Rebel News Podcast - Alberta is set to repeal its carbon tax. Is it a sign of things to come？

00:00:00.580 You're listening to a Rebel Media Podcast.

00:00:03.860 Tonight, Alberta is set to repeal its carbon tax.

00:00:06.960 Is it a sign of things to come?

00:00:08.680 It's May 29th, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.

00:00:13.740 Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?

00:00:17.500 There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.

00:00:21.560 The only thing I have to say to the government of a wire publisher

00:00:24.920 is because it's my bloody right to do so.

00:00:30.000 Well, hello from the legislature in Edmonton, Alberta.

00:00:37.400 What a gorgeous spring day.

00:00:39.440 I mean that literally, but metaphorically, too.

00:00:42.180 Look at the kids splashing around in the pool.

00:00:45.900 I nearly disrobed, kept my skivies on, and jumped in, too.

00:00:50.740 But, of course, there's all sorts of bylaws against that.

00:00:53.880 We don't want to terrify anybody.

00:00:55.840 But I'm only half joking.

00:00:57.520 The laughter here seems a little happier.

00:01:00.520 The air smells a little freer.

00:01:03.240 I'm not just speaking metaphorically.

00:01:04.840 Of course, in the NDP-caused liberal exacerbated recession,

00:01:10.280 it is a dark fact that, of course, depression and suicides were way up.

00:01:15.540 You cannot throw 200,000 working men and women in the oil patch out of work

00:01:19.960 without a devastating social cost.

00:01:22.540 Of course, the bubble of Edmonton, especially around the legislature,

00:01:26.900 is immune from the vicissitudes of the private sector economy.

00:01:31.120 It's always boom time here in bureaucratville.

00:01:34.760 But for the rest of us, the sun is coming out.

00:01:37.760 What a gorgeous day.

00:01:39.480 I say all this because tomorrow is the last day in Rachel Notley's punitive job-killing carbon tax.

00:01:48.540 It appears that Jason Kenney is keeping his first and largest promise to repeal that tax,

00:01:53.820 a tax that was never mentioned, by the way, in Rachel Notley's sneak attack election in 2015.

00:02:00.880 Need I remind you that, according to an abacus poll,

00:02:04.440 more than 90% of Albertans in 2015 who voted for the NDP said they did not support NDP policies.

00:02:11.580 They simply wanted a change.

00:02:13.180 Well, folks, they got a change and hard, didn't they?

00:02:17.000 But the change is changing back.

00:02:19.580 It'll be interesting to see what Jason Kenney does repeal and what he does not repeal.

00:02:25.800 I told you before about the ancient Roman concept of damnatio memoriae.

00:02:32.300 That's my attempt at Latin.

00:02:33.620 It means dam or condemn the memory.

00:02:36.620 What emperors would do if they were deposing a rival, let's say, in a family feud,

00:02:42.560 is they would erase every trace of their rival.

00:02:47.300 They would destroy any statues of them.

00:02:49.900 They would scrape off any painting of them.

00:02:53.000 They would repeal any laws made by them.

00:02:55.780 Now, we don't know if damnatio memoriae ever worked because if it worked,

00:02:59.980 we wouldn't know about it.

00:03:01.120 We know the cases where it didn't work because there were remnants.

00:03:04.460 I believe the only way to cleanse Alberta is through fire of damnatio memoriae 0.84

00:03:11.880 to torch every single statute passed by Rachel Notley and her crew of destroyers.

00:03:19.120 It was as radical as any government in Alberta could get.

00:03:22.280 I mean, just for one example, we see the horrors of Venezuela unfolding before our eyes.

00:03:27.300 This is the government whose premier, Rachel Notley, personally had a shake with our wristwatch on.

00:03:33.020 So, 20 times a day, as she would check the time, she would see and admire, I suppose,

00:03:38.960 an actual murderer and terrorist.

00:03:41.500 And, of course, this fella was in caucus.

00:03:44.520 So, those dark days are gone.

00:04:00.380 Jason Kenney and his government are in charge.

00:04:03.820 They're repealing the carbon tax.

00:04:05.420 What else will they repeal?

