Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Alberta goes to the polls. Plus： A feature interview with documentary filmmaker Aaron Gunn

00:00:00.000 Hello, my rebels. A big show today. It's election day in Alberta, but we managed to squeeze in a

00:00:05.180 great interview with my friend Aaron Gunn, the documentary filmmaker, who has a viral hit on

00:00:09.240 his hand. It's called Canada is Dying. He'll take us through the movie and actually how YouTube

00:00:14.480 tried to stop it. That's a crazy story right there. I want to also say that tonight we have

00:00:20.860 a live stream on, an election live stream for the province of Alberta. So feel free to tune in then.

00:00:25.880 If you're listening to this on election night, it's 8.45 Eastern time, 6.45 p.m. Mountain

00:00:31.720 time will be live. All right. Here's today's podcast.

00:00:35.260 I want to talk to you about something because we have a new sponsor and I came across them

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00:03:27.000 are fit for REBEL News, we would love to have your ads. And TWC, Canada.health is absolutely bad.

00:03:34.420 I'm excited about this. When was the last time you saw me do an ad read? I don't do ad reads if I

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00:03:59.300 Tonight, Alberta goes to the polls, plus a feature interview with Aaron Gunn,

00:04:03.260 a documentary filmmaker. It's May 29th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.

00:04:07.140 You're fighting for freedom! Shame on you, you censorious bug!

00:04:15.820 Hi, everybody. It's great to be here. I'm excited because I'm recording this 0.54

00:04:26.960 on Election Day in Alberta, but before the polls close. When the polls close, we will be doing

00:04:34.300 a live stream, as we often do. I'll be out here in our world headquarters in Toronto,

00:04:38.320 and Sheila Gunn-Reed and Adam Sos and other of our Alberta team will be on the ground out there.

00:04:44.260 But what makes me excited about it is, first of all, the substance of the election. Like it

00:04:49.180 couldn't be a starker choice between Danielle Smith and Rachel Notley. And really, truly,

00:04:53.180 the future of the province turns on this. I'm not exaggerating. People often say this is the

00:04:57.340 most important election ever. It's often not true, but oh my God, is this one important. But I'm also

00:05:02.800 excited about it for personal reasons, because tonight is the night we debut our new studio. I'm

00:05:09.400 recording my live stream, sorry, my Ezra LeBancho, as we call it, from our boardroom, because we've

00:05:16.160 sort of been camped out here while the construction crew works in the old studio space, building a new

00:05:21.700 studio. Well, in just a couple hours' time, we will go in there and try it out for the first time.

00:05:27.860 There might be the odd glitch, I should warn you, because we literally have never broadcast

00:05:31.780 anything before. It's sort of dramatic to go from never using a space to live streaming it in the

00:05:36.640 first time, but that's what we'll be doing. So I hope you enjoy it. In fact, by the time this show

00:05:42.620 you're watching airs at 8 p.m. Eastern Time, 6 p.m. Mountain Time, well, our live stream starts just

00:05:49.460 shortly after that. Our live stream starts at 8.45 Eastern Time, 6.45 Mountain Time. That's going to

00:05:55.840 be a long night, could be, or the results, you know, it's really a two-party outcome there. So there's

00:06:02.640 there's not going to be a minority government situation. It's either going to be Rachel Notley 0.94

00:06:08.280 or Danielle Smith. The question, I suppose, is will it be tight and close, or will it be a

00:06:12.340 landslide? We'll find out. So that's tonight, and I would encourage you to hop on over to the live

00:06:18.340 stream, which you can follow us on YouTube and Rumble and our other streaming systems. But I do

00:06:24.460 want to talk to you, show you an interview I recorded with my friend Aaron Gunn, who's just an

00:06:29.100 outstanding filmmaker. So I'll show you that, and then I'll come right back and I'll read a couple

00:06:33.260 letters to you. So here's my interview with Aaron Gunn. Well, conservatives have a lot of opinions,

00:06:49.540 but quite often they're spoken in a dry way, almost like a mathematics professor. I think

00:06:54.240 conservatives like to argue, I guess we'd be called left brain, like an engineer or an accountant,

00:07:00.760 and too few people who care about freedom and privacy and smaller government think about things

00:07:07.140 artistically. Think about things in the manner of Hollywood. Think about emotion. We eschew that.

