Rebel News Podcast - Celine Dion tells us what she thinks of children — and it’s weirder than you think

00:00:00.000 Tonight, Celine Dion tells us what she thinks of children, and it's a lot weirder than you think.

00:00:05.740 It's November 20th, and this is The Ezra Levant Show.

00:00:14.060 Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?

00:00:17.840 There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.

00:00:21.560 You come here once a year with a sign, and you feel morally superior.

00:00:24.540 The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.

00:00:35.740 Who cares what Celine Dion thinks of the world, right?

00:00:38.940 I mean, she's really good at singing in that earnest style.

00:00:42.480 That's what she's famous for. 1.00

00:00:43.980 That's what she's great at. 1.00

00:00:45.720 Why not judge her on that alone?

00:00:47.400 No need to get political.

00:00:48.520 Let a singer be a singer. 0.94

00:00:50.420 She's not particularly political, as musicians go.

00:00:53.080 I think that's what kicks in sometimes when a singer starts to lose their talent,

00:00:57.640 or an actor starts to lose their fame, and they need to get attention in some way.

00:01:03.280 Celine Dion isn't like that.

00:01:05.280 There was this news story from a couple years ago that claimed she declined to perform at Donald Trump's inauguration,

00:01:11.840 but that doesn't really say anything one way or another.

00:01:14.220 For all we know, it could have been a scheduling conflict, or maybe the opposite of political.

00:01:17.760 Maybe she didn't want to do anything either for or against Trump.

00:01:21.040 I mean, what's not to like about Celine Dion?

00:01:24.720 But let's also acknowledge that she's a little bit unusual.

00:01:28.200 She started singing as a child prodigy, and when she was 12, she met her new manager,

00:01:34.740 Rene Angeli, who was 38 years old at the time, so he was 26 years older than her.

00:01:40.740 And when she was in her later teens, they started dating, and they got married a few years later.

00:01:49.680 It's not really normal to marry who was your father figure.

00:01:54.700 Nothing in her life has been normal.

00:01:56.600 She lives in the Las Vegas bubble, and that's fine.

00:01:59.480 She provides a lot of joy to a lot of people, and she's very well compensated for it.

00:02:03.700 But you must admit, she leads an unusual life, always has,

00:02:07.900 and her notions of mums and dads and husbands and wives and kids are a bit different from a normal person's.

00:02:16.060 Again, no problem.

00:02:16.960 I mean, it's called Holly Weird for a reason.

00:02:19.120 But Celine Dion always had that slightly nerdy, friendly vibe, right?

00:02:25.420 She gets into some product lines, businesses like celebrities do. 1.00

00:02:29.480 She has a line of perfume, and now she's decided to get into children's clothing, 0.77

00:02:34.100 and she has a few kids of her own now.

00:02:36.800 I suppose I should tell you a little bit about that if you don't already know.

00:02:39.940 Hey, let me read to you from this Globe and Mail article from 18 years ago.

00:02:43.520 This is from the year 2000.

00:02:44.800 Ready?

00:02:46.500 The story is called On the Celine Dion Front, Things Get Ever Stranger.

00:02:52.100 Here's the quote.

00:02:52.780 We have a little baby in our belly and one at the lab,

00:02:57.660 a beaming Miss Dion says in a coming television interview for the TVA Network.

00:03:02.840 Miss Dion, who became pregnant through in vitro fertilization earlier this year, 0.98

00:03:06.660 says a second embryo has been placed in frozen storage in New York.

00:03:11.880 She hopes one day to have the other egg implanted into her for a second pregnancy 1.00

00:03:17.060 and has promised her mother that she will.

00:03:20.140 Mom told me, you are going to go get him, right?

00:03:25.200 And I told her, of course, Mom.

00:03:26.800 I will go get him for sure.

00:03:30.140 And she did indeed go to the freezer.

00:03:32.620 Here, let me read a story from 2009, nine years later.

00:03:36.940 Celine Dion pregnant with embryo frozen for eight years is the headline.

00:03:43.820 Celine Dion had her embryos frozen when she went through IVF while trying to conceive her first child,

00:03:48.820 Renee Charles, who was born in January 2001.

00:03:51.780 When she completed her performance run in Las Vegas in 2007,

00:03:56.400 she consulted Dr. Rosenwax about trying again.

00:03:59.240 She came back to have the embryos transferred back because she wanted to have another baby, he says.

00:04:05.080 According to the fertility specialist, freezing an embryo for eight years is not necessarily a problem.

00:04:10.620 There have been embryos that have been frozen for more than 10 years

00:04:13.240 and even more than 15 years that have successfully thawed and resulted in a pregnancy, says Dr. Rosenwax.

00:04:20.240 Now, life is life, and I'm glad she has three kids.

00:04:25.700 It turned out that she got twins from that other frozen embryo.

00:04:29.640 And look, some people have trouble conceiving naturally.

00:04:32.440 I don't begrudge anyone any use of technology if they're trying to have a baby.

00:04:38.940 I will say that having an embryo frozen, an embryo is a tiny baby.

00:04:43.140 It's not just a sperm or an egg.