00:04:06.920 I understand they're repealing the desperate last-ditch attempt by Rachel Notley to appear

00:04:11.500 to be pro-oil and gas, where she said she would buy, what was it, $3 billion worth of

00:04:17.560 oil-by-rail tanker cars, a bizarre public expenditure.

00:04:21.760 Of course, oil and gas companies can buy all the rail cars they need.

00:04:24.980 And it was Rachel Notley's analogy to Justin Trudeau buying the existing Trans Mountain

00:04:31.180 Pipeline, a pipeline that was already happily owned.

00:04:34.280 It was just a distraction, a fake.

00:04:41.020 And I think the most costly press release Justin Trudeau ever issued.

00:04:45.260 I think it's the same thing for Jason Kenney, repealing Rachel Notley's buy the oil tanker bill.

00:04:50.720 But what about other things?

00:04:51.960 Well, we see that they're reforming some of the labor laws passed by Rachel Notley that

00:04:56.760 exacerbated the reception, sorry, the recession.

00:04:59.760 Will they go further?

00:05:00.800 Will they repeal Bill 6, the Farm Unionization Act?

00:05:05.720 Will they repeal some of the extremist changes made at Alberta Education, where Notley and her

00:05:12.760 anti-Christian bigots declared war on homeschooling and Christian schools?

00:05:17.280 We'll see in the days and weeks ahead.

00:05:19.100 But we know that the media party hated those social reforms the most.

00:05:25.200 I think the media party knew that the carbon tax was dead and the anti-oil, anti-pipeline,

00:05:30.180 anti-gas manifesto of the NDP was dead.

00:05:34.440 But I think in the months ahead, you will see the media party and the rump opposition of

00:05:40.980 the NDP try to hang on to those social changes.

00:05:44.560 That was the essence of their election campaign against Jason Kenney, to talk about gay rights

00:05:50.480 and abortion and bigotry, this and that.

00:05:53.960 I think of all the repeals that will be the most difficult in the damnatio memoriae, it's

00:05:59.780 rolling back those social engineering experiments.

00:06:02.780 That will be the toughest.

00:06:03.820 Certainly that will be the toughest because of the media.

00:06:07.960 The media party in Alberta is, you wouldn't think it, given that Alberta is such a conservative

00:06:13.400 province, but it is one of the strongest media parties in the country.

00:06:16.960 And by strong, I mean the most whipped, the most disciplined, the most on-narrative anti-conservative

00:06:26.820 media in the country.

00:06:27.540 Because it's smaller, say, than the Ottawa Press Gallery or the Ontario Press Gallery,

00:06:33.440 because the group of reporters who cover Rachel Notley and Jason Kenney is so small, you know,

00:06:41.320 you could really fit them in one minivan, the full-time commentators.

00:06:46.240 They are a clique.

00:06:48.100 They are unanimous.

00:06:50.180 And they hate Jason Kenney, especially some of the reforms.

00:06:53.980 So in the months ahead, you will see that they, even more than Rachel Notley, are the

00:06:59.440 chief opposition.

00:07:00.320 So where does that leave us here at the Rebel?

00:07:03.100 Well, of course, we take great pride in doing more investigative journalism over the last

00:07:09.240 four years than the media party combined.

00:07:11.480 You will suddenly see a renewed interest in the media party in actually doing some digging

00:07:15.820 and grilling cabinet ministers that they somehow lost that curiosity for the last four years.

00:07:21.200 You won't see us lose our curiosity either.

00:07:25.680 But what I see our role as here at the Rebel is to hold Jason Kenney and the UCP government

00:07:32.800 to account from the right.

00:07:35.340 And that means two things, I think.

00:07:37.080 Number one, it means holding them to their conservative promises and holding the line so they don't ooze 0.99

00:07:44.620 to the left.

00:07:45.120 The entire gravitational pull in this building, in this city, in the media culture is to pull

00:07:51.100 them to the left.

00:07:51.600 Not just the NDP opposition, but the media, every lobbyist now finagling their way into

00:07:57.340 things.