00:07:13.600 We don't have a lot of comedians on our side of things. And so when we find an artist or an author

00:07:19.040 or a songwriter or a filmmaker who promotes an agenda of freedom, well, my God, that is the time to lean in

00:07:26.420 and help and watch and learn and spread the word because we are outgunned in that side of things.

00:07:32.660 And I am talking about a friend of the show. He's my friend too. Aaron Gunn is his name. He's an

00:07:38.000 outstanding documentary filmmaker, and he has done it again with a hit, unfortunately, on a very

00:07:44.680 sensitive subject. The title of his new documentary is Canada is Dying. And it's an homage to Vancouver

00:07:52.220 is Dying, a spectacular viral hit he did a few months back when Vancouver had its turning point

00:07:58.500 municipal election. And incredibly, they threw out the hardline socialist NDP MP who was the mayor.

00:08:05.700 And I am hoping in my heart of hearts that Canada is Dying will also serve to wake up Canadians 0.95

00:08:11.800 coast to coast to what is happening to this country. What a pleasure to be joined now via Zoom

00:08:16.940 by the filmmaker himself, Aaron Gunn. Aaron, great to see you again. And I wish there were more

00:08:22.440 people who believed in freedom and the creative arts because the whole industry depends on freedom.

00:08:27.660 Hollywood depends on freedom. Artistic liberty depends on freedom. Too many people in that

00:08:32.440 industry forget it, but you're out there fighting the good fight. What would you say motivates you?

00:08:36.440 And then we're going to get into the movie in a second, but why are you a creative guy when so many

00:08:41.620 on our side of the aisle or not? Well, let me first say thank you for having me, Ezra. And I wish

00:08:47.160 there were more conservatives and common sense people in the media as well. So thank you for the

00:08:51.400 work that you're doing. But I think what motivates me is, you know, as someone who's forced to consume

00:08:59.180 so much liberal content because it's so ubiquitous and out there, that no one's telling in a lot of

00:09:05.060 cases in depth in these kind of documentary fashions, the other side of the story, which obviously you do a

00:09:11.220 lot of at Rebel News. And growing up on the west coast or the left coast of Canada here in British

00:09:17.260 Columbia, for the past 20 years, I've grown up in seeing the results right in front of me of these

00:09:24.020 failed harm reduction policies or so-called harm reduction policies. And I've watched homelessness,

00:09:30.600 drug addiction, and violent crime get worse and worse and worse. And I wanted to know why is this

00:09:36.960 happening? And we looked at it first and Vancouver is dying. And then after I made Vancouver is dying

00:09:42.280 and it blew up, I heard from people across the country, especially across BC, but also across the

00:09:46.280 country saying, you have to come to my city because it's happening here in Kelowna, or it's happening

00:09:51.240 here in Lethbridge, or it's happening here in London. And so we came out to try to travel across the

00:09:57.940 country and figure out, hold on a second, this isn't just a Vancouver problem, what is happening

00:10:02.780 in Canada? So that's what motivated me to make this specific project. Well, I'm so glad you did.

00:10:07.980 And what's the view count? How long has it been online now? And how many people have watched it so

00:10:12.500 far? Well, the two main places it's posted are Facebook and YouTube. You can also find it on

00:10:19.180 Rumble. But it's been up for about six days and combined, it's got about 800,000 views right now.

00:10:24.340 That's incredible. I want to tell you by reference, the CBC's flagship news show called CBC The

00:10:31.200 National, often is in the two to 300,000 views space. So you are just blasting it. That is

00:10:38.500 enormous. And I congratulate it for you. Hey, just for folks who haven't watched it yet, I want to

00:10:42.840 really get them excited about this. I want to show them the quality. I mean, this is Netflix quality,

00:10:49.120 this is theatrical quality, and we're very proud of you. And we're trying to get into the documentary

00:10:53.720 space a little bit, so I know how hard it is. And you're a tough act to follow. I want to show

00:10:59.460 people some of the heart-rending and very compelling things. Let me ask you to choose,

00:11:05.180 of all the things, and you traveled the country, what was the biggest surprise that you came across?