00:04:44.840 That Globe and Mail story said an egg frozen wasn't an egg.

00:04:47.800 It was a teeny tiny baby already.

00:04:51.140 And in her case, it was twins.

00:04:53.460 I mean, here's a picture of those lovely twins right after they were born.

00:04:57.640 You could say that they were already 10 years old, though, couldn't you?

00:05:02.860 This picture is from December 2010.

00:05:06.380 Again, it's wonderful.

00:05:08.660 Life.

00:05:10.000 I'm glad she's got three kids, and I bet she's a great mom. 0.99

00:05:13.300 But there is something unusual, and I found it a bit uncomfortable, at least to me.

00:05:18.220 About knowing you have a little teeny tiny baby and freezing that teeny tiny baby for years.

00:05:24.820 And I know it's unborn, and it's very, very small.

00:05:27.100 But you heard her talk about those kids.

00:05:29.940 Yeah, they're in the freezer.

00:05:30.820 Yeah, Mom, I'll go back for them.

00:05:33.060 And actually, I'm glad 10 years later she did.

00:05:36.680 That's an odd look into the future.

00:05:39.460 It feels like a sci-fi future.

00:05:41.420 I think Celine Dion is a nice lady. 1.00

00:05:43.440 But you have to admit, she has not had a normal relationship with her late husband or with her children.

00:05:49.620 Would you grant me that?

00:05:51.640 And that's fine.

00:05:52.440 And I wouldn't talk about it.

00:05:53.440 And it's none of my business.

00:05:54.520 And it's personal and it's private.

00:05:55.840 But other than she has just come out with a kid's clothing line for little kids, in addition to her perfume line.

00:06:05.260 And it's a bit weird.

00:06:06.040 She's selling it as gender-neutral clothing for kids. 1.00

00:06:11.400 She launched it with a big splash just a few days ago.

00:06:15.820 There's the headline in one news report.

00:06:17.760 Celine Dion is a new gender-neutral clothing line for kids.

00:06:20.280 It's part of a growing trend in kids' clothes.

00:06:22.820 Now, if you have kids, or if you had kids, you will know that gender is hardwired. 1.00

00:06:28.420 It is biological.

00:06:30.340 I mean, woke parents can give their little girls train sets and dump trucks to play with. 1.00

00:06:35.100 And they can give their little boys dolls to play with.

00:06:37.760 But you go to any birthday party for three-year-olds and you will see what happens.

00:06:41.620 The boys run around like maniacs, playing some rough game, usually involving pretending to shoot things or throw things,

00:06:48.620 while the girls sit around in a circle and talk about dolls.

00:06:51.360 I am not saying it's an iron law, but it is the norm.

00:06:55.420 You can try to counter it.

00:06:56.720 You can try to resist it.

00:06:58.000 But it is deep and biological, like sex differences are.

00:07:02.200 I'm sorry, there are only two sexes, folks. 1.00

00:07:05.100 But Celine Dion says there are none.

00:07:09.020 And that ain't right.

00:07:11.120 But that's the theme of her clothes, gender neutrality and skulls. 1.00

00:07:17.460 Skulls.

00:07:17.960 I'm not kidding.

00:07:18.780 I think that's weird.

00:07:20.380 Here's your kid's clothing line.

00:07:22.100 It's called Celine Nunu.

00:07:25.420 You can see that right at the top.

00:07:27.260 Scroll through it.

00:07:27.920 The clothes are as ugly as you'd think.

00:07:31.460 And they just have lots of skulls, like human skulls.

00:07:39.540 That's the main image.

00:07:41.200 That's not normal.

00:07:43.040 I mean, children are a fountain of life.

00:07:45.440 They're growing.

00:07:46.820 They're vivacious.

00:07:47.840 They're lively.

00:07:48.460 They're inspiring.

00:07:49.220 They're energetic.

00:07:49.740 It's the opposite of death.

00:07:53.580 It's gross and unnatural to have children and dead men's skulls juxtaposed.

00:08:00.060 That's weird.

00:08:02.100 It's also weird compared to Celine Dion's store for grown-ups.

00:08:05.740 Look at that store.

00:08:06.780 That's a normal store.

00:08:08.660 You've got women's clothes and men's clothes, but there's no skulls. 1.00

00:08:14.240 This is her store.

00:08:16.340 Feminine clothes, masculine clothes, pretty things.

00:08:21.100 There's women's clothes marked for women, men's clothes marked for men. 0.73

00:08:23.500 I wonder why she sells normal clothing to adults, mainly to women, of course. 1.00

00:08:29.200 Pretty clothes.

00:08:30.780 Things that would make you feel good, like a Celine Dion song makes you feel.

00:08:33.720 But she sells ugly unisex clothes with skulls on it to children. 1.00

00:08:39.940 That's weird.

00:08:40.540 But then I watched her video launching her kids' clothing line.

00:08:47.180 I'm just going to show it to you.

00:08:48.940 Okay?

00:08:49.800 Watch this and listen to this.

00:08:51.460 It's about 90 seconds long.

00:08:52.640 Take a look.