00:07:58.200 It's important that the Rebel hold Jason Kenney and his team to account from the right

00:08:03.180 because no one else is.

00:08:05.660 There's no counterweight to the rest of the media.

00:08:08.420 That's our role.

00:08:08.980 The second thing is to call out the fake, gotcha, BuzzFeed-style gutter journalism of the

00:08:18.260 media party.

00:08:19.060 So that is to criticize Jason Kenney and his government in a good-faith way from the

00:08:24.280 right and to rebut the bad-faith criticisms of him from the left.

00:08:29.840 Is it possible to do that?

00:08:30.960 Well, yes, it is.

00:08:31.680 Of course, the Sun News Network, where some of our rebels came from, was born in the era

00:08:37.420 of Stephen Harper leading the conservative government.

00:08:40.420 That did not mean we sat on our hands.

00:08:41.980 It's the opposite.

00:08:43.020 We did our best to hold Stephen Harper to account for conservatives and to rebut the leftist

00:08:47.120 media.

00:08:48.020 We did the same at the Rebel when the Rebel's first half-year was under Stephen Harper, too.

00:08:54.100 I see that as our role here.

00:08:55.520 But it's also to be a voice for issues that Jason Kenney himself does not want to talk about.

00:09:03.640 In the recent weeks, we've shown that includes rooting out leftist holdovers that Rachel

00:09:09.620 Notley appointed, and even the bizarre choice by Jason Kenney to appoint a pro-carbon tax

00:09:16.120 lobbyist as one of his chief policymakers.

00:09:19.120 Now, as I said a few moments ago, tomorrow is the glorious day where the carbon tax will

00:09:23.000 die.

00:09:23.340 So, obviously, Mark Cameron was unsuccessful in that regard.

00:09:27.520 But we've got to keep an eye.

00:09:29.420 We've got to keep a watch on the watchman.

00:09:31.280 I note that my old friend, Monty Solberg, who was such an outstanding conservative MP for

00:09:37.500 years, he's got a lobby firm here in Alberta, and that's fine.

00:09:41.920 But he just signed on a former chief of staff to Notley's discredited government, an NDP

00:09:49.740 activist hired by Monty Solberg to lobby the government of Alberta.

00:09:55.240 I love Monty.

00:09:56.700 I love the Solberg family.

00:09:57.800 Stan Solberg, Monty's dad, used to work for the Western Standard.

00:10:01.480 But we've got to keep an eye on all these rent seekers, all these lobbyists who are saying,

00:10:07.580 I've got a connection with the UCP, and I'm going to rent that out.

00:10:11.640 I'm going to monetize the fact that I'm friends with this cabinet minister or that I used to

00:10:17.100 be a colleague of that cabinet minister, and I'm going to sell that to the highest bidder,

00:10:21.400 which could well be some left-wing activist group or some left-wing business scheme.

00:10:27.260 We've got to keep an eye on that.

00:10:28.740 But let me say this, the news from Alberta is good.

00:10:32.560 The tide has turned, or as Churchill would say, if it's not quite the beginning and the

00:10:36.580 end, it's at least the end of the beginning.

00:10:39.620 Rachel Notley is gone.

00:10:41.080 We look across this country, and whereas four years ago, it was only little Saskatchewan fighting

00:10:46.200 against the tide, now it's Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick,

00:10:52.480 Nova Scotia, and almost Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland, Prince Edward and almost

00:11:00.140 Newfoundland fighting back against the Trudeau liberals.

00:11:02.780 The tide is turning.

00:11:04.900 All attention now must go to the federal liberals and how we can remove that fool from office

00:11:10.480 too.

00:11:11.800 Well, over the course of the next 10 minutes, I'll talk to our two Alberta-based reporters,

00:11:16.180 Sheila Gunn-Reed and Kian Bexte, and give you their point of view.

00:11:22.480 Well, Sheila and Kian, thanks for joining me today.

00:11:36.820 We were standing, and it was almost like they sensed I was here, because the hot dog stand

00:11:42.080 people came and went right next to me.

00:11:44.400 They knew who their number one customer would be.

00:11:46.940 Sheila, great to see you.

