Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Alberta Premier Danielle Smith opposes mass immigration

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, did you know that Danielle Smith recently said she wants to double the population

00:00:04.500 of Alberta through immigration? I can't believe it. I chew this and other immigration stories over

00:00:10.220 with our friend Lauren Gunter in a feature interview conversation about mass immigration.

00:00:16.720 But first let me invite you to make sure you have what we call Rebel News Plus. It's the video

00:00:21.100 version of this podcast. I want you to see it, not just hear it. It's eight bucks a month,

00:00:25.480 which might not sound like a lot of money to you, but it really adds up for us and it helps keep

00:00:29.140 us free and independent. Just go to rebelnewsplus.com and click subscribe. All right, here's today's

00:00:35.780 podcast. Tonight, does Danielle Smith really want to double the population of Alberta through 0.95

00:00:57.120 immigration? It's August 15th and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.

00:01:03.920 Shame on you, you censorious bug.

00:01:15.900 Well, I was in Ottawa yesterday, but it was an Albertan on trial. I'm talking about Tamara Leach.

00:01:22.860 A lot of my time these days is spent on the legal repercussions of the Freedom Convoy,

00:01:29.500 even though that was two and a half years ago. Between our coverage of the Tamara Leach trial,

00:01:34.280 which I think today is day 40 or 41 of the hearings, and all the various permutations of

00:01:40.780 the Coutts trials, I think by far it's the number one story we've been covering in the last year,

00:01:45.480 even though the lockdowns and the pandemic itself are long over. It's interesting that an Alberta gal,

00:01:53.540 a Métis grandma like Tamara Leach, can be hauled to Ottawa again and again and again in a clear abuse 1.00

00:02:00.620 of process. And what startled me yesterday from the court was how prickly the judge was becoming,

00:02:06.340 and I think that's because this is likely the longest trial she's ever had. Forget complex

00:02:12.160 corporate litigation or criminal matters of murder or terrorism. This tiny little mischief trial has

00:02:19.700 been turned into a full year affair because I genuinely believe this is how the establishment

00:02:26.280 intends to punish Tamara Leach herself. There's no way she's going to get more jail time. She's 1.00

00:02:31.140 already served 49 days. There's no way that, like, they can't punish, I think she's going to actually 0.80

00:02:36.640 be acquitted, but they're turning the process into the punishment. Anyways, I tell you that because

00:02:41.040 that's where I was yesterday. I was in Ottawa, but I felt like it was an Alberta story because it was

00:02:47.080 that Alberta spirit of rebellion. It really was Albertans in many ways that helped lead the convoy,

00:02:54.940 and I say that with some longing as a former Albertan myself who is in exile in Toronto. Well,

00:03:00.380 the fact that I'm in Toronto doesn't mean I stopped thinking about Alberta. In so many ways, it is a

00:03:05.820 province that shows philosophical and ideological leadership, and that sometimes manifests itself in

00:03:11.860 the actual practical politics of the place. And right now, in the person of Danielle Smith, the premier

00:03:19.020 of the United Conservative Party, I think we have probably what's the closest thing to a libertarian

00:03:24.800 as a provincial premier in this country. You can certainly argue that Premier Scott Moe of Saskatchewan

00:03:31.240 is a rock-ribbed conservative, although like many from that province, he's got sort of a social

00:03:36.380 generosity side that even the old NDP still reverberates with there. But I think Danielle Smith

00:03:42.760 is the most libertarian. And sometimes, though, her ideas are, I don't know, I'm not going to say quirky

00:03:49.320 because that's insulting, but they're esoteric maybe. They're, I don't know, to help me sort of

00:03:57.660 grok what's going on, including with Danielle Smith's views on immigration, we're joined now by really

00:04:05.720 one of our Sherpas in Alberta, one of the senior columnists of that province. I'm talking about our

00:04:11.800 old friend Lauren Gunter, who writes for the Edmonton Sun. Lauren, great to see you again.

00:04:15.680 Good to see you. I'm not sure exactly what I was doing with that meandering introduction. I was

00:04:21.420 just trying to say that although I was in Ottawa, it felt like a very Alberta thing, considering the

00:04:25.940 Albertan Tamera Leach was on trial. And I do know Danielle Smith, because we were in college together,

00:04:31.960 and she was always interested in ideas. Tell me a little bit about Danielle Smith on immigration,

00:04:38.580 because I've seen different things from her. I'd love to tell you more about her on immigration,

00:04:43.400 but she seems to have had a major 180 in the last three or four months. And I'm not sure it is. It

00:04:49.860 might just be a sharpening of her views, an evolution, a growing up, whatever it is. But in

00:04:56.640 March, she wrote to Prime Minister Trudeau and said, you're not letting us have enough immigrants here

00:05:02.280 in Alberta. We are going to grow this province to 10 million from four and a half million by 2050,

00:05:09.340 and therefore we need lots more immigrants to fill our job vacancies and start up new businesses and

00:05:15.260 things. And I am all in favor of immigrants. I think immigration is good for Canada, but it's not 1.00

00:05:23.200 good for Canada in the numbers that the Trudeau government has been allowing. It's crazy.

00:05:30.440 By StatsCan's estimate, last year, they let in 2.3 million people.

00:05:37.900 There's no other country in the world. No other country in the world has done that.