00:11:12.000 I mean, we all know that Canada's going in the wrong direction, but was there something out there

00:11:15.320 that really startled even you? Well, there's a couple of things that startled me when making this

00:11:22.240 documentary, unfortunately. Especially, well, starting off with violent crime, some of the

00:11:28.040 insane sentences and people that our justice system or so-called justice system have been letting out 0.72

00:11:32.900 on bail. But the biggest surprise, if you made me choose just one, I would have to go toward the end

00:11:39.800 of the documentary, when we start talking about what's fueling all of this violent crime, the drug

00:11:45.140 addiction crisis that is sweeping Canada, and this new so-called safe supply, where the federal

00:11:50.960 government has started basically flooding our streets with opioids, unbeknownst to most Canadians.

00:11:56.700 And we interviewed a pharmacist who didn't want to be, didn't want to be recognized and want to have

00:12:00.860 her face shown. And she was telling us what was happening at the pharmacy that she was working at.

00:12:06.360 And so I'll get this clip. And she actually said that there were doctors where she would call down to

00:12:13.000 the doctors who were writing these prescriptions, saying, there are people coming in with these

00:12:17.920 prescriptions of powerful, highly addictive opioids who walk out of the pharmacy every day, this is a daily

00:12:24.640 prescription, and sell them right in front of the pharmacy. Someone comes and picks them up. And the person

00:12:30.420 or your patient that you've prescribed this to isn't actually taking his medications. And the doctor said,

00:12:37.820 well, I'll watch the clip and you'll see what the doctor said.

00:12:42.880 Yeah, here, let's take a look.

00:12:44.540 It doesn't even sound real saying this, but like, I have patients who, the whole reason that they became

00:12:50.320 addicted to opioids was because one time their doctor prescribed them Oxycontin, they got hooked.

00:12:55.680 So I have those people who are now getting this prescribed safe supply. They're selling to other

00:13:01.500 people who are just going to end up in this same thing. Like, it's just this circle.

00:13:04.640 During the huge ramp up of legally produced, clearly labeled, consistent quality prescription opioids,

00:13:14.020 more Americans and Canadians died of those legally produced opioids than died in World War I and World

00:13:19.980 War II combined. And that was, that is very, very recent history. We got here from companies saying

00:13:27.320 the same line of reasoning, you know, don't be opioid phobic. We're going to prescribe these very

00:13:33.060 generously. We'll give them out in the community in all kinds of ways at a much higher level than we

00:13:37.440 ever have. And because they are FDA approved or approved by, you know, Health Canada, they're safe.

00:13:45.160 And, you know, millions of people got addicted, hundreds of thousands of people died. And we still

00:13:49.320 have people dying from those medications today, including, by the way, a number of people who are

00:13:54.160 dying from street fentanyl. If you follow back their story, they started on one of those,

00:13:59.080 you know, allegedly safe, you know, opioid prescriptions.

00:14:03.280 I tell you, and of course, of course, everyone knows that's going on. Of course, that's so secret.

00:14:08.280 That's incredible. Well, you know, I think that some Canadians, I mean, let's be honest, Canada

00:14:14.880 sometimes has a bit of a smug superiority complex. You know, listen, I love being Canadian. I would want

00:14:21.120 to be nothing else. But, you know, I know chapters in to go, they say Canada, the world needs more Canada.