00:11:47.860 Hey, Ezra.

00:11:48.400 Thanks for having us on.

00:11:49.240 Oh, come on. 0.87

00:11:49.960 You guys are the bedrock of the rebel out here in Alberta.

00:11:51.940 Kian, great to see you.

00:11:52.860 You're flying all over the place, not just here in Alberta.

00:11:55.020 I am.

00:11:55.480 I'm all over the place across North America, but it's good to be back at Ground Zero.

00:11:59.360 Yeah.

00:12:00.000 Well, I mean, I'm in good spirits because it's Alberta.

00:12:03.980 It's a gorgeous day seeing everybody in the wading pool.

00:12:07.180 I was joking about splashing around in there myself, but we didn't want Greenpeace coming

00:12:11.180 to rescue a whale or anything.

00:12:12.540 But, I mean, I think that things will immediately, quantifiably and qualitatively be better in

00:12:24.600 Alberta.

00:12:25.360 But the number one change is that people know the war against the people by its own government

00:12:32.140 is over.

00:12:32.560 So, even without the changes, they just know they're not being hunted and hated by rulers

00:12:39.300 and masters.

00:12:40.380 Now they're being represented by legislators.

00:12:42.660 It's a different thing.

00:12:43.820 Well, and I think it's not just a war on the people that's ending.

00:12:46.120 I think the war on business is ending also, which I guess at the end of the day is a war

00:12:51.540 on people because businesses are people too.

00:12:53.880 Jason Kenney announced that he's lowering the minimum wage for young workers, which will,

00:13:00.100 of course, result in more young workers having jobs.

00:13:03.560 The idea that a 14-year-old or 15-year-old or 16-year-old needs to make $15 an hour when

00:13:10.140 they're living at home and doing really menial entry-level work, lowering that is

00:13:16.100 really going to help businesses get back to growing and hiring and training those young

00:13:21.580 people for the booming economy to come here in Alberta.

00:13:24.900 Yeah, I mean, of course, the minimum wage is never $15.

00:13:27.500 They're zero.

00:13:28.000 The minimum wage is always zero.

00:13:29.440 And if a young person who doesn't have the training yet, doesn't have that first job

00:13:32.440 yet, isn't worth $15 from the eyes of an employer, they will get zero.

00:13:36.940 It's basically cutting off the lowest rung in the ladder and saying, if you're not good

00:13:40.560 enough to hop up to the third rung in the ladder, you don't get rung one and two.

00:13:44.040 I think that's an important symbol.

00:13:47.500 And it's against the fashion of $15 an hour, which sounds so good, but no one who's ever

00:13:52.360 run a business has ever said that.

00:13:54.720 Kian, I think that your campaign against an unrepentant communist activist named Anne McGrath,

00:14:02.700 who was beloved by the media party for some reason, she was like a fan favorite, a communist.

00:14:09.060 Communism has killed more people in the last century than even Nazism between the Soviet

00:14:16.960 Union and China.

00:14:18.520 And even if we look at hardcore socialism like Venezuela and Cuba, the fact that Anne McGrath

00:14:26.520 could run in Alberta as a communist with zero scrutiny from the media party shows in my

00:14:33.920 mind the absolute necessity for independent media.

00:14:38.500 And I think that your focus on Anne McGrath made the difference.

00:14:41.720 I think it did make the difference.

00:14:42.780 And I don't want to claim victory or defeat over the Anne McGrath thing.

00:14:46.300 The point of it wasn't to sway the election.

00:14:48.380 The point of it was to let the electorate know what secrets she was hiding because the

00:14:53.060 mainstream media certainly wasn't going to share it.

00:14:55.380 What I am interested in looking at right now, because someone just told me, equipped it

00:15:00.160 to me two days ago, Anne McGrath might actually still be on the government payroll. 1.00

00:15:04.780 She took a leave of absence from the McDougal Center in Calgary, the Government Operations

00:15:08.660 Center in Calgary.

00:15:10.100 And since then, I haven't seen a press release seeing that she was fired.

00:15:13.540 Have you?

00:15:14.740 No.

00:15:15.200 I mean, that's one of the things that worries me.

