EZRA LEVANT ｜ An in-depth look at Alberta's 'better late than never' mass immigration reversal with Lorne Gunter
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
167.09586
Summary
A bold statement from Alberta s premier, Danielle Smith, about mass immigration. Ezra and Lanyadoo talk about it, and a response from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's mass immigration pusher, Mark Miller. Plus, a look at the numbers on immigration in Canada.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hello my friends, an incredible statement yesterday by Danielle Smith, the Premier of Alberta,
00:00:04.940
coming out guns blazing against mass immigration. Very interesting and she managed to communicate it
00:00:11.500
in a very gentle and persuasive and loving way, if I can use that word. I'll show you the video
00:00:17.600
and then Lauren Gunter and I are going to go through the response to that video
00:00:21.420
from Mark Miller, Trudeau's mass immigration pusher, I guess you could call him. So a bunch
00:00:28.080
of video clips there. I want you to see the videos, not just hear them. So do me a favor
00:00:31.820
and do yourself a favor, if I may, and go to rebelnewsplus.com. That's the video version
00:00:38.360
of this podcast. We spent a lot of effort on the visuals of the show, so I don't want you
00:00:42.880
to miss them. Plus the $8 a month it costs to subscribe. Well, you know, that's how we pay
00:00:47.760
the bills around here because we get no money from Trudeau, unlike most other journalists
00:00:52.040
and it shows. That's rebelnewsplus.com. All right, here's today's podcast.
00:00:58.080
Tonight, finally, a concerted opposition to mass immigration. Not from our federal opposition
00:01:18.760
leader, though, from the province of Alberta. It's September 18th and this is the Ezra LeVance
00:01:39.740
Well, immigration is a federal issue under the constitution, the separation of powers,
00:01:46.380
but more and more provinces want to say, especially Quebec, which likes to choose its own immigrants
00:01:52.260
for linguistic and cultural reasons. But Justin Trudeau has gone absolutely bonkers in the last
00:01:59.540
few years with immigration. The numbers are, frankly, they're quadrupled. I was astounded when I first
00:02:05.900
heard that there were more than two million people brought to Canada last year. Two million. You might
00:02:12.960
say, well, that's not true, Ezra. There's only half a million immigrants. Well, that's what they call
00:02:17.620
people who apply to be, you know, to immigrate to Canada doesn't include the more than one million
00:02:24.380
people on a student visa. And we learned that only a third of them are in accredited universities.
00:02:30.620
Doesn't include the 750,000 temporary foreign workers. So if you add it all up and then there's the
00:02:37.820
hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers, two million people were brought into this country and you can
00:02:43.860
feel it on the street of any large or even medium sized city. It's absolutely astonishing.
00:02:51.200
Even more crazy is when you see where the so-called asylum seekers or refugees are from. The number one
00:02:57.540
source of refugees, if I'm not mistaken, is India. Yeah, the world's largest democracy that is at peace.
00:03:05.080
There's no civil war in India. It wouldn't be my first choice for a place to live, but it's a fine
00:03:10.320
country. It's rapidly developing. There are multi-party democracies. There's a fairly vigorous
00:03:15.820
opposition and a vigorous press. Why would the number one source of refugees be from India? Mexico's on
00:03:25.240
that list too. Yeah, there are some parts of Mexico where there's a bit of a crime problem. I don't deny
00:03:30.180
that one bit. But again, Mexico is not a civil rights crisis. If you're coming from Mexico saying
00:03:37.300
you're seeking refugee status, you are most likely a liar and an advantage taker. And I think as much
00:03:45.080
as anything, it's that bogus nature, the obvious fraud of these fake refugees that poisons people
00:03:53.320
against immigration. Of course, the raw numbers have something to do with it too. And so it was very
00:03:58.000
interesting to me that Danielle Smith, the premier of Alberta, who has largely been silent on matters
00:04:03.520
of immigration, she weighed in in a big way the other day with a televised address to Albertans.
00:04:10.960
Let me play for you a couple of minutes of a clip from her, and then we'll bring in our friend Lauren
00:04:15.780
Gunter, the senior columnist from the Edmonton Sun, to talk about it. This is quite a bold statement.
00:04:24.600
Now, Alberta has always welcomed newcomers who possess our shared values, and we will continue
00:04:29.460
to do so. Welcoming those who believe in working hard, protecting our freedoms, contributing to
00:04:35.180
society, following the rule of law, and who have a deep respect for other cultures and faiths different
00:04:40.920
from their own, have long been a strength of our provincial culture and history. Equally as important
00:04:46.400
though, Canada's previous immigration policies under leaders like Prime Minister Stephen Harper,
00:04:51.280
as an example, focused on ensuring that immigration levels matched our nation's economic needs and was
00:04:57.720
commensurate with our ability to build enough houses and infrastructure to keep up with that growth.
00:05:03.760
However, the Trudeau government's unrestrained open border policies, permitting well over a million
00:05:08.960
newcomers each year into Canada, is causing significant challenges and has broken this delicate balance.