00:05:41.320 No. The Americans get that many at their southern border, but they are 10 times the size we are. 0.95

00:05:49.440 And they think of this as a problem. The Trudeau government, if it hadn't been,

00:05:54.540 if this immigration level hadn't caused all sorts of economic repercussions, they would not be 1.00

00:06:01.920 thinking of it as a problem even now. And even now, it's difficult to get an awful lot of their

00:06:07.680 media friends to report on it as a problem. But it's had a negative impact on the housing markets,

00:06:15.800 had a negative impact on the job market. It's had a negative impact on educational institutions.

00:06:20.820 It's had a negative impact on social services. And it's made it harder to get a doctor, for instance,

00:06:28.300 because there are too many people coming in. You can't buy a house in Canada on a single

00:06:37.940 average wage anymore, because there are 1 million, 1.5 million, 2 million new people flooding in every

00:06:47.140 year under the Liberals. And those people have a right to find a place to live too. The only way

00:06:53.060 you could stop that is to turn back the flow that the Liberals have had. And Danielle Smith finally

00:07:02.380 said that yesterday on a Western Standard website podcast, where she said, well, yes, this is

00:07:09.520 unsustainable, what they're doing now. But in fact, I have to think in some ways,

00:07:14.700 she added to the problem back in March, when she wrote to the Prime Minister, she said,

00:07:21.040 we want more control in Alberta over who we're taking. And but we want more. And I think that

00:07:27.780 that you can imagine that the Trudeauites would forget the Alberta control part of that, and just

00:07:34.300 go to cabinet meetings and say, well, look, even the Alberta government wants more people. So how can

00:07:39.760 you say we're taking in too many? I didn't quite phrase it right. But that I mean, the thing about

00:07:45.660 Danielle Smith, I think she regards herself as a very open minded person who cares about intellectual

00:07:50.780 things. I think she reads, and she studies, and she looks at papers, I think she actually loves

00:07:55.960 the world of ideas. In that way, she's completely the opposite of Justin Trudeau, who would never read

00:08:01.760 a briefing. No, we learned he literally had to have someone read to him national security briefings,

00:08:07.620 like a bedtime story, like Justin sits over there, and someone reads it to him, because he will not

00:08:12.540 do the reading himself. That came out during the China interference matter. Danielle Smith, I think,

00:08:17.800 is someone who is the opposite. But you can go too far the opposite, you can go down rabbit holes and

00:08:22.420 obscure and strange thinking, like there's this concept, there's this group called the Century Project,

00:08:27.800 which wants 100 million people in this country in a matter of decades. They're not going to live in

00:08:34.280 the big Arctic. Like you look at Canada on the map, it looks huge. Most of it's unlivable. No one's

00:08:39.000 moving to Inovic or Tuktoyaktuk. They're moving to Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal. And now they're

00:08:44.220 spilling into some smaller cities, but everyone is really in certain metropolises. It's insane.

00:08:52.640 Toronto is off the hook insane. And here's a stat I saw the other day, Lorne. There's about 750,000

00:09:00.360 temporary foreign workers, and many of them working in McDonald's, Tim Hortons, like low skill,

00:09:06.080 low paid jobs. Those are multi billion dollar multinational companies. And so they get to

00:09:11.300 save a buck or two an hour. But I have not seen a young Canadian by that mean I like a teenager

00:09:20.020 working in a fast food restaurant in years. And I think back to my own youth, that was my first job.

00:09:27.840 I worked because you can't screw it up. You get paid a little bit of dough, but you learn

00:09:32.460 things about showing up on work on time and, and being tidy. And you learn, you can't get your

00:09:38.560 second job till you have your first job. That's right. I worked at a dairy queen when I was in high

00:09:43.960 school. And it was the busiest dairy queen in Western Canada that didn't have burgers. We were just ice

00:09:51.580 cream. But the thing I learned because the lineups would be really long on a Sunday summer evening.

00:09:58.720 The thing I learned was people get cranky standing in line and you can't get cranky back. You have to

00:10:05.400 learn in customer service that you need to be nice even to the cranky pants out there. And so those are

00:10:12.020 very important life lessons that you, that you learn when you have those first jobs for sure. And so it is

00:10:19.100 a, it is a problem that, that the governments, federal government in particular has to deal

00:10:25.540 with. One thing that Smith said yesterday in her podcast on the Western standard was that,

00:10:31.840 you know, you've, we've, this is a problem that all governments are now facing and, and we're even

00:10:38.200 starting to see it creep into Alberta. And I think what she meant by that was, for instance, last year,

00:10:43.820 Calgary had the greatest increase in rents of any city in the country. And so Calgary is becoming less

00:10:52.780 affordable than it was. Edmonton is still one of the most affordable cities in the country. Calgary

00:10:58.640 is still affordable relative to Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, lots of the other places, but it is

00:11:04.320 becoming less so. And because of the flood, you can see over the next three to five years, lots of

00:11:12.280 people, if the same levels are maintained by Ottawa, lots of people will flood into Calgary,

00:11:17.020 lots of people will flood into Edmonton and start to do to the housing market and the job market in

00:11:22.480 those cities, what they've already done to the housing markets and the job markets in Toronto and

00:11:27.640 Vancouver in particular. And I think Smith sees that now that she didn't see in March. I think this

00:11:34.300 idea that we could, in 25 years, double the population of the province is nuts. It's only

00:11:42.500 doable if it's done organically. If that's what the market wants, if, if that's what is needed for

00:11:49.300 work in the oil field, in the service industries, fine, because the housing will follow along with it.