00:15:17.500 In my opening comments, I referred to this Roman concept of damnatio memoriae, which is

00:15:23.460 another way of saying, raise it to the ground, leave no stone on top of the other, like rubble

00:15:28.880 it, as they say in aliens, nuke it from orbit.

00:15:33.320 And when you have had four years of appointees, now not every single NDP appointee was awful,

00:15:42.720 but I'm going to say 90% of them were.

00:15:45.260 For example, their partisanification of the investment, like all the Alberta pensions,

00:15:53.400 this was like the Alberta version of the CPP.

00:15:57.280 And historically, only world standard, absolute professional money manager would be allowed

00:16:04.860 to touch that.

00:16:05.780 The NDP was putting their own hacks in the banking business, in the, like extreme insane

00:16:15.140 appointments.

00:16:16.420 I think, you know, there's a saying, better to let 10 guilty men go free than to convict

00:16:21.560 one innocent person.

00:16:22.560 That's true in the criminal law.

00:16:24.940 But in terms of politics, better to fire 10 okay bureaucrats than to leave 10,000 on the 1.00

00:16:36.400 job.

00:16:36.840 I truly believe that every single NDP appointee should be terminated, give him severance, give

00:16:44.400 him severance.

00:16:44.940 And if there's any, there's Darren Billis right there, by the way.

00:16:47.760 Hey, Darren, Darren.

00:16:49.360 Go, Kian, go. 1.00

00:16:50.620 Minister Billis, can you tell me, has, has anything changed in your lifestyle?

00:17:08.900 Has anything changed in your lifestyle since you got reelected?

00:17:11.780 It became clear that they weren't really interested in, uh, in your party's brand of politics.

00:17:17.480 But for some reason, they decided to reelect you.

00:17:19.580 Have you paid off the drugs as your, as your wife said you were wrong?

00:17:24.980 Where are we going right now?

00:17:31.980 Excuse me, I'm on the phone.

00:17:33.120 Yeah, no, I'm, I just was wondering if you'd answer some questions.

00:17:36.860 You didn't really want to talk when you were in government.

00:17:38.400 So maybe now you're in opposition, you'd like to chat about what you've been up to.

00:17:44.340 Right, right, right.

00:17:51.100 You, you never know when you're going to get the opportunity to talk to a communist.

00:17:54.480 Or, sorry, he's not a communist.

00:17:56.060 He was just running with communists.

00:17:57.540 So you never get, know when you get the opportunity.

00:17:59.220 So let's just get back to what we were doing.

00:18:01.200 Uh, he didn't really want to talk to me, Ezra.

00:18:02.600 He just, uh, he's always on the phone when I chat with him.

00:18:05.120 Yeah, he's been funny that way.

00:18:05.920 He's got a lot of people to talk to on the phone.

00:18:07.160 Well, let's get back to the official show.

00:18:09.180 Well, how much fun was that?

00:18:11.820 It was great.

00:18:13.280 He's always on the phone.

00:18:14.200 Like I said, he doesn't want to talk to me.

00:18:16.100 Uh, but, you know, you got to ask the questions that the mainstream media is not going to ask.

00:18:19.400 Because he was re-elected.

00:18:20.520 He was re-elected with a healthy majority of people in Edmonton saying that, yeah, he's the candidate for us.

00:18:25.560 But, you know, if the CBC published what we published about him, that his wife says that he has a serious drug and alcohol addiction, that he was philandering with the head of caucus, basically, in a time when we weren't sure who the MLA was or the MLAs were that Rachel Notley was covering up for.

00:18:44.320 Yeah.

00:18:44.880 Yeah, I mean, when Stephen Harper was prime minister, him and his cabinet would be chased with legitimate questions all the time.

00:18:54.200 But with the NDP and with most, until the last couple of months of Justin Trudeau, there's been some sort of immunity because the media are the auxiliary of the parties of the left.

00:19:04.420 That's why the rebel's alive.

00:19:06.960 People say, how can we beat the rebel?

00:19:08.940 I can tell you in one sentence.

