of the veteran walking to Ottawa.
00:49:50.520
They are very scared. Yes, that would be James Topp, who is indeed walking right across our country
00:49:56.980
to Ottawa. Say, folks, do you think Justin Trudeau will actually come out and greet him? Will shake
00:50:04.460
his hand? Or would this be another case of, you know, as Justin likes to say, the veterans are simply
00:50:10.700
asking for too much? What a disgrace. Well, folks, that wraps up tonight's edition of the Ezra Levent Show.
00:50:18.400
Thanks for tuning in. The Big Boss Man, he'll be back tomorrow. In the meantime, as always, stay sane.
00:50:26.140
Kerry Diot for Rebel News. Everyone knows and remembers the late Ted Byfield as a conservative
00:50:33.020
activist and great opinion columnist. Now there is a book about the man and the legend.
00:50:40.380
There's a gentleman by the name of Jonathan Van Maren, who runs his own show, The Bridgehead. And he felt that
00:50:50.880
we don't have enough conservative heroes. In fact, I don't think we have hardly any these days. And
00:50:58.920
the media has done a great job in popularizing a lot of left-wing folks. But Dad or Ted was very much
00:51:16.300
a larger-than-life figure. And this came through. And the stories that circulate around my dad
00:51:25.440
are so amazing at times that some people think that they're made up. And Dad is the first one to say
00:51:35.720
that, how did he put it? Verification has ruined many a good story. But at the same time, the facts
00:51:45.620
with some of the things that my dad had accomplished in his life need to be told. Hopefully, it will serve
00:51:54.580
as an inspiration. For someone who's never heard of Alberta Report, how would you describe it?
00:52:01.760
Time magazine from literally 1920 in terms of its viewpoints. It was Christianity. It was Christian
00:52:09.260
values, but it wasn't in-your-face Christian values. It was just assumed. It was sort of the foundation of
00:52:17.080
every article, pretty much. But it was not. Anyway, it took off. It was very popular. And what happened
00:52:25.560
in the early 80s is it became known that they were practically the only media, if not the only media,
00:52:33.860
in the province that was going to stand up to the liberals when Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Marc
00:52:41.740
Lalonde introduced the National Energy Programme, which was a blatant grab of Alberta's energy in terms of
00:52:50.500
Did your dad see this book before he passed away?
00:52:54.980
No, I'm afraid not. He was able to see a draft of the first three or four chapters and had provided a lot of
00:53:06.780
input with Jonathan. He thought Jonathan did a really good job. And by the way, people who've
00:53:12.700
reviewed the book and have endorsed the book, like Preston Manning, Preston won't endorse a book unless
00:53:19.940
he's read it. He's a very principled man. And he thought it was exceptionally well done. And so did others.
00:53:28.720
Phil DeBrand, your competitor for the Western Standard, said he could not put the book down. He just,
00:53:37.220
What did he think about politics toward the end of his life? Obviously, he saw the first Trudeau up close and
00:53:45.240
Yeah, I think actually dad had a fair amount of respect for his adversary. He always thought of Pierre as a
00:53:56.960
very intelligent man, but quite clearly, the enemy. And if you read dad's
00:54:04.880
writings, even early on, even though dad lived and died a federalist, dad saw the, what is often coined
00:54:16.140
now, the Laurentian elites as a really serious problem that will wreck this country if they are not somehow
00:54:24.760
put in check. And so dad came up with the triple E Senate, well, along with Preston Manning.
00:54:30.840
And, uh, but that's been fairly soundly rejected since.
00:54:36.100
The, uh, it's probably not a secret to most people in Alberta that it's arguable that had your dad not
00:54:43.520
been around, there might not be a Conservative Party of Canada.
00:54:46.460
Uh, yeah, I think so. Because, uh, I, if you look at the history of movements, I think that the Reform Party
00:54:59.520
very clearly said, and it, and the most, the most famous expression that's associated with the Reform Party is
00:55:08.720
the West wants in. Uh, and, uh, so I think had Preston and dad not provided that leadership and vision,
00:55:27.900
there were plenty of people, even back then in the nineties, uh, who wanted out and had had enough.
00:55:37.660
Uh, but dad, uh, said, we need to give it one more try. And, uh, and they did, they tried really hard.
00:55:45.420
Um, and, uh, so, so Preston obviously created the Reform Party and, and then, uh, Stephen Harper took over
00:55:53.240
and, uh, and then merged with Peter McKay. I have my opinions on that not necessarily being the best
00:56:02.380
thing for Western Canada, but, uh, certainly has kept, uh, kept everything stuck together in terms of
00:56:09.820
the Conf, the Federation. What do you think, what, what do you think your dad would like to be remembered
00:56:15.020
most for? I think he wants to be remembered most for his books. Uh, and, and, uh, he, he, he, every day
00:56:28.880
until his last day prayed every morning and prayed every night. And I think that he wants to be remembered
00:56:38.240
as a good and loyal servant of God. Now that means serving his fellow man. And that means serving his
00:56:50.000
fellow Albertan and Western Canadian. And he genuinely does feel that a Canada that can resolve these
00:56:58.740
regional issues is better than a divided Canada. And I might add, he has said that if Alberta were to
00:57:08.060
ever separate, that's the end of Canada, the rest of Canada will fall apart very, very quickly.
00:57:16.160
Ted Byfield was a conservative legend. If you'd like to know more about what made this guy tick,