00:08:58.480 It's okay.

00:08:59.340 It's okay.

00:09:00.840 I'm Celine Dion.

00:09:02.000 Our children, they are not really our children.

00:09:12.180 As we are all just links in a never-ending chain that is life.

00:09:17.760 For us, they are everything.

00:09:20.860 But in reality, we are only a fraction of their universe.

00:09:24.580 We miss the past.

00:09:29.140 They dream of tomorrow.

00:09:32.120 We may thrust them forward into the future.

00:09:34.900 But the course will always be theirs to choose.

00:09:38.360 I can't believe they called security.

00:10:03.480 I mean, oh, come on.

00:10:05.300 I'm Celine Dion.

00:10:06.680 I'm not spending the night in jail.

00:10:08.940 Holy shit.

00:10:16.920 Guys, relax, easy.

00:10:19.200 I'm Celine Dion.

00:10:20.500 Yeah, girl, and I'm Beyonce. 1.00

00:10:24.100 Now, I think that was trying to be funny in a nerdy Celine Dion sort of way.

00:10:29.640 I'm Celine Dion.

00:10:30.780 I'm Celine Dion.

00:10:31.580 That was funny enough.

00:10:33.480 But you can't miss the sheer creepiness of her saying that our children are not ours.

00:10:40.140 And by that, she really means your children are not yours.

00:10:44.120 I won't talk about her and her own kids.

00:10:46.680 I guess that's a private thing for her, even though she's certainly posed for enough magazines

00:10:50.940 with them and told everyone the details.

00:10:53.940 But she means your kids are not yours.

00:10:56.500 If it wasn't clear enough, she was sneaking into a hospital nursery and degendering children, 0.99

00:11:02.620 taking them out of their pretty kids' clothes for boys and for girls and putting them in 0.99

00:11:07.720 her weird black and white trans clothes.

00:11:12.180 Is that weird?

00:11:13.180 I think it's weird.

00:11:13.940 I think it's a little bit political, too.

00:11:17.120 But if that's all there was, there wouldn't be much, I guess.

00:11:20.360 I mean, I think her clothing line will fail.

00:11:22.740 It feels like a bit of a stunt, maybe a trans activism gimmick.

00:11:26.300 The moment she shuts down her pretty clothing line for grown-ups, you know, with pink things 0.99

00:11:32.140 and women's things. 0.94

00:11:32.820 The moment she starts dressing in gender-neutral sacks herself, or even like Hillary Clinton 0.98

00:11:39.140 in those big form-obscuring smocks. 0.80

00:11:43.200 When she starts dressing like that, I'll believe that Celine Dion doesn't believe in boys' 0.99

00:11:48.000 things and girls' things.

00:11:48.640 She loves being girly and feminine.

00:11:51.520 She's lying about what's cool.

00:11:54.760 Skulls are not cool for beautiful children.

00:11:57.760 It's going to flop commercially.

00:12:00.280 But let me go one notch deeper, okay?

00:12:02.240 Her clothing line, as you saw there, it's called Celine Nunu Nunu, which is weird, but it's

00:12:08.780 actually a partnership with an existing kids' clothing line called Nunu Nunu.

00:12:12.920 That's what it's called.

00:12:14.220 And they've been around for a little while, and I thought the clothes were really ugly.

00:12:17.140 And I thought the politics were dark.

00:12:19.740 The whole thing was even in black and white, wasn't it?

00:12:22.400 Now, their activists Nunu Nunu, as much as clothiers.

00:12:25.600 And so I went to their Instagram page.

00:12:28.420 This is Celine Dion's partner company and her gender-neutral clothing line.

00:12:32.420 And let me show you some of the pictures I just found poking around on their public Instagram

00:12:40.360 page.

00:12:40.820 You could find them yourself on Instagram pretty quickly.

00:12:44.760 Now, some of these are gross.

00:12:45.880 So if you don't want to see gross things and uncomfortable things, take a two-minute break

00:12:51.040 now, okay?

00:12:52.500 Take a look at this one.

00:12:54.960 What do you think of that?

00:12:57.360 What do you think?

00:12:58.140 Take a look at that.

00:13:00.020 What do you think of that?

00:13:02.440 That's on a kids' clothing company Instagram page.

00:13:08.540 The company's called Nunu Nunu.

00:13:09.760 They're making Celine Dion's transgender clothes for kids.

00:13:13.620 But they're not your kids, you see.

00:13:15.980 That was demonic.

00:13:18.020 Literally.

00:13:19.840 And what about this one?

00:13:20.740 A woman looking through the skull of a horse.

00:13:25.840 And if you see at the top there, they call it skull inspiration.

00:13:31.440 Sorry, that's really gross.

00:13:34.600 I showed you the weirdness that Celine Dion's kids' clothes obsesses over death and skulls.

00:13:40.180 Here's another Nunu Nunu image.

00:13:43.520 And in the comments, they call it skull inspiration, they say.

00:13:48.700 I don't know if that's an adult or a teen that's on a child's hand.

00:13:52.360 But what's with the death and skulls?