00:11:56.880 But if you're talking about forcing this issue as a government, then that's not going to work. It

00:12:03.660 doesn't work when the feds do it. It's not going to work when the province does it. And another of

00:12:07.700 her ideas that stems from this immigration population expansion thing is this idea that we should build

00:12:15.400 billions of dollars of intercity trains and commuter trains all over the province. Like, where does that

00:12:23.860 come from? Like, that's as nutty as the Calgary City Council building a $6.3 billion LRT line to

00:12:33.580 nowhere, because in the future we'll need it. And it's as nutty as the federal government spending

00:12:39.460 money on transit all over the country that isn't designed to do anything in particular, but make them

00:12:44.700 feel more green about themselves and maybe make Greta more pleased with them.

00:12:50.000 You know what? The Simpsons, that old cartoon, they have this con man character who comes into

00:12:57.040 town. So, oh, you wouldn't want the monorail. That's more, you know, here in, I forget the name

00:13:03.840 of the Springfield. Well, it's more a Shelbyville idea. You wouldn't want that. No, no, no, we want it.

00:13:09.740 Like he's a huckster. Here's a quick clip of that just to remind people what I'm talking about.

00:13:13.660 Oh, it's not for you. It's more of a Shelbyville idea. Now, wait just a minute. We're twice as smart

00:13:20.960 as the people of Shelbyville. Just tell us your idea and we'll vote for it. All right. I tell you

00:13:26.200 what I'll do. I'll show you my idea. I give you the Springfield monorail. I've sold monorails to

00:13:35.720 Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook, and by gum it put them on the map. Well, sir, there's nothing on

00:13:42.140 earth like a genuine bona fide electrified six car monorail. What'd I say? Monorail. What's it

00:13:47.740 called? Monorail. That's right. Monorail. Monorail. Monorail. Monorail. Anyone who's, look at

00:13:54.380 California where they've been talking about building this high speed rail for literally decades. And the

00:13:59.820 other day they were so proud of themselves. They tweeted like a one kilometer stretch connected to

00:14:04.100 nothing. They thought this was something to be proud of. There is so much traffic between Calgary and

00:14:08.520 Edmonton by car. There's WestJet and Air Canada. There's Uber. There's buses. The idea that the

00:14:14.680 government needs to come in and spend billions of dollars on a train, it infuriates me. And that's

00:14:19.260 what I mean about Danielle Smith. She'll read a paper in a technocratic way and sort of get excited 1.00

00:14:25.000 about it. But you need sort of a base instinct of government is bad. And I think on the immigration 1.00

00:14:33.240 side, I told you half the story about 750,000 temporary foreign workers. Here's the other

00:14:37.780 half. There's 450,000 unemployed people in this country between age 15 and 19. So why are you

00:14:44.940 bringing in 750,000 people who I'm sure are fine people? But why are people from foreign lands being 1.00

00:14:52.260 brought in for cheap labor and 450,000 Canadian young people can't find work? And they can't find work

00:15:01.600 because these companies have an easy way out. Because we're saying that we're letting billion

00:15:06.120 dollar companies say, hey, I need to save a dollar an hour on my salaries. So can I bring in foreign

00:15:12.640 laborers? Sometimes they won't find work either. It's easy enough in Canada to get by on what the

00:15:20.320 government will hand you or what your parents are prepared to pay while you're still living at home.

00:15:25.160 And there's lots more young people living at home than there were when when I left home in the 70s.

00:15:31.340 But but the other side of that is to that I don't blame any of the newcomers for being allowed in.

00:15:39.240 That's not they're not the problem. They didn't you know, if somebody said to you, you're living in

00:15:43.640 this decrepit developing country over here on the other side of the world, how would you like to come 1.00

00:15:48.920 to Canada easy and free? Of course, you're going to say yes, you'd be ridiculous. You would be doing

00:15:55.280 your family a disservice. You wouldn't be the best parent you could be if you said no. So I don't

00:16:00.600 blame any of them for coming. The problem is all with the liberals and all with their woke notions

00:16:06.420 that we you know, a little immigration is good. So a lot must be way better. 1.00

00:16:11.900 Here's the one thing that I would I mean, obviously, there there are probably 2 billion people in the

00:16:17.140 world who would come here. Most of Africa, much of Asia, even parts of South America. Why wouldn't you

00:16:24.920 come here? Because it is but it is better to be the lowest rung of Canada than a middle rung in Somalia. 1.00

00:16:33.400 But here's what here. The one thing I would differ with you on a little bit is we have over 1 million

00:16:39.680 foreign students in Canada. There are not even 1 million Canadian students. There's just not in

00:16:47.000 universities and colleges. And and they've set up all these fake diploma mills, right with a fake

00:16:53.240 street address, and you pay them 10 or 20 grand, and you get a student visa, but it's not really a

00:16:59.920 school. So it's it's a scam. So I would I would think that I'm going to estimate half of the people

00:17:06.700 here on a student visa. I'd say I'd say that's that's maybe on the low side of it. So I mean,

00:17:13.240 I suppose I'm not blaming them since we allow that since these fake colleges and by the way,

00:17:17.640 some real colleges, they're getting billions. They're basically selling immigration for 20 or

00:17:22.940 30 grand pop. And there's a lot of BS refugees. You're not you're not required by the federal 1.00

00:17:27.840 government to go home when your studies in. So most of these colleges have a six to nine or 12 month

00:17:33.660 program after which you are issued a certificate. You are allowed allowed under Canadian regulations

00:17:40.940 under immigration law to continue working in Canada in a post graduate position for I think

00:17:49.420 right now it's 36 months. They're trying to talk about cutting it back to 18 months. But why do you

00:17:55.400 get to work here after you're done anyway? And while you're here working towards this certificate from

00:18:00.980 this college, you can work 40 hours a week. Now, as of September one, that goes down to 24 hours a

00:18:07.800 week. But nonetheless, you know, I I know a fellow who runs a restaurant in Toronto who said most of the

00:18:14.780 people who come on bikes to pick up delivery food from his restaurant are technically foreign students,

00:18:23.060 but they're really working 40 hours a week delivering food for for one of the delivery service.