00:19:11.200 Do real journalism about the other side of the story, and then there would be no market for what we do.

00:19:19.320 Well, and to make a point, further to Kian's point, there's journalists sitting in this building behind us.

00:19:26.540 They're covering the legislature every single day.

00:19:28.700 They have a press room.

00:19:29.960 They have a little clique that they belong to, that I refuse to belong to.

00:19:33.920 They could ask those questions that Kian asks of Darren Billis.

00:19:38.020 But Darren Billis walks around the legislature grounds knowing that no one's ever going to ask him those questions unless Kian jumps out of the shadows in the middle of a show and chases him down the block.

00:19:50.340 He walks around with complete impunity, and it's because the media party inside the building behind us has completely abdicated their jobs.

00:19:58.600 All right, let's get back to what's going on here.

00:20:00.440 I made the case that literally every bureaucrat should be fired, because although you will get one or two who were competent and legitimate and talented, literally the majority of them were improper appointees in the first place.

00:20:17.260 And I say that because I remember the very first list of the chiefs of staff for the cabinet ministers.

00:20:23.500 I think there were 12 of them, 10 out of the 12 chiefs of staff for Rachel Notley's cabinet were from outside the province.

00:20:30.800 Now, I've got nothing against people outside the province.

00:20:32.380 I live in Ontario myself.

00:20:34.500 But to rule Alberta, to bring in hired guns, mercenaries from every failed NDP activist around the country, it's basically a welfare job for failed NDPers, that was so gross.

00:20:47.360 And it wasn't just chiefs of staff, which are an inherently political position.

00:20:50.900 Appointees in the bureaucracy, they tried to embed little termites.

00:20:57.100 Sephora Berman.

00:20:58.220 Yeah, that's a great example.

00:21:00.600 So I think they have to wipe them all out, and I should point out that that has not happened yet.

00:21:06.680 And I think that if Jason Kenney does not appoint a chief inquisitor of the NDP inquisition, and I know the inquisition is a bad rap, but I think that Jason Kenney needs to appoint a digger to check every single appointee, because Donald Trump did not.

00:21:27.920 And so all these Obama-era holdovers were undermining Trump for two years, undermined him.

00:21:34.880 And don't think that's not going to happen here.

00:21:36.720 Well, and I think, too, that even just the mere suggestion that a house cleaning is going to happen, it created the conditions for the garbage to take itself out, and not to call Ed Whittingham garbage.

00:21:49.280 But he was...

00:21:50.680 He's recycling.

00:21:51.720 Recycling.

00:21:52.340 He's recycling.

00:21:53.600 Yeah, he was the head of the Pembina Institute, who, during the time that he was there, was featured in the Rockefeller Foundation tar sands campaign.

00:22:02.840 He was appointed to the Alberta Energy Regulator.

00:22:06.080 So the guy who decides which energy project goes forward.

00:22:09.960 Rachel Notley did that on her way out the door. 0.99

00:22:12.400 The mere suggestion that Jason Kenney was going to examine his hiring caused him to quit and resign in a big huff.

00:22:23.300 So, I mean, they really need almost like a Vivian Crouse-style investigation into everybody who's been appointed here.

00:22:32.020 Yeah, you know, the saying nothing in public office became him like the leaving of it.

00:22:38.000 The best thing Ed Whittingham ever did was leave the public square.

00:22:42.400 Kian, you're from the south, Sheila's from the north.

00:22:46.880 Just when we were, before the camera was on, we saw a lot of great MLAs coming out, and we had a great banter.

00:22:52.580 I said hi to a whole bunch of folks, some I knew, some I didn't.

00:22:57.060 You know, we were a voice for change in this province, but they've got a little bit of rebel derangement syndrome in the caucus.

00:23:07.140 Which is, you know, I had our team check, and literally a majority of the UCP MLAs are rebel members.

00:23:22.760 They're donors, they're subscribers, they've signed up.

00:23:27.040 Some of them have signed up for like 20 things.

00:23:28.720 So, I mean, I would never reveal the privacy of who's a member of the rebel.