00:13:57.500 Here, look at the next one.

00:13:58.680 This one is a child.

00:13:59.740 This is a disturbing image.

00:14:02.640 Maybe the most disturbing of them all.

00:14:04.220 Is that blood on her clothes? 1.00

00:14:07.280 Why is she in a dirty alleyway with a bag over her head, holding on to a teddy bear like that? 0.89

00:14:14.100 And look at what they call it.

00:14:15.260 Look right at the top there.

00:14:17.540 Nunu Nunu inspiration.

00:14:20.120 This is their inspiration.

00:14:23.200 Now, I swear this next one is real.

00:14:24.940 You're not going to believe me.

00:14:25.900 Look at this next one.

00:14:26.620 That's a young girl holding a children's book, wearing a goat's head mask, like the occult, satanic deity, Baphomet.

00:14:44.080 That's Celine Dion's partner company.

00:14:47.820 Here's one more.

00:14:48.900 One more image for you.

00:14:51.000 Look at that.

00:14:53.000 Death.

00:14:54.740 Not life.

00:14:55.880 It's shocking.

00:14:58.180 Because children are about life.

00:14:59.980 Well, not for this company.

00:15:01.460 And what's that behind them?

00:15:02.460 Is that spattered blood?

00:15:03.660 I don't know.

00:15:04.360 Some black and white, like everything they do. 0.68

00:15:06.360 Who knows?

00:15:07.440 All I know is that I wouldn't want my children anywhere within a mile of these people.

00:15:15.720 Not wearing their clothes.

00:15:17.080 Not even going into their stores.

00:15:18.840 Not alone with them.

00:15:20.540 They are freaks.

00:15:22.740 What is going on here with lovely Celine Dion, who we all know?

00:15:30.920 I am not indulging in some weird conspiracy theory.

00:15:34.360 I am not connecting dots here.

00:15:36.180 I simply went through the official Instagram page of her kids' clothing company, with whom she has partnered in her weird project.

00:15:48.080 She says your kids are not your kids.

00:15:50.800 She says boys shouldn't be boys, and girls shouldn't be girls. 0.98

00:15:53.700 Maybe they should be demons or skeletons?

00:15:58.520 This is bad.

00:16:00.660 I think Celine Dion is a bit screwed up.

00:16:03.560 Her life, while very glamorous, has always been lived in a gilded cage, wouldn't you say?

00:16:09.080 Since she was a child, her manager came in and took over her life.

00:16:15.460 He was 26 years older than her.

00:16:17.220 She was just 12.

00:16:19.080 And then he surely planned to become her husband and made it happen.

00:16:25.860 And as if she even had a chance otherwise, she surely has not had a moment of real, normal life since she was a kid herself.

00:16:34.040 So, her own experience of having children was the most antiseptic and dehumanized story I've ever heard.

00:16:41.360 Now, I'm not condemning in vitro fertilization.

00:16:44.080 And if it's tough to have a baby, do whatever it takes to get that baby.

00:16:48.180 But you must agree with me that her comments about keeping kids in the freezer until it's convenient, that's odd.

00:16:56.980 Now, I still like the sound of her voice.

00:16:59.000 I still like her songs.

00:17:00.000 I'm sure her concerts are great, and I'm sure there's not a lot of skulls and demons in them.

00:17:06.600 But someone needs to get her off this bizarre project she's on. 0.98

00:17:11.400 She obviously doesn't need the money. 1.00

00:17:13.700 She's not doing it for that. 0.63

00:17:15.300 So, what exactly is she doing it for?

00:17:17.800 And at whose advice here?

00:17:20.000 And with her husband, Renee, gone, is there even anyone around her to tell her to stop?

00:17:28.080 Stay with us for more.

00:17:30.000 Today, I'm announcing the appointment of three special envoys.

00:17:48.900 Their task is to work with the energy industry and CEOs to develop short and medium-term solutions to close the oil price differential as much as is possible with the tools that we have available.

00:18:01.960 The envoys are Dr. Robert Skinner from the University of Calgary School of Public Policy,

00:18:08.460 Colleen Volk, Alberta's Deputy Minister of Energy,

00:18:11.720 and Brian Topp, my former Chief of Staff and a well-regarded policy consultant.

00:18:16.620 And Brian Topp has a long history as a negotiator and public policy practitioner,

00:18:20.600 including working very closely with Alberta industry leaders on the climate leadership plan and the royalty review program that we put in place over two years ago.

00:18:31.400 Yeah, let me translate.

00:18:32.660 She's hiring Brian Topp, her former Chief of Staff, who brought the carbon tax into Alberta.

00:18:38.360 He's this whiz kid now who, along with these two other appointees, are going to find some way to solve the oil demarketing.

00:18:49.200 These three wise men will...

00:18:51.180 Let me quote, actually, from exactly what she said.

00:18:55.300 It's just incredible.

00:18:56.400 The idea here is for them to do work, to dig in in a more systematic way with industry players to determine what kind of short-term solutions can be brought to the table.

00:19:11.940 So she has no clue.

00:19:14.160 And they have no clue.