00:18:29.140 And I suppose if you're if if you're doing that, I take your point. Well, we're letting it happen.

00:18:34.600 So you can't blame them. Well, that's the insanity is we're letting it happen. There's there's students

00:18:39.760 who are taking bogus studies and stick around thereafter. There's temporary foreign workers who 0.92

00:18:44.420 are indeed working instead of Canadian young people working. And then there's refugees, 0.99

00:18:50.840 many of whom are bogus. A lot of these people coming as temporary foreign workers or students

00:18:55.760 then later claim asylum. It's bizarre to me. I mean, we accepted this across Roxham Road. No one 0.92

00:19:03.800 coming from the United States, by definition, is not a refugee. This is how I see this all over the 1.00

00:19:08.560 world. By the way, I see this in Ireland, people walk across from Northern Ireland, they take the

00:19:13.000 dinghy from France to Britain, they go to Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, walk into Ireland,

00:19:18.200 the country and say, we're refugees. No, brother, you're not. You just came from the UK. And refugee 0.96

00:19:25.640 law doesn't allow you to shop around. It's it's our folly that we accept this. Yeah, it is. It

00:19:31.360 absolutely is. And we have. So under the liberals, say, let's go back to Harper. Under the Harper

00:19:39.280 Conservatives, the refugee appeal approval rate in Canada was about 67%. It was about, let's say,

00:19:47.880 two thirds. Since the liberals have taken over, the refugee appeal rate has now gone well over 90%.

00:19:55.840 And I don't have the figures for last year because they're not available yet. But it looked like they

00:20:00.120 were headed towards about 95 or 96%. So if you make an application to be considered an asylum seeker in

00:20:08.020 Canada, there is a 95 or 96% chance, you will be granted your wish to stay here. And once you have

00:20:17.300 been granted that the chances of you ever being sent out of the country are minimal. You know, it infuriates

00:20:25.880 me in a way that the truck driver who ran into the junior B bus and killed all of those hockey

00:20:34.700 players is is being deported, despite the fact that he immediately apologized, he made amends with the

00:20:42.840 families, he pled guilty, so they wouldn't be subjected to a trial. He's followed all of the

00:20:48.480 rules that he had to in order to minimize the grief for the families as much as he could. Nothing can bring

00:20:55.880 back those young men and the adults who are their coaches. But but nonetheless, here's a fellow who has

00:21:03.320 tried as hard as he can to do the right thing and stay. And he's being kicked out. And then all these

00:21:10.020 people who abuse the system and claim refugee status that they're not that they're not entitled to,

00:21:15.440 they get to stay.

00:21:16.220 You know, I see this all around the world. One of the strange things that's happening in Ireland,

00:21:24.280 let me just share with you, I was there a few weeks ago, here in Canada, we put our bulk refugees

00:21:29.800 in big cities, or even smaller cities, like for example, some hotels in Niagara Falls,

00:21:36.120 many hotels in the greater Toronto area, they're no longer tourist hotels, they're no longer for

00:21:40.820 traveling business people, they are urban refugee camps. This is happening in the United States too,

00:21:45.760 even in New York City. There's dozens of hotels that are now urban refugee camps. And so they sort

00:21:51.380 of blend in and there's no really active local community that's going to really get motivated in

00:21:57.760 many of these large cities. But in here's what's crazy about Ireland, is the government for some

00:22:03.000 reason is choosing to spread out their refugee camps to the tiniest villages, literally today. 1.00

00:22:09.220 There's this village I was at a few weeks ago called Dundrum, less than 200 people in the whole

00:22:14.480 village, Lauren. Like I met almost half of them just wandering around. The local beautiful hotel,

00:22:21.320 country club and golf course signed a contract with the government to shut down as a hotel and

00:22:25.640 country club and golf course, and to take 280 military aged migrant men, not men, women and children,

00:22:33.320 just men. So you have a town of 200 that is now getting 280 men on top of that. No consultation,

00:22:41.640 no hearing, no planning, no consent. And it just happened just today, I think. And that's insane

00:22:50.420 because it's so extremely visible. And you've just destroyed centuries of, like this village of

00:22:56.320 Dundrum goes back centuries. You've just absolutely changed the course of history. You've changed

00:23:01.880 everything in the lives of this village. I don't understand why they would be so provocative.

00:23:05.980 In Canada and the United States, we're sort of hiding them in urban hotels. But it's, I don't know. I think

00:23:13.760 that mass immigration is a global weapon being used against the West. Am I wrong on that? 0.98

00:23:21.160 I think it is. But I also think it's being foisted on the West, not by the rest of the world,

00:23:29.800 but by progressive elites in the West, who refuse to see that there might be a downside to all of

00:23:38.720 this, whose wokeism is so pervasive, so strong, that they think, oh, if a little bit of our tolerance

00:23:47.660 is good, then five times that, 10 times that must necessarily be better. And they refuse to see that

00:23:56.020 there is a downside on the healthcare system, on the housing market, on the job market. It's like

00:24:01.240 the elites that have crafted our justice system policies, where everyone gets bail, even people

00:24:09.540 who have been convicted several times in the past of violent crimes, they still get bail as a default,

00:24:17.840 because getting people into the community is always the best way to cut down on crime.