00:14:26.700 We have the best healthcare system in the world. We're nicer than America. Like all these things

00:14:32.060 are a little bit of smugness. And, you know, sometimes, sometimes they're true, but sometimes

00:14:36.620 they're not. And I think Canadians think, well, terrible crime and terrible homelessness, that's

00:14:43.460 America. That's the hard hearted mean streets of America without a social safety net. I think that,

00:14:50.340 I think that Canadians overestimate how, how our streets are, especially Canadians who don't get 0.99

00:14:56.880 out and go to some of the downtown areas. What would you say if you had to choose the worst thing

00:15:02.160 that you discovered? And I wouldn't call it maybe a surprise, but something that maybe caught,

00:15:06.660 if a Canadian say, well, that would never happen here, that's maybe Skid Row in LA, or maybe that's

00:15:11.660 the worst part of, you know, Portland. What would you say the worst thing that you discovered in

00:15:18.220 your tour of Canada's dying?

00:15:23.380 Well, I mean, there's a, I would, I'd say two things. I mean, I mean, one thing I would have

00:15:29.640 to say is just that how the downtown East side is, is at this point, basically apocalyptic. It's,

00:15:34.440 it's, it's some dystopian alternate reality, the zombie like apocalypse, but across British

00:15:40.220 Columbia, especially, at parts British Columbia, especially, this is happening in every small

00:15:46.260 town. I mean, I'm on Vancouver Island, Ezra. And I mean, towns that have, you know, 30, 40,000 people,

00:15:52.380 Campbell River, Duncan, Nanaimo, which we spent a lot of time in, Victoria. I mean, they all have

00:15:57.700 these mini downtown East sides now that, that have popped up in the interior, Penticton, Kelowna.

00:16:02.940 It's in elsewhere in the country, but in BC, because you have this obsession with, with, you know,

00:16:09.700 basically enabling and normalizing hard drug use and homelessness, you get more of it. And it's,

00:16:15.080 it's really sad to see. It's not just limited to Vancouver anymore. Now I will, I will say,

00:16:19.320 I gave you that other clip, but the first kind of half of the documentary or the first third

00:16:24.460 is also about our criminal justice system. And I sat down across from a mother whose son was murdered

00:16:30.980 in one of these random violent attacks and to hear her story and, and how hurt she was. So just,

00:16:38.620 just to cover this, this happened back in 2017. Okay. Her son was violently stabbed to death in

00:16:47.440 the middle of a street by someone who didn't know there was actually, he stabbed someone else. He

00:16:51.180 went to help this person who had been stabbed and that he himself got stabbed 14 times, Ezra.

00:16:57.500 And as I was interviewing her, the mother, I found out that the person that stabbed her son 14 times to

00:17:05.460 death had already been released on parole. This, this happened in 2017. And to sit there and just,

00:17:11.600 you know, think about like, that's not that, you know, that's not a long period. That's six years.

00:17:15.920 That's six years already released on parole, already walking these same Canadian streets.

00:17:21.960 And the shocking story, and I would hear this over and over again, but, or read about it, but as I'm sure

00:17:28.340 you know, like when you actually sit across a mother who this happened to, it becomes a lot more real.

00:17:33.240 So, so I can, I can show you a clip of her talking about this right here.

00:17:38.200 Well, you've warned us. So this is not for the faint hearted here. Take a look.

00:17:44.540 Well, this is very troubling, but you know, I think we need to be troubled just the same way.

00:17:48.800 We don't like the sound of an alarm when we get up in early in the morning, but we need the alarm to

00:17:52.660 wake us up. Or you could say a fire alarm is even more important. We need to hear it, even if it's

00:17:58.060 unpleasant. And I think that you are raising an alarm, especially for people who don't know these

00:18:03.060 things, who maybe live in a suburban neighborhood and don't go into places where these homeless

00:18:09.020 encampments and these free drug areas are. I think that's the alarm. So we would prefer to look away,

00:18:15.980 but I don't think that's going to fix it. Hey, I want to end on a more positive note,

00:18:20.020 because you got to keep hope alive. Otherwise, what's the point? I mean, you obviously made this

00:18:26.200 movie to make a difference, to motivate change. And so let me ask you to end on a hopeful note.