00:23:32.960 But I know for a fact, all the supporters of the rebel who are now part of the government, they've got this politically correct, oh, I can't be seen with Kian and Sheila or Ezra.

00:23:45.800 I don't even get it, and I don't even know what the point of that is anymore.

00:23:50.280 It just, I don't even remember how that started.

00:23:52.200 It just seems odd, especially when the, it's gaslighting, you know, and it works.

00:23:55.880 When the mainstream media tells you over and over and over again that you're not, that someone is a Nazi or someone is an extremist or someone is evil, you start to believe it.

00:24:04.360 Even if you know differently.

00:24:05.500 I don't think these people believe it.

00:24:06.720 I think that they're afraid.

00:24:08.940 Oh, they don't, well, they don't believe it.

00:24:10.240 I mean, the point is, when the camera was off, how many MLAs came and shook your hand, my hand, Sheila's hand, I think I saw a hug.

00:24:17.240 So, if the camera's off, and all these MLAs, and I think there might have been a cabinet minister or two there, I can't recall, and some outstanding front-rank MLAs, if they're all huggy, handshake-y, back-slappy, hey, say hi to your dad, hey, say hi to your mom, so they know they don't believe the BS.

00:24:35.580 So, why are they going along with it?

00:24:37.380 That's what I don't quite understand.

00:24:38.760 I think that a lot of them are more scared of the CBC than they are of me.

00:24:44.680 And I think the onus then is on us for the next four years, hopefully more, to hold them accountable for their campaign promises.

00:24:53.980 That just because I'm conservative and they're conservative, that this is going to be a cakewalk and a friendly relationship.

00:25:01.140 I think that it's our job here at The Rebel to make sure that they, when, as you always say, Ezra, all the forces are pulling them left, the mainstream media, the CBC, the opposition party, and time in office, for that matter, it's our job to bring them back right.

00:25:16.600 And right now, for some reason, they are far more scared of the CBC and the mainstream media, and I think that has to change.

00:25:23.220 I don't think they think that we'll turn around and expose them for things that we've been exposing the NDP for.

00:25:27.660 And I have no qualms calling out Jason Kenney for his failures, but I will equally applaud him for when he does great things.

00:25:37.540 And I'm excited that Janice Harrington, the executive director of the United Conservative Party, is now gone.

00:25:43.080 And she wouldn't tell anyone why she left, but I have a feeling it's because Jason Kenney was cleaning house, which is good news.

00:25:48.080 Well, this was something we thought a lot about at the Sun News Network, when Stephen Harper was in office, because you don't want to just be a repeater of conservative talking points.

00:25:58.060 What's the point of that? That's boring. You could just sign up for a conservative newsletter then.

00:26:01.200 I think the difference was our criticisms were in good faith.

00:26:06.080 We gave Harper, as will give Kenney, the benefit of the doubt.

00:26:08.740 And we won't be stupid, BuzzFeed-style, Vice-style, CBC-style, kooky, trash journalism, gotcha, like just the gutter journalism of the BuzzFeeds and the Vices of the world, the Huffington Post gutter journalism.

00:26:23.160 So if we criticize Jason Kenney, it'll be on substance.

00:26:26.800 It'll be ideological.

00:26:29.020 It'll be a good faith criticism.

00:26:32.360 And everything I just said there will be the opposite of how he's criticized by the CBC.

00:26:36.700 And we will also debunk the junk journalism of the CBC.

00:26:44.400 So we have an interest—we're like a friend to all, a critic of all.

00:26:49.520 We're the same no matter who we talk to.

00:26:52.380 That's tough to do in journalism and politics.

00:26:55.500 I remember when you first accosted Darren Billis and Rachel Notley, not much further away than I am to you right now.

00:27:02.580 And you asked very challenging questions about his wife's sworn affidavit, that Darren Billis was a drug abuser, that he had an illicit affair with another NDP MLA.

00:27:13.500 That's extremely hard to do from a personal point of view to ask another human being.

00:27:18.740 And so I understand why it's natural for journalists and politicians who work in close proximity with each other to have a collegiate—oh, I'm never going to ask you something difficult.

00:27:27.280 You're never going to ask me something difficult because otherwise it'll be uncomfortable working in the same building together for four years.