00:19:16.140 And smart people have been thinking about this for many years and hiring a Toronto-based union organizer to figure it out.

00:19:24.160 I'm not sure if that's going to work.

00:19:25.100 Just a reminder of Brian Topp.

00:19:26.540 Here's some clips of him when he ran for the leadership of the NDP a few years back.

00:19:31.860 Here's Brian Topp.

00:19:32.880 We want a clear approach on climate change.

00:19:35.420 And I quite like what they're doing in Europe.

00:19:37.180 And it's worth studying it carefully as we think about Canadian policy.

00:19:40.600 Hard cap on emissions to price carbon, a home and industrial retrofit program, getting out of coal,

00:19:48.100 getting an urban mass transit program, and getting fossil-fueled cars out of our cities.

00:19:53.240 The comprehensive approach like that, we can tackle climate change, and it's got to be at the heart of our next government.

00:19:58.800 He's so extreme, the NDP recoiled from him.

00:20:01.640 Imagine a man who says, get fossil-fueled cars out of the city.

00:20:07.380 Well, he was the guy who was brought in to bring in the carbon tax.

00:20:10.280 And now Rachel Notley is asking him to help get Alberta's oil to market.

00:20:15.520 Joining us now to talk about the likelihood of success is our friend Lauren Gunter, a columnist with the Eminence of the Sun.

00:20:22.340 Lauren, great to see you again.

00:20:23.900 We're in good hands because no one knows more about oil and gas than a Toronto union boss like Brian Topp.

00:20:31.020 Don't you think that three years, three and a half years into your term as premier,

00:20:36.040 is a little late to start realizing you don't know anything about the energy industry?

00:20:42.480 You should really send some people over to find out what's going on.

00:20:45.740 One of the things that Notley said that I also want to add in, I mean, I think all of those clips that you've played on Topp

00:20:55.520 and the things you've said about Brian Topp are exactly right.

00:20:58.640 But one of the other things I want to add in is she said, Brian Topp, my former chief of staff,

00:21:03.460 who has a history of negotiating with oil executives on our climate leadership plan.

00:21:12.480 Well, you remember back in November of 2015 when she announced her carbon tax and the rest of the climate leadership plan.

00:21:19.160 There were four executives standing on the stage with her, nodding in agreement, saying this is a marvelous idea.

00:21:26.240 We're all for it.

00:21:27.380 And those four, three of whose companies are still involved in the oil sands, one who sold out,

00:21:35.720 all of those chief executives are now gone.

00:21:39.780 And they were the ones that are seen by a lot of others in the industry as collaborators or as traders

00:21:49.040 for having gone in secretly with the NDP, not asking the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers,

00:21:56.800 not asking other CEOs of other major companies, cutting a side deal with the NDP themselves.

00:22:02.500 That's what Topp put together.

00:22:03.800 When she says he has a history of negotiating with oil executives, that's what she's talking about.

00:22:10.180 She's talking about getting those four, standing on the stage with her during the climate leadership plan.

00:22:15.160 It was a disaster.

00:22:16.040 It's a disaster now.

00:22:18.340 And that's what she's boasting about.

00:22:20.820 So if she thinks that qualifies Brian Topp to go out now and talk to oil executives about

00:22:28.240 what needs to be done about the big price gap between West Texas Intermediate or the world

00:22:32.560 price of crude oil and the Canadian price, she's sadly mistaken.

00:22:37.400 Really.

00:22:37.820 It really is sad.

00:22:40.780 You know, it's sad.

00:22:42.460 It's pitiful that it's being taken at face value.

00:22:46.040 I mean, but even if she hired, I don't know, T. Boone Pickens, a guy who's, even if J.D. Rockefeller

00:22:58.540 himself came back from the grave, there is no solution to this other than building a pipeline.

00:23:06.940 There is, I mean, there are halfway solutions having trains.

00:23:13.240 There's even some oil sands companies moving their oil.

00:23:15.740 It's not even a halfway solution.

00:23:17.700 It's not even a halfway solution.

00:23:19.020 Trans Mountain by itself, when you twin it, will take 900,000 barrels a day of Alberta crude and bitumen to the West Coast.

00:23:29.960 900,000.

00:23:31.580 We were told in July by the National Energy Board that for the first time ever, oil by rail was 200,000 barrels in the month of July.

00:23:42.660 So 200,000 barrels a day.

00:23:45.840 So Trans Mountain by itself, if you added in Energy East and Keystone XL and others, it would be many, many, many times what rail is.

00:23:54.880 So it's not even halfway, all the solutions that are left to Notley are optics.

00:24:02.180 She has announced this morning that the provincial government is going to cede about $2.1 billion in petrochemical plants around the province,

00:24:10.160 and that should lead to 15,000 jobs in construction and $60 billion in private investment.

00:24:16.280 It may or it may not, and it's nice if it does, but this is too little too late.

00:24:20.280 This is a government that has, for three and a half years, done everything it possibly can to appease environmentalists by adding more and more burdens on the backs of oil companies

00:24:30.960 until there are 47,000 Albertans still without jobs who lost them in 2014, 2015 in the private sector.