00:18:32.020 Was there something in your journeys that gave you a flicker and thought, you know what, this is

00:18:37.560 reversible. It is not our destiny. We can make a better fate. Was there something that fits that

00:18:43.760 description? I'll tell you two stories and they're connected. The first one is that

00:18:49.920 I talked with probably a dozen individuals who are addicts in recovery, people who had been

00:18:56.680 homeless, who had been addicted to fentanyl, who have now incredibly turned their lives around

00:19:01.800 and are helping other people and pushing the message of hope and pushing that message of addiction

00:19:08.040 recovery. And what I took away from that is, you know, you can see these apocalyptic-like scenes.

00:19:13.860 And it's amazing that the people in that situation, they can be helped, they can be saved,

00:19:19.240 they can return back to society as law-abiding, tax-paying, and productive, happy citizens and

00:19:25.580 fathers and mothers and sons and daughters. There is hope out there. And I saw that hope with my own

00:19:30.900 two eyes. And no better example of that, I would say, was Marshall Smith, who became the chief of

00:19:38.960 staff to the Alberta premier and who used to be homeless on the downtown east side, has now risen

00:19:46.260 to that, obviously, position. And we got a tour with him through these 10 giant treatment facilities

00:19:54.820 that Alberta is now building. Alberta has stopped the federal liberal government's attempt to push

00:20:01.460 free opioids into Albertan streets, and they've put a stop to that program. And instead, they are

00:20:08.200 focusing on treatment and rehabilitation and getting more people, you know, to get that agency back over

00:20:18.240 their own personal lives and not look at the person that's struggling on the street and say,

00:20:22.800 all you need are more free drugs and saying, actually, no, we're not going to enable and

00:20:26.880 normalize this. So we got some incredible kind of exclusive tours of these facilities before they

00:20:32.780 open. So I'd love to show you that clip because that left me a lot. Okay, let's take a quick look

00:20:37.680 at that. Give us a bit of hope. Take a look. As part of the goal to extend treatment and recovery

00:20:43.120 to all Albertans who require it, regardless of ability to pay, Alberta has begun construction of 11 large

00:20:50.720 treatment facilities spread out across the province. In Red Deer, the first such facility is almost ready

00:20:58.000 to open a brand new building. I was given a chance to tour with Marshall Smith. Aaron, this is the first

00:21:05.520 of 10 large recovery communities that we're building here in Alberta. These are different than the sort of

00:21:14.640 normal treatment centers, which are short-term 28-day programs. These facilities are large,

00:21:20.720 high-capacity facilities where clients can come and stay for up to a year at a time. It's individualized

00:21:27.360 care with full medical services. In the one in Red Deer, it's 75 beds, 50 on the male side and 25 on the

00:21:33.360 female side. It's separated. They've got separate kitchens and people are going to be put through the 1.00

00:21:37.360 work. They're going to do the therapy in the morning and chores in the afternoon or vice versa.

00:21:42.640 They're going to have to learn how to cook, learn how to take care of themselves, learn how to take

00:21:46.320 care of the facility, learn how to do some community gardening. Maybe we'll end up seeing some kind of

00:21:51.040 farmers market there. And we'll be coaching people through how to develop the life skills so that they

00:21:56.560 can get their individual agency back. And then setting them on a pathway where they can pay it forward and

00:22:00.960 help others. I think that that is a much more inspiring vision than simply watching people slowly killing

00:22:08.000 themselves, which is, I think, what the alternative approach has been. We won't give up on people.

00:22:13.600 And they are healing communities. But things are done in groups, right? And they live a very structured

00:22:19.600 day. In contrast to the pure housing model where people come in and they get a hotel room and that

00:22:27.840 they can continue to use drugs in their hotel room and there's no structure to that. I would say that

00:22:33.520 that that can be very dangerous. And, you know, 75 percent of fatal overdoses occur at home on the

00:22:40.000 living room floor. So if you're giving somebody a living room floor and you are allowing them to

00:22:45.840 continue using drugs in your facility, the chances are you're probably going to find somebody dead.

00:22:51.360 Instead of warehousing attics in hotel rooms like the B.C. government,

00:22:55.680 these Alberta treatment facilities aim to build recovery communities.