00:24:23.760 And even when you can show statistics after statistics after statistics, that this mass

00:24:29.720 immigration or these lenient bail rules, or whatever the issue is, that those are not working,

00:24:36.040 you can show the proof they're not working. The progressive elites refuse to accept that their

00:24:42.920 ideas have caused any problem.

00:24:46.080 I think there's something also a little bit darker. There is so much wokeism on the issue of race,

00:24:52.340 race, and anti-white racism is not only accepted, it's promoted. It's now normal to see job 0.96

00:25:03.140 descriptions saying you must be a minority or another disadvantaged group. There's all sorts of

00:25:09.100 DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion, training sessions, the anti-white, and, you know, the anti-racist

00:25:16.040 baby, like you're told to read books, basically to being white is tantamount to being an oppressor. 0.59

00:25:24.000 And what is the national, natural, rational, logical conclusion of this nouveau racism, but to

00:25:32.080 be anti-white as a society? And I think that that's part of mass immigration. I think there are some

00:25:38.340 progressives who say, we're going to knock the white. And by the way, I mean, I'm fine with people 0.95

00:25:44.700 of all races. But I'm saying is that this mass immigration is deliberately, like in that hotel 0.94

00:25:51.360 in Dundrum I just mentioned, there were some Ukrainian families there that were genuine refugees

00:25:55.940 from the war. They're being evicted to bring in people from Nigeria and Somalia. It's really 1.00

00:26:02.460 astonishing. Let me show you a quick video clip. I was in Marseille, France last year when there were

00:26:07.780 race riots. And I went there and I found a man who looked very integrated. He looked very modern. He was

00:26:14.240 dressed in the Western attire. He had a cloche-shaped beard. Like he looked like a well-integrated Muslim

00:26:20.900 man. He was from Algeria. My French was terrible, but we managed to talk to each other. And I said, if it's

00:26:26.640 so racist here in France, why are you here? Why are so many Algerians here? Marseille is almost half 1.00

00:26:32.700 Muslim certain parts. Here's a clip of him saying the quiet part out loud. He basically

00:26:38.840 said, France colonized Algeria for a century. I'm here to return the favor. Take a look at this.

00:26:48.540 Franchement, tout ce qui se passe ici, c'est par rapport à l'État. Tout ça, c'est la faute

00:26:54.100 des policiers, c'est la faute de l'État. Parce qu'ici en France, il y a trop de racisme.

00:26:58.300 Le racisme, il est au premier degré ici en France. C'est tout ce que j'ai à dire. C'est

00:27:02.820 tout.

00:27:02.980 Pourquoi millions de musulmans immigré à France si France est raciste?

00:27:12.240 Eh bien, ils nous ont colonisé 132 ans. Et là, c'est notre tour de venir ici pour,

00:27:20.200 pour, pour, comment t'expliquer là, pour, je sais pas trouver les mots. Ils nous ont colonisé

00:27:26.720 132 ans. Et maintenant, on va les coloniser à vie jusqu'à la mort.

00:27:30.320 He later, by the way, I should tell you, that man later chased us down the street, found us about

00:27:36.000 a mile away, and demanded that we delete that footage. And we sort of pretended we did. Now,

00:27:41.980 I'm not saying that he speaks for everyone. There are many people who immigrate to Canada who love

00:27:47.460 it, who want to become Canadians, who want to share our values, who become patriots. But if we're not

00:27:52.620 assimilating people and indoctrinating them into our, not just our economy, everyone talks about

00:27:57.640 GDP and our economy and growth. And what, how about cultural fit too? How about keeping it safe for

00:28:04.680 women to walk at night? Safe for women? Where's our high trust society? The Canada I grew up in had a 1.00

00:28:12.680 high trust society where the default approach with a stranger was, we're all in this community

00:28:18.920 together. I believe if you bring in people too quickly who don't assimilate and find a common ground

00:28:23.800 and common purpose and common culture, you're losing that high trust society. You may get

00:28:28.440 economic growth, but you're not going to get the safety and the feeling of belonging that we grew up

00:28:33.220 with.

00:28:33.920 Right, right. No, I think that, I think that's absolutely fair. I think that's absolutely true.

00:28:38.040 And you're seeing that. A good example, you and I had talked about before we started this interview

00:28:45.460 about Jenica Atwin, the Green MP turned liberal from Fredericton, New Brunswick, who wants the

00:28:53.840 federal government to stop screening refugees from Gaza and just admit as many as want to come here as

00:29:01.940 quickly as possible. For instance, she even wants to get rid of the security screening

00:29:06.180 on the ground in Gaza before the people leave and come here. And that would, I think, simply lead 0.81

00:29:15.220 to two things. First of all, it would lead to Hamas embedding its own operatives within what looks like

00:29:24.060 a group of refugees, because Gaza controls who comes in and who gets out of Gaza. So of course, 0.98

00:29:29.940 they're going to put their own people in there. There's going to be a lot of incentive for their own

00:29:33.440 operators to get into those refugee groups, because the Israelis are closing in. And a lot of those

00:29:39.800 people, if they don't get out, are going to get dead. And so certainly there'll be a lot of people

00:29:44.700 in those Gaza refugee groups who would be Hamas. But also, you have to remember that during the October

00:29:51.540 7th massacre of Jews by Hamas, that was very widely and wildly popular with ordinary Palestinians.