00:24:39.900 There's slow rates of growth in the whole province.

00:24:44.080 I think we're heading into another negative year, perhaps next year.

00:24:48.520 It looks just awful, and the only reason she's doing this now in November of 2018 is because in May of 2019,

00:24:57.600 she has to go back to the voters and try and win re-election, and that is simply not going to happen.

00:25:04.660 Yeah. Well, you know, I don't think the problem is we don't know how to get rid of this price differential.

00:25:14.620 It's the simple laws of supply and demand.

00:25:17.500 There is a lot of oil in Alberta, and a very small amount of it can get out because it's being bottlenecked.

00:25:25.640 This was a deliberate strategy called demarketing.

00:25:28.740 The real problems are there's no pipelines.

00:25:33.860 You have courts that are stopping the pipelines in the case of the Federal Court of Appeal.

00:25:38.820 You have environmental activists.

00:25:40.420 You have her brother, New Democrat, Premier in Victoria, B.C.

00:25:45.440 So we don't need to send out some mission into space to find out what could possibly be happening.

00:25:52.920 We all know what's happening.

00:25:55.580 No, we don't have to send up a Voyager satellite to get soil samples from Mars to figure out what is going on.

00:26:03.540 Yesterday, Notley said in one of her press releases, I didn't hear it in the speech that she gave,

00:26:08.620 but I did see it in one of her press releases, she said the reason this is a problem is the bottleneck, the backlog.

00:26:14.660 We can't get our oil out to market.

00:26:15.900 And the reason for that is that Canada hasn't built any pipelines in a decade.

00:26:20.220 When she was in opposition, she was opposed, I think, to every pipeline.

00:26:24.600 She was certainly opposed to most of them.

00:26:26.260 Since she's been the premier, she opposed Northern Gateway.

00:26:29.100 She was iffy on keystones.

00:26:31.100 She said, oh, we don't really need it.

00:26:31.900 Oh, she was against it.

00:26:32.760 She said she didn't want to ship raw bitumen.

00:26:35.480 Well, yeah, I mean, their argument against it is that they don't want to send raw bitumen or crude to Texas to be refined, refined in Alberta.

00:26:47.760 That's not a bad argument, but that means you're not in favor of the pipeline, really.

00:26:51.800 And when Energy East was canceled because of Trudeau trickery a little more than a year ago,

00:26:57.460 the only thing that Notley said was that's, quote, unquote, unfortunate.

00:27:02.740 Please don't blame Ottawa and Quebec for this.

00:27:05.480 It's not their fault.

00:27:06.840 It's the industry and the prices at the moment.

00:27:10.160 She has been almost as bad on pipelines as Justin Trudeau has.

00:27:15.160 And now she says, oh, I don't understand this.

00:27:18.740 We don't have any pipelines.

00:27:20.320 How can that be?

00:27:21.640 Well, she's done this almost as much as any leader in the country to stop pipelines. 0.80

00:27:27.460 Yeah.

00:27:28.000 We just showed on the screen Rachel Notley in opposition at a protest.

00:27:32.300 She wasn't the lady holding the sign.

00:27:33.840 I'm going to put that up just for one more second.

00:27:35.400 I'll just, you know, she, there was never an anti-oil sands protest in Edmonton she didn't attend.

00:27:41.560 No tar sands, no tankers, no pipeline, no problem.

00:27:44.220 And she was at this rally.

00:27:46.240 Let me show you a tweet that touches on me because, as you may recall, I wrote a book a few years ago called Ethical Oil, The Case for Canada's Oil Sands.

00:27:55.080 And here's what Rachel Notley wrote at the time.

00:27:58.620 She said, Topp's modest proposal, like the original, is tongue-in-cheek.

00:28:03.840 He wrote some anti-oil sands screed.

00:28:05.980 And then she said, if only one could say the same of Levant's silly ethical oil argument.

00:28:11.780 And that's six years ago.

00:28:13.080 You can see that.

00:28:14.140 Listen, it doesn't hurt my feelings.

00:28:15.900 I don't care what she thinks of my book.

00:28:17.620 The book speaks for itself.

00:28:18.540 My point is, she was so against Alberta oil, she thought pointing out that it's ethically superior to Saudi Arabia, Iran, Nigeria, Venezuela, pointing out the facts that Albertans are better in terms of democracy and treating minorities in those other countries, she called that silly.

00:28:37.480 That speaks to her, not to my book.

00:28:39.040 And Topp, who she has now appointed as one of her new oil envoys to go out and talk to CEOs, wrote in the Globe and Mail when he was running for the federal NDP leadership that the idea of ethical oil was as ridiculous as the idea of ethical landmine.

00:29:00.300 I mean, you're still going to be just as dead.

00:29:02.220 You're still going to be just as polluted.

00:29:03.880 It doesn't matter that it comes from an ethical country.

00:29:06.380 It's the oil itself that's evil.

00:29:09.440 And so these are the people that she surrounds herself with, and she hopes that they're going to get her good advice.

00:29:14.440 Now, I know Brian Topp is a Machiavellian political operator, that he probably does or does not believe what he says half the time.