00:23:00.960 Sure. Well, we call them recovery communities for a reason, right? Because it isn't just the

00:23:07.120 treatment of addiction that happens here. It is a reintegration into community. It's a rebuilding of

00:23:12.880 community. When people are on the street, whether they're in tent encampments or you see homeless

00:23:19.760 people gathering, they do that because that is their community, right? That, you know, whether

00:23:25.440 that community is attractive to us or not is irrelevant. Addiction is an illness of loneliness,

00:23:31.520 despair and isolation. And so the antidote to that is building facilities like this where people can

00:23:37.200 come together, where they're not lonely, where they're not isolated and where they're not in despair.

00:23:43.760 Any opioid vending machines here? No opioid vending machines here. No. We're going to skip the

00:23:49.040 opioid vending machines. As a government, we believe very deeply that our job as government

00:23:55.120 is to be the cheerleader in chief. We have an obligation to provide the tools, facilities like

00:24:01.120 this, like we do in all kinds of other areas of health care to give the people of Alberta the best

00:24:08.000 shot at recovery. For this, the Alberta model has received international attention, hosting a global

00:24:15.120 conference in 2023 to showcase to the world its early success.

00:24:20.560 Of the last decade, we've seen the issues of addiction, homelessness and public safety grow and affect

00:24:26.240 every community in Alberta. Something definitely does need to be done in the criminal justice system

00:24:33.520 and you're bringing something that hopefully will get worldwide and fast.

00:24:38.320 Now in Alberta, first jurisdiction, I think anywhere in North America,

00:24:44.400 any Albertan, any time of day, anywhere you live, free of charge with no waitlist,

00:24:49.200 can receive treatment on demand, right? And that is...

00:24:53.760 Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

00:24:58.000 Well, Aaron, I salute you. You've done a hell of a job as usual. Now, I want to leave and I just want

00:25:02.400 to mention this because I think you're a very responsible journalist. I think you're very fair.

00:25:07.760 I think you're even handed. I mean, you have a mission, it's clear, but I think you do responsible

00:25:14.320 journalism. No one would say you're a bomb thrower, so to speak. And yet, when you uploaded a trailer,

00:25:22.400 like a little teaser promo of this to YouTube, they slapped it with an age warning. So it was no

00:25:30.320 longer free on the internet. You had to stop, log in, prove your... Look, it was this whole owner's

00:25:35.760 thing, which killed that thing immediately. And yeah, there are some sad and emotionally

00:25:42.960 challenging parts of the video, but it's not gratuitous. It's not titillating. It's not obscene

00:25:48.800 by any of the definitions that something might normally be censored. And when I heard that

00:25:54.000 YouTube had blocked, essentially blocked your trailer, I thought, that is political. That is

00:26:01.040 political. Tell me a little bit about that. Now, they haven't done that to the main movie,

00:26:06.080 I understand, which is weird because the trailer is extracted from the main movie. I think they're

00:26:11.760 just messing with you. Am I being too paranoid here? What do you think?

00:26:14.960 I mean, sometimes it's hard. It's hard to differentiate incompetence from maliciousness.

00:26:22.720 So I'm not sure what YouTube is doing. They did demonetize the main documentary, which is...

00:26:27.200 What did they say the reason was for that?

00:26:31.200 They implied that it was promoting drug use, which is...

00:26:33.520 Oh my God, that's the opposite.

00:26:35.200 That's what I would point out. The thing is, it's basically showing what you can see if you walk

00:26:44.880 downtown Vancouver. And apparently, that's too shocking for Canadians. What I pointed out is

00:26:50.160 almost all of the clips or all of the footage that they would object to is just taken from nightly

00:26:55.040 newscasts over the past year or two. And also, they didn't do it to Vancouver's Dying, which is

00:27:03.920 the prequel to this. So I mean, this might be a bit of an inside baseball thing, but it is very hard

00:27:08.560 as a filmmaker to... This is why I'm hoping there's going to be new platforms like Twitter that are more

00:27:14.480 creator-friendly, that don't create all this high degree of uncertainty when it comes to trying to

00:27:20.400 make projects like this. Because there's supposed to be an exception, YouTube plays out for

00:27:24.960 educational or documentary content. And then you get hit with, for a small director and producer

00:27:32.800 like me, it's a big blindside all of a sudden to have your trailer slapped with an age restriction,

00:27:37.120 which as you pointed out, essentially blocks it. They stop the distribution of it.