00:27:33.100 That's not checks and balances.

00:27:35.920 You have to be able to decouple your job as a journalist from a personal friendship.

00:27:43.160 And so, in fact, all of the back-slapping and hugs and handshakes and high-fives that we had with the various MLAs and cabinet ministries as they came and went,

00:27:50.700 that has to be expendable, actually, if they're doing something wrong.

00:27:56.040 And that will prove our value to Albertans.

00:27:58.940 That's my view.

00:27:59.720 Last word to you, Keane, and then, Sheila, you can give us some thoughts to leave on.

00:28:03.140 I, you know, I'm excited to be back in Edmonton.

00:28:05.840 If anyone wants to follow the work that I'm doing around North America, particularly in Canada, as I follow Justin Trudeau,

00:28:11.820 the next person in my sights after Rachel Knolley and Anne McGrath, they can go to www.rebelinvestigates.com.

00:28:19.900 Check out everything that I've been doing, where I've been, and the stories that I'm uncovering.

00:28:23.560 Right on.

00:28:24.220 Sheila, you really own the Alberta Beat.

00:28:26.480 You've broken more stories probably than the rest of the press gallery combined.

00:28:30.380 And I don't want to quite say that, because they're, because that would imply you're ten times better than them.

00:28:34.820 I think you're five times better, maybe eight times better, maybe nine times better.

00:28:38.600 I want to just do the math before I say you're ten times better.

00:28:40.880 Okay.

00:28:41.360 But in my heart, you're ten times better.

00:28:43.080 I just, um, you had a big role in shining a light of public scrutiny on the misbehavior and the misconduct,

00:28:50.400 and in some cases, the crimes of the NDP.

00:28:55.280 Three best-selling books, all had Alberta-centric themes.

00:28:58.680 The Destroyers, your unauthorized biography of David Suzuki, and then Stop Knolley, huge success.

00:29:05.600 You are a midwife of this new birth year.

00:29:10.600 It probably would have happened without the rebel, because the NDP was so awful,

00:29:15.280 but you helped give birth to this new era.

00:29:20.320 What do you hope things will be like 12 months from now?

00:29:24.540 Well, going back to the point I was making about the United Conservatives being scared of me,

00:29:31.280 I really want to keep them scared straight.

00:29:32.920 I want them to know that I will provide them the same level of scrutiny that I provided the NDP,

00:29:39.300 so that they never do the things that the NDP have done.

00:29:42.140 If we need an example of that, just look at our Fire Cameron campaign.

00:29:47.700 Jason Kenney appointed a pro-carbon tax lobbyist named Mark Cameron to be his chief policy wonk

00:29:53.340 as one of his first major hires.

00:29:55.840 In his first gaffe, in my mind.

00:29:57.640 Yeah, me too.

00:29:58.700 And we went just as hard, although fair, on Jason Kenney as we did with Rachel Notley.

00:30:05.380 We ran a petition.

00:30:07.220 I've got a billboard up on the side of Highway 2,

00:30:11.240 and I put it up on a long weekend, so a lot of people have seen that billboard.

00:30:15.520 So going forward, if I'm doing my job right,

00:30:19.520 if I'm doing my job, then we should have good, clean governance here.

00:30:24.600 But it means a lot of work and a lot of digging for me to make sure that that happens.

00:30:29.820 Well, I know you guys are the two to do it, and I thank you on behalf of The Rebel, our company,

00:30:34.580 but also on behalf of our countless viewers in Alberta, across Canada, and around the world.

00:30:39.780 Well, I'll wrap it up there from my short but sweet trip to Alberta's capital,

00:30:44.720 where I think the counter-revolution has begun in earnest.

00:30:49.540 And tomorrow, the last dying day of the carbon tax, that's a day to remember.

00:30:54.160 For the Rebel.media, on behalf of all of us here, to you at home,

00:30:58.920 good night, and keep fighting for freedom.

00:31:01.280 Good night.

Rebel News Podcast - May 30, 2019

Alberta is set to repeal its carbon tax. Is it a sign of things to come？

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