00:29:24.680 I mean, if it's to his political advantage, he'll mouth it.

00:29:27.340 If it's not, I don't know that he will.

00:29:30.320 Maybe he's a grown-up now, and he'll go and he'll find some solutions from oil executives.

00:29:34.460 But the point is, as you made this point very early in our conversation, this is something the Premier of Alberta should know already.

00:29:44.140 She doesn't need to find three people she can send out to survey the oil industry and find out what it is that they need.

00:29:52.080 She should know this stuff already.

00:29:53.720 And the other thing that she's done in all of this is that she's adding, she said, they will go and see oil industry experts.

00:30:02.780 Now, you and I think that an oil industry expert is somebody who knows how to run an oil company or how to run an oil market.

00:30:08.520 But I remember when she was running in 2015, she said, we are going to be better at developing oil and protecting the environment at the same time because we will bring in experts to do it.

00:30:21.080 And I said there, you know, the people who work for the Alberta government already are experts at this.

00:30:25.380 I mean, they've been doing it for years.

00:30:26.620 They know how to – royalties and how to make permits and how to set off the land leases and all this.

00:30:32.060 I mean, they do understand what they're doing.

00:30:34.240 And she said, no, no, no, no, no.

00:30:35.400 I'm talking about experts, scientists who've looked at this and really know how things are going.

00:30:39.480 So when she says she wants to send people to see oil experts, they're going to go see the Pemba Institute.

00:30:43.860 I guarantee you they are going to go see environmentalists.

00:30:46.700 They're going to go see people who don't really believe in development, who have these ideas of still these wacky ideas that we're going to be able to somehow decarbonize our economy overnight.

00:30:58.840 They'll just wave a magic wand and we will suddenly be carbon-free, but we'll all still have high-paying, prosperous jobs.

00:31:07.340 That's the kind of expert I think she's talking about.

00:31:10.440 You know, if she really wanted to get this problem solved, she would hire some former NDP premier of British Columbia, 0.75

00:31:19.760 someone like Glenn Clark or Ujjal DeSange, and send him as her ambassador to the current NDP premier of BC.

00:31:31.260 She would hire the former head of the Assembly of First Nations, I don't know, Matthew Cooncombe or someone like that, Phil Fontaine, I don't know,

00:31:40.340 to lobby the Indian vans along the route, and she would go to where the blockade is. 0.80

00:31:48.140 The blockade, you don't need to ask oil executives, hey guys, what's the problem?

00:31:52.360 We know what the problem is.

00:31:53.660 It's not the oil executives.

00:31:55.440 The problem is the courts, the politicians, and the Tides Foundation funded Indian vans,

00:32:01.800 and that is exactly what she is not doing.

00:32:04.340 She's hired a Toronto union boss to, you know, to bill his, you know, $1,000 a day rate 0.91

00:32:10.280 to give some deep thinking about how we need to decarbonize.

00:32:13.280 It's a disgrace.

00:32:14.280 Last word to you, Lorne.

00:32:16.200 Well, I think there are two things that need to be done in order to get this backlog cleared up.

00:32:21.260 One is the federal government has to assert its constitutional authority over interprovincial trade

00:32:26.220 and say this pipeline is going to be built.

00:32:29.140 If the courts get in the way, they can say, look, we'll change the law

00:32:32.260 so that you can't examine all of the things in there because this has already been examined

00:32:37.320 by the experts at the National Energy Board who've said it's okay.

00:32:40.640 That's thing one.

00:32:41.460 Thing two is at the provincial and federal level, you get rid of the carbon tax,

00:32:45.040 you take away all the new regulations that have come in since 2015 on oil companies

00:32:49.940 that have just added burden on burden on burden, and you just say, hey guys,

00:32:53.900 we trust you to run the oil industry.

00:32:56.200 We know you know how to do it.

00:32:57.860 We're going to back out of your way.

00:32:59.000 We're going to take away the financial impediments that we've put in your way,

00:33:03.000 and we'll see what happens.

00:33:04.960 It'll happen exactly as it has in North Dakota, in Utah, in Texas, in Oklahoma,

00:33:10.020 with the American government getting out of the way of the oil industry.

00:33:14.380 They've had booms there in the oil industry for the last two years,

00:33:17.300 and then we'd have the same thing here if those two things would happen.

00:33:20.820 Yeah.

00:33:21.340 You know, the other day I was looking at North Dakota.

00:33:23.760 They just produced a record production, about 1.2, 1.3 million barrels a day,

00:33:29.260 in a state that has 750,000 people.

00:33:33.420 That is more oil than all the conventional oil production in Alberta

00:33:40.280 and the rest of the country combined.

00:33:42.180 Lauren, it's good to talk to you, even if it's about a depressing matter.

00:33:44.680 I guess we're done in six months with this absolutely devastating government,

00:33:50.440 and hopefully the recovery.

00:33:52.940 I am chilling the champagne now.

00:33:54.880 Yeah.

00:33:55.540 All right, great to see you again.

00:33:56.840 Thanks for being here.