00:27:41.520 And then for the main video to be demonetized, it's got 800,000 views right now. So I mean,

00:27:47.280 this is, if it gets up into the millions, like Vancouver's Dying, that's talking thousands of

00:27:53.040 dollars. So it's, I don't know if they're keeping the money or what, I'm pretty sure there's still

00:27:57.680 ads running on it. So it's very frustrating to work with these social media companies.

00:28:03.280 I will say I've had my problems with Facebook in the past. They seem to have no problem with this

00:28:07.840 video. It's up without any demonetization or blocking of any kind. And obviously, it's up on

00:28:15.280 Rumble as well. So yeah, it's very frustrating as a small town, as a small time kind of producer and

00:28:21.920 director of this content. I know Rebels had issues with YouTube as well. So it's fingers

00:28:27.920 crossed that Twitter can, can really grow into a proper alternative.

00:28:31.120 Yeah. I know that Twitter now allows long form videos, like two hour videos. So hopefully that'll

00:28:36.400 be a forum for you also. Listen, Aaron, it's great to catch up with you. Thanks for taking so much time.

00:28:40.480 And thanks for showing us those three clips. The movie is called Canada is Dying. You can find it

00:28:46.960 on YouTube, Rumble and the other places that Aaron mentioned. And listen, we wish you wish you so much

00:28:53.120 success and we can hardly wait till your next project. Keep up the fight and keep being creative

00:28:58.320 and expressive because, you know, that that's not a strong suit of our side of the island. I'm so glad

00:29:04.080 you're doing it. Thanks for being here. Thank you for having me, Ezra. I really appreciate it.

00:29:08.560 All right. Our pleasure. There you have it, Aaron Gunn. The movie is called Canada is Dying. You can find

00:29:12.160 it on the internet. Stay with us. More ahead.

00:29:20.240 Hey, welcome back. I have three letters to the editor I'd like to read to you. And the first one

00:29:26.160 is quite critical. Here, let me read it to you. It's from Aaron Road Knight, who says,

00:29:30.080 your first endorsement. As you said, this is the first endorsement in your history. And it's not

00:29:34.240 for someone extraordinary who is fulfilling promises, kicking out the left-wing media and

00:29:38.400 making a province country free. No, it's for someone who routinely changes stories on whether

00:29:43.520 she can pardon, grant, amnesty for different stories. A truthful person is one story and tells

00:29:49.040 the truth they have nothing to hide. You should endorse someone who believes in freedom,

00:29:52.400 liberty and stands behind it. Arthur Pawlowski, Maxime Bernier, for example. This endorsement,

00:29:57.200 again, has led to bias. When Arthur Pawlowski did a press conference, Rebel News was nowhere

00:30:01.680 to be found, breaking their promise to newsreaders to tell the other side of the story. In this case,

00:30:05.840 Danielle, broken leadership story. Well, I have known Arthur Pawlowski for more than a decade.

00:30:12.000 Even back at Sun News Network times, we would talk about him and how he was persecuted by the

00:30:17.040 police. Here at Rebel News, we've done the same. And then we've gone one better. We have crowdfunded

00:30:20.960 his legal defense. He has had more than a dozen. I think the number is like 17, actually.

00:30:26.480 Court appearances. And we have crowdfunded his lawyers. That said, my support for Arthur Pawlowski

00:30:31.840 is as a Christian pastor who stood for freedom of religion and defying government authoritarianism.