00:30:02.100 People keep talking about, oh, Israel is going after Gaza, but they're killing all these poor 0.99

00:30:07.740 Palestinians. First of all, under international law, if you started the war and now you're hiding

00:30:13.560 behind civilians, their deaths are on your head, not on the head of the people who are defending

00:30:19.520 themselves. But second, what you've got there is this crazy passion for Hamas among a lot of

00:30:32.080 Palestinians, maybe even three quarters, as many as three quarters. And so if you're admitting an 1.00

00:30:36.800 awful lot of people to Canada who are passionately anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, and pro-Palestinian in

00:30:43.660 large numbers, are they going to integrate into Canada and live by the peaceful code that we have

00:30:51.360 here? Are they going to express their views in a non-violent way? Or are they simply going to start

00:30:58.480 jumping on hospital entranceways in Toronto again and lighting off firebombs and having violent

00:31:06.120 protests and calling for the death of Jews and maybe starting to attack Canadian government sites

00:31:14.280 because they don't think the Canadian government is pure enough in its support for Palestine?

00:31:19.340 We are simply inviting a ton of trouble. And that goes directly to what you're saying about when you

00:31:25.380 allow in so many people with so many different views without doing any kind of screening and at

00:31:32.040 this end, getting rid of any kind of cultural training for Canadian values, then you're asking

00:31:41.360 for trouble. Yeah. Well, let me close on this. In the United Kingdom, our former, our alumnus,

00:31:49.860 Tommy Robinson, who's, you know, a controversial person to the world. I like him and I trust him,

00:31:55.380 actually. He held a very large, very peaceful rally, the first on June 1st, the second on July 27th.

00:32:02.060 We covered it very peaceful. It was patriotic. It was multiracial. But it had a central message,

00:32:08.600 which is stop mass immigration. So two huge peaceful rallies. But in the last week or so,

00:32:14.120 there have been actual violent riots and counter riots in the UK and a lot of arrests of what I

00:32:22.080 call indigenous British people. They're the First Nations there. So I mean, they're, where does a 0.99

00:32:28.160 Brit go if he wants to go back to his homeland? Well, there's really nowhere else to go. So there's 0.76

00:32:33.420 been riots and prosecutions. So there was a poll done after the riots. That's my point. After the

00:32:38.900 riots, after the prosecutions and jailing of hundreds and hundreds of, of rioters, primarily

00:32:44.840 indigenous Brits, more than a third of Brits say that violence is a solution to mass immigration.

00:32:55.860 That is a shocking and terrifying number. A third say, according to a poll that was just released,

00:33:04.220 something yesterday. And obviously we're against violence. But when you say to people, you're not

00:33:09.820 allowed to protest, you're not allowed, like they're arresting people for memes, for social media

00:33:15.220 statements. For one person in Northern Ireland was jailed for simply watching the riot, not participating,

00:33:21.940 not hollering, not heckling. Just, he was a curious observer, which by the way, is a definition of a

00:33:27.360 journalist too. I, I fear that by, that, that I think the UK and France are way further down this

00:33:34.760 road than us, but I wish that we would learn from their bad example and not go that crazy. And the

00:33:40.740 talk of a 10 million person Alberta and a hundred million person Canada, we will, God forbid, may it 0.98

00:33:47.260 never happen. We will be at the place where there are riots too. And the fact that more than a third of

00:33:53.680 Brits say, yeah, rioting is the only way the establishment will listen to us. That is terrifying.

00:33:59.680 Because, because not only will the establishment not listen, they will arrest you for speaking out,

00:34:09.380 or they'll, you know, that's what this new online harms bill is all about in Canada, is the ability

00:34:14.560 of, of the CRTC as an agent of the government to take down posts that might say something unkind

00:34:22.200 about mass immigration. I, I noticed the other day, Facebook, uh, deleted a, um, I don't know what

00:34:29.920 you call it, an account, I guess, uh, that was put double X and that's two X chromosome. Right. And

00:34:37.700 it was to make comments on the international Olympic committee statement that gender now scientifically

00:34:45.520 is not, uh, determined by chromosome. You know, scientifically it is. And this is one of those

00:34:53.760 preposterous elite statements that ends with people honking their horns in downtown Ottawa for three

00:35:00.680 weeks because they have no other idea what they can do when, when the, the smartest people, the people

00:35:07.640 with the most education in, in, in society start spouting absolutely preposterous nonsense. And there

00:35:16.520 was a very good piece in the national review in the United States last week on, on the advent of

00:35:22.100 the profoundly wrong expert. And I think we're seeing that in all manner of issues now that the people who

00:35:30.960 are directing government policy, the people who are being consulted by governments and by elites, uh,

00:35:37.360 to, to give them ideas for solving problems are profoundly wrong. And, but they won't admit it.

00:35:45.560 The people who are paying them to give them ideas won't admit it. And if you start to say, Hey,

00:35:50.820 you're profoundly wrong, well then you'll get your social media account deleted. You might end up being

00:35:56.520 arrested if you're in Britain. Uh, and, and, and it's a topsy turvy world. Uh, you see, I, and you and 1.00

00:36:03.760 I differ very much on Donald Trump. I am not a big fan at all of Donald Trump, but I understand the

00:36:11.240 Trump phenomenon. The Trump phenomenon comes out of these profoundly wrong experts who on every issue,

00:36:18.760 not only are wrong, but they want to micromanage the lives of the people who aren't wrong. Yeah.