00:33:57.920 Okay.

00:33:58.500 All right, that's your friend Lauren Gunter, a columnist with the Edmonton Sun.

00:34:02.060 We're talking about Rachel Notley hiring three wise men

00:34:06.400 to figure out what the problem is.

00:34:09.300 Stay with us.

00:34:10.100 More ahead on The Rebel.

00:34:10.780 On my monologue yesterday about former Prime Minister Stephen Harper's interview

00:34:26.520 with Ben Shapiro, Liza writes,

00:34:29.120 I really enjoyed listening to Harper Unplugged.

00:34:31.060 It was the fastest hour I've spent in a long time.

00:34:33.620 At least Americans will be reminded that we didn't used to be a laughing stock.

00:34:36.980 Harper has more than once made me proud to be Canadian.

00:34:38.960 And that's exactly what I thought, too.

00:34:42.020 I mean, I thought, oh, brother, I don't have an hour.

00:34:44.120 Who's got an hour?

00:34:45.280 I wanted to hear what he said next, and it was great.

00:34:49.880 And although I chided Ben Shapiro yesterday for disagreeing with a few things,

00:34:54.900 so what?

00:34:55.480 We're allowed to disagree, and Ben Shapiro let the man talk,

00:34:58.480 which is something the Canadian media party wouldn't.

00:35:01.960 Norbert writes,

00:35:03.300 Great show, Ezra.

00:35:04.180 I have read Harper's new book and found it to give an excellent account of present

00:35:07.120 and future political analysis.

00:35:08.880 In the excerpts of the interview with Shapiro,

00:35:10.440 Harper expands on his comments in the book and underlines them in expert fashion.

00:35:14.260 It is a book not just for Canada, but the world at large.

00:35:17.000 All right, well, I haven't read it yet, but that interview made me want to read it.

00:35:21.020 And I'm sure if I read it, which I hope to, I want to talk to him about it.

00:35:25.240 Now, I don't know if he's going to come on The Rebel,

00:35:26.980 because, you know, the tepid conservatives in name only in this country are a bit scared of us.

00:35:33.140 Although, I should say, we were certainly out in force at the Ontario PC convention on the weekend.

00:35:39.340 Hopefully, Harper doesn't care what the media party says. 1.00

00:35:41.740 I'll reach out to him.

00:35:42.620 I have some friends in his office.

00:35:45.240 Billy writes,

00:35:46.140 Well, thanks, Billy. I think you're right.

00:36:00.360 And I think that we treated the NAFTA renegotiations more seriously than probably any other media in the country,

00:36:09.280 with the exception of the Financial Post. Would you agree with me on that?

00:36:12.180 We had some very interesting guests we interviewed.

00:36:14.280 I really enjoyed our three or four interviews with Manny Montenegrino.

00:36:18.300 Wasn't he thoughtful?

00:36:21.020 And we had that Professor Buckley, I believe is his name,

00:36:25.380 the Canadian-American who wrote the Republican Workers' Party.

00:36:31.020 I thought it was very interesting.

00:36:33.780 And, yeah, I think we treated it more seriously.

00:36:36.820 We weren't cheerily. We wanted the deal.

00:36:38.440 We were cheering for a deal, not for the disastrous diplomat.

00:36:44.000 To call Christian Freeland a diplomat is to torture the meaning of the word beyond what the word can hold.

00:36:49.800 Yeah, imagine if we had Harper. 1.00

00:36:51.600 He would have done that deal in one month, quietly, a year ago, bilateral deal,

00:36:58.420 keep Mexico out of it, friends, friends, friends, 1.00

00:37:00.980 and it would have been, that's exactly what would have happened.

00:37:05.260 And, in fact, Harper and Trump, even though they're stylistically couldn't be more different,

00:37:10.720 I'm sure they would have found a lot of common ground,

00:37:12.820 whether it's on human rights, Israel, China, trade, industry, whatever.

00:37:17.640 I really regret that the two men did not overlap in office,

00:37:23.620 because I think it would have been, you know, it's a pity in a way.

00:37:26.740 You had Jean Chrétien matched up against George W. Bush,

00:37:30.560 and they didn't really get along.

00:37:32.400 And then you had Stephen Harper up against Barack Obama,

00:37:36.560 and they didn't really get along.

00:37:38.620 Keystone XL pipeline, the biggest problem with that.

00:37:41.100 And now you've got Trudeau and Trump.

00:37:43.420 If only we were in harmony, in cycle with America. 0.87

00:37:47.740 I think that would be to our advantage,

00:37:50.300 because America is just so massive.

00:37:52.180 It's got such a gravitational pull.

00:37:54.200 I mean, I don't know.

00:37:55.040 Maybe it makes sense that we're pulling away from them all the time.

00:37:57.520 But I think, economically, at least, that's hurt us.

00:38:01.080 Well, that's the show for today.

00:38:02.900 On behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home,

00:38:06.200 good night, and keep fighting for freedom.

00:38:13.420 We'll be right back.

Rebel News Podcast - November 21, 2018

Celine Dion tells us what she thinks of children — and it’s weirder than you think

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