00:30:38.160 I think that his new political party, to be very candid, does not have a chance of winning,

00:30:44.320 a chance of winning at all. I think it won't even get 1% of the vote. But even if it did,

00:30:50.480 that's not my interest in Arthur Pawlowski. My interest in him is the civil liberties battles

00:30:55.600 he's in, not just to protect him from the state, but to set a precedent for freedom.

00:31:01.600 I was at Arthur Pawlowski's rally in Lethbridge outside his trial about a month ago

00:31:08.720 when he talked about his new party. So I don't know if it's accurate to say we haven't covered it,

00:31:14.800 but I don't know how newsworthy it is because it was registered just days before the election.

00:31:20.400 And there will be only two parties that have a chance of winning, Rachel Donnelly's NDP or

00:31:26.560 Danielle Smith's UCP. So in fact, in my endorsement, I wanted to

00:31:31.840 make clear that I thought Danielle Smith actually took a lot of

00:31:37.520 blows, took a lot of bruises from the media and the NDP for

00:31:41.520 her defense of people who were hit with lockdown fines. So I disagree with you on that.

00:31:45.360 Next letter is from Lise Dumont who says, I already voted. Danielle has my vote. There's no other

00:31:51.120 option. If NDP gets in, it will be the death of Alberta. I'm shocked to see orange signs on people's

00:31:55.600 property. Do they not have a memory of what happened the last time the NDP were in power in Alberta?

00:31:59.840 Man, people are blind or just ignorant. You know, I'm reminded about Donald Trump, 0.99

00:32:04.160 who I think was an outstanding president. And we see that now that he's gone. I mean, inflation,

00:32:10.800 price of gas, unemployment, war in Ukraine, looming war in Taiwan, all sorts of things gone mad.

00:32:20.800 But people said he had mean tweets. OK, so you got yourself a president, Joe Biden, who I think is

00:32:28.000 cognitively impaired. And the one thing you know is he's not doing mean tweets because I don't think

00:32:32.320 he writes any of his own tweets or any of his own speeches at all. And my analogy is,

00:32:36.400 Danielle Smith muses out loud. And maybe she shouldn't do so as much, although a lot of the

00:32:42.320 clips being used against her, historic clips was from when she was a journalist. But that's an

00:32:48.880 aesthetic. That is an extraneous incident. The heart, the character of her campaign is a smaller

00:32:55.360 government, freedom-oriented government, which is far more important. Rachel Notley's core is not her

00:33:02.160 friendly smile and happy demeanor. Her core is an authoritarian socialism. I'm worried that too

00:33:08.560 many people are voting based on feelings rather than the devastation that Rachel Notley will bring.

00:33:16.480 Alberta Patriot One says, I still think the only way for Alberta to get out of serfdom is to leave

00:33:20.320 Canada. I think $600 billion is enough welfare for the East. Our province could have used that money

00:33:25.760 for new hospitals and schools in combating the communist scourge. All right, well, let me throw a 0.82

00:33:30.320 point back to you. Who is the challenger? Who is the risk of turning Alberta into a, to use your word,

00:33:38.320 a communist scourge? Well, it's not anyone from Ottawa or Toronto or Quebec. It's Rachel Notley,

00:33:45.920 who was born in Alberta. The risk to Alberta today, literally today, is from Albertans. And having 1.00

00:33:55.120 Alberta as a separate country, I don't know if that would fix that problem. I am nervous that Alberta can't

00:34:00.000 even get its own house right. I agree with you generally that Confederation has been economically

00:34:05.280 a losing game for Alberta. Alberta is being punished in a number of ways. Justin Trudeau regularly beats

00:34:10.480 up Alberta for the delight of his Liberal voters. But I'm not sure if an independent Alberta that votes

00:34:15.520 NDP is any better or worse than in Alberta, a Canadian province that votes NDP. That's our show for today.

00:34:24.000 We'll have so much news on the election results tomorrow. And please watch our live stream tonight.

00:34:28.400 Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home,

00:34:32.240 good night, and keep fighting for freedom.

Rebel News Podcast - May 29, 2023

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Alberta goes to the polls. Plus： A feature interview with documentary filmmaker Aaron Gunn

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