00:36:24.340 And, uh, and, and I think that's, I think that's what we're headed for.

00:36:28.360 Let me close with this because we're talking a little bit about censorship now. Um, the other day,

00:36:34.300 Elon Musk interviewed Donald Trump on the Twitter platform, which is now called X. And it was very

00:36:41.120 long and interviewed and some people have their thoughts on the substance of it and the style of

00:36:44.800 it. But, uh, according to Twitter, and they may be exaggerating, but they claim that it was listened

00:36:51.200 to or, or, or watched or, uh, came to the attention of 1 billion people. Now, I, I don't know how that

00:37:00.060 can be given that there's not even a billion people on Twitter, but it was pretty big. But the day before

00:37:06.180 the head of the European union, um, Terry, I think I'm pronouncing his right, his last name, sent a big

00:37:13.660 letter on European union stationary to, to Elon Musk, basically warning him not to say certain

00:37:21.720 things, not to incite hatred, basically. So a letter from a European bureaucrat who himself

00:37:27.080 is not elected because he's the head of the EU writing to an American citizen, Elon Musk, telling

00:37:34.460 him that he can't say certain things in his interview with a presidential candidate, the chutzpah,

00:37:40.100 the condescension, the, the audacity, but, but that is absolutely all of them. When I was in Davos

00:37:48.840 at the world economic forum last year, the two names they hated the most was Donald Trump because

00:37:53.400 they think he'll smash their international architecture, but they hate is a very close

00:37:58.840 second. Elon Musk for enabling people to see and hear and say things that they weren't allowed to

00:38:05.260 before then. I, I am just as worried about an assassination attempt, God forbid, against Elon

00:38:11.400 Musk as, as I think that we should be worried about one against Trump. The, the chutzpah of some

00:38:17.320 European Belgian bureaucrat to write a letter to Elon Musk in America and say, you're not allowed to say

00:38:23.440 certain things in your interview with Donald Trump in an election. It is so appalling, but it's so

00:38:28.340 normal. And that letter did indeed go out. It's, it's, it's normal in those circles. They really

00:38:33.920 do believe that the world is becoming a darker, more sinister place, and they are the only lights

00:38:40.480 that are keeping it civilized. And so therefore they can do whatever they choose in order to protect

00:38:47.900 what they see as civilization. And they're just full of it. Yeah. Lauren, it's great to catch up with

00:38:53.040 you. I meant to talk a lot more about Alberta things, but we talked mainly about immigration,

00:38:57.000 but I have to tell you all around the world, that is a key issue in places like Hungary and Poland,

00:39:03.300 they have made a very starkly different choice. And I have to tell you, there's no pro Hamas marches 0.58

00:39:08.740 in Hungary and Poland. There's no stabbing attacks in the street of Hungary and Poland. There's no,

00:39:14.360 I was in Hungary at the large Jewish synagogue in Budapest. They don't even have a security guard.

00:39:19.740 There's no anti-Semitic graffiti in Hungary. It was, it was actually declared by the world Jewish

00:39:24.760 Congress to be the safest European city in which to be a Jew. I have to tell you, my friend, there is

00:39:30.620 a connection. There absolutely is a connection. However politically incorrect it is to say so,

00:39:35.360 it's something that's going to be, I think, the issue of our times. Thank you for talking with me

00:39:40.380 about it. It's better to talk about these things than to brush them under the carpet, which I think

00:39:44.560 a lot of the mainstream media do. All right, there you have it. Lauren Gunter, one of our favorite guys.

00:39:49.280 He's a senior columnist for the Edmonton Sun. Take care, my friend.

00:40:03.620 I was going to read some letters, but let me share with you some thoughts about other things as well.

00:40:07.680 My colleague, Sarah Stock, is in Ottawa reporting on Tamara Leach's trial. It really is astonishing that

00:40:13.280 the largest trial in Canada, the largest trial in Canada in, for years, I can't remember any

00:40:18.820 longer running trial with more government resources, it is not for terrorism. We saw about the two

00:40:24.420 terrorists from ISIS that were brought into this country even after they had committed terrorism

00:40:29.560 overseas. Their trial will not be as long as Tamara Leach's. There will be no trial of, for example,

00:40:36.700 the great bank heist where they stole all that gold from Toronto Pearson Airport. That won't be as long.

00:40:42.520 There are atrocious terrorist acts, atrocious crimes, drug gangs, car theft rings. If you're in the

00:40:50.100 greater Toronto area, you know that cars are stolen literally every day. People break in, get the key

00:40:55.120 fobs and drive away with luxury cars, put them on a ship and send them to the Middle East or Africa.

00:41:01.200 It's an astonishing crime wave. None of those get the police crackdown.

00:41:06.720 The prosecutorial resources and the time of our courts, like Tamara Leach. And I just turn that

00:41:13.680 over my head and I realize what backwards and upside down morality we have in our justice system.

00:41:21.200 That Tamara Leach, who had never done a crime in her life, never arrested in her life, never actually

00:41:28.560 did anything other than be sort of the spiritual leader of the convoy, has the largest mischief trial

00:41:35.100 in not just Canadian history, but anywhere in the Commonwealth. And my time yesterday was

00:41:40.940 confirmed that. Now, I was happy to say that I was certainly left with the impression that Tamara

00:41:46.780 Leach will be acquitted and that the prosecutors were just phoning it in. They had some of those

00:41:50.840 embarrassingly stupid arguments I'd ever seen. But what else are you going to do?

00:41:55.640 If you're instructed by the attorney general to prosecute Tamara Leach at all costs and you've got

00:42:00.860 nothing, you sort of try and make something out of nothing. Maybe the prosecutors were just

00:42:06.140 filling time, but they certainly did it in a punitive way. I'm excited that Rebel News is not

00:42:10.540 just the publisher of Tamara Leach's autobiography, but that we're working with the Democracy Fund to

00:42:15.420 crowdfund Tamara Leach's legal fees. If you can help, please do go to helptamara.com. I saw

00:42:21.820 the lawyers in action and there was this wonderful moment, if I can just share it with you.

00:42:25.100 One of the leading cases in mischief as a criminal offense was discussed yesterday. I forget the name

00:42:33.360 of the case, so I don't want to get it wrong. The prosecution was referring to that case. It was a

00:42:38.900 high court, it was an appeal court decision about a neighbor who parked his truck near his neighbor

00:42:46.360 and had a message on the truck, something like, I'm not responsible for the flood in your basement.

00:42:52.580 Like some squabble between the two. So it was on neighbor number one's truck on neighbor number

00:43:00.660 one's property next to neighbor number two. Neighbor number two somehow managed to get not just some

00:43:07.660 civil suit, small claim suit, but managed to get a mischief prosecution and conviction of a crime of

00:43:15.340 his neighbor. So the guy, neighbor number one, who put up this weird sign on his truck that didn't have

00:43:20.300 any swears, didn't have any threats. It was just sort of a nuisance. Convicted of a crime? Well, that

00:43:26.720 case was appealed and neighbor number one was acquitted. It was overturned on appeal. And the weight

00:43:35.400 of that court case, the importance of it, was that if you have expression, if you have political

00:43:40.820 expression or you have some meaning, that can be a defense to mischief. So you can see why this is an

00:43:46.240 important case when Tamara Leach, the head of the truckers, is on trial for mischief. Anyway, so that's the

00:43:52.620 case. The prosecution brought up the case and was trying somehow to make the point that this benefited the

00:43:59.380 prosecution. The judge waited and said, yeah, no, I'm not sure if you quite understand that case. And they were

00:44:05.840 bantering back and forth. The judge was really pushing back against the prosecutor. And I said, well, I assume the

00:44:12.380 judge is right. She's a very senior judge. And then it was my favorite moment yesterday. Lawrence

00:44:18.700 Greenspawn, the senior lawyer, the head of three lawyers defending Tamara Leach, pipes up in a very

00:44:23.440 gentle way and says, Your Honor, I was the lawyer who took that case to the court of appeal 14 years ago,

00:44:31.980 and I won. And so literally Tamara Leach's lawyer is the expert lawyer who fought the case and won in the

00:44:41.060 court of appeal 14 years ago, setting the precedent for freedom of speech, even in the case of mischief,

00:44:47.920 being a source of acquittal. And it was sort of funny to me, because here's some prosecutors trying

00:44:52.660 to say, I know what this case means. Your Honor, let me tell you, this case really helps us because

00:44:56.600 of blah, blah, blah. And the judge said, no, I don't, I don't really think so. And then sitting over

00:45:00.540 there with a big smile on his face is the lawyer who actually took that case and won that case and

00:45:05.940 argued that case and knows that case probably better than anyone else in the world, Lawrence

00:45:09.980 Greenspawn, Tamara Leach's lawyer. And in that moment, and by the way, the way Lawrence Greenspawn

00:45:14.160 mentioned this and brought it up sort of in a self-deprecating way, oh, I'm so old kind of thing.

00:45:19.740 It was very funny, very lighthearted, and it was an amazing moment. And I thought, boy,

00:45:26.300 having a great lawyer can make all the difference. And not only is Lawrence Greenspawn, in my personal

00:45:33.480 view, a great lawyer. And I say that, I probably know 50 lawyers. Watching him in that moment,

00:45:39.660 being the man of the hour, knowing that case of mischief when there's political expression,

00:45:45.540 I felt pretty good about it. Look, I don't know how the Tamara Leach case is going to end. I just

00:45:49.140 don't know. How do I know? Only the judge herself knows. But I'm fairly optimistic. And I think

00:45:54.880 what the prosecution started is an attempt to not just criminalize Tamara Leach and punish her

00:46:00.160 personally, but to sort of retroactively criminalize the entire convoy, I think it's

00:46:04.840 going to backfire on the government. I think it's going to be an acquittal, and thereby a vindication

00:46:09.060 of the entire convoy. Yes, it was Trudeau who threw the country under martial law. And yes,

00:46:13.800 it was Trudeau who did atrocious things and made atrocious statements. But at the end of the day,

00:46:18.660 it's the Ontario government, the provincial government, Doug Ford's government, that instructs,

00:46:23.580 pays, directs, and chooses to go after Tamara Leach with the prosecutors. Those are Ontario prosecutors,

00:46:29.340 not federal prosecutors. Anyways, Sarah Stock continues to cover that story for us. 1.00

00:46:38.280 That's our show for today. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us at Rebel World Headquarters,

00:46:43.760 to you at home, good night, and keep fighting for freedom.

00:46:46.360 you

Rebel News Podcast - August 15, 2024

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Alberta Premier Danielle Smith opposes mass immigration

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