00:05:15.020
These historically high immigration levels, especially as it relates to those with temporary visas,
00:05:21.460
is exacerbating shortages in housing, job opportunities for young people, as well as health,
00:05:27.060
education, and other social services infrastructure in a manner that is a severe challenge for all
00:05:32.540
provinces to keep up with, including our own. This drives up the cost of living and strains public
00:05:38.160
services for everyone, new Albertans, lifelong Albertans, and everyone in between.
00:05:42.920
So I am joining with other premiers across our country in calling on the current federal government
00:05:47.780
to immediately reintroduce sensible and restrained immigration policies, similar to levels we saw
00:05:53.520
under Stephen Harper, so that all provinces have some time and resources to sustainably catch up
00:05:59.360
with growth and to ensure those coming here closely align with our country's economic needs and our core values.
00:06:06.040
And if the current federal government won't make these changes, our government will certainly support a new one that will.
00:06:10.920
There you have it. Danielle Smith in her televised provincial address last night joining us now
00:06:15.900
to talk about it. And the reaction by the federal immigration minister, Mark Miller, to it is our friend
00:06:22.180
Lauren Gunter. Lauren, what do you think of that? That's quite a strong statement for a premier who I think
00:06:27.560
has avoided foreign affairs immigration issues pretty assiduously. What do you think?
00:06:31.840
Well, and I think that her libertarian background made her less open or less
00:06:41.140
vigilant about this issue that, you know, there should be free movement of people across borders
00:06:48.820
within limits and, you know, with that idea to national security and all that sort of thing.
00:06:53.560
And so she has only lately come to the realization of what the federal government has done, but better
00:07:01.100
late than never. I mean, I think that's a very good statement on her part. That is an excellent
00:07:05.760
summation of what the feds have done. And as you said in the lead in, we're now looking at most years
00:07:13.480
north of two million people getting into Canada one way or another. And OK, so some of them are temporary
00:07:21.640
foreign workers, some of them are foreign students, some of them are visitors. If those people all went
00:07:27.680
home when their visas expired, this wouldn't be as big an issue. But those people make up two thirds
00:07:33.680
or more, maybe closer to three quarters of the intake of newcomers every year. And very few of them go home
00:07:41.960
when their visas run out. Now, foreign students are particularly good examples. We're not talking here
00:07:48.500
in most cases about bright young mathematicians, chemists, medical students who are studying at
00:07:55.800
big, reputable universities. We're talking about people who are in six and nine month career education
00:08:01.200
programs at those colleges that you only notice out of the corner of your eye when you're driving past
00:08:06.300
on the street. And when they're done their programs, they're given about 12 months to 18 months
00:08:15.260
to work in Canada before they're supposed to go back to their country of residence. But that limit has
00:08:23.440
been expanded, extended by the Liberals five times. And so you have an awful lot of people who came here
00:08:29.280
studied for six or nine months in marketing management or some sort of, well, let's say less than vigorous
00:08:39.020
program. While they were here doing that, they could work up to 40 hours a week. So really what
00:08:45.780
they were doing was they were working full time. They were kind of enrolled in these colleges. And
00:08:50.700
then when that expired, they were able to stay on for another year and a half, most of the time
00:08:58.420
working 40 hours a week or more. And then when their visas were running out, the federal government
00:09:04.920
extended and extended and extended. So basically what they were doing in Ottawa is they were running
00:09:09.020
a parallel immigration system. You couldn't get all the people in in the 450,000 quota immigration
00:09:15.440
system we had. So they created this other program, run people through student visas. And they doubled
00:09:23.600
the number. There are twice as many people in a student visa program, roughly, as there are in a
00:09:29.740
regular immigration system. And then you got to add temporary foreign workers and asylum seekers.
00:09:35.680
And asylum seekers are mostly people who came here saying they were going to be tourists. You can fill
00:09:42.580
out a form online to get a travel pass to come into Canada. You fill out the form, you pay seven bucks
00:09:52.000
and you get the pass. And then when you get here, you say, oh, I'm seeking asylum. And thanks to
00:09:57.380
Supreme Court ruling back in the 1990s, everybody who is on Canadian soil has the same right to legal
00:10:05.900
processes, including having the government subsidize their legal defense. They have the same rights,
00:10:14.720
even if they're only here on a visitor's visa, as people who were born and raised in Canada or people
00:10:20.900
who have come to Canada and become naturalized citizens. There is no advantage in the legal system
00:10:29.360
to being a citizen of the country, whether you were born here or naturalized here. People who just come
00:10:35.320
and show up can start claiming the same rights. And I think that that's nuts. But that's what the
00:10:41.660
liberals have wanted. You remember Trudeau when he was, before he became prime minister, he talked
00:10:46.240
that this was a post-national country, that we weren't really a nation anymore. We were a concept.
00:10:54.220
That's what he meant. We could absorb two and a half million people a year and it would be fine. But
00:10:59.360
of course, that's exacerbated inflation and it's exacerbated the housing crisis and all sorts of
00:11:07.660
other, like healthcare. You know, the waiting rooms and hospitals are fuller than they would be
00:11:12.760
otherwise because we have 2 million new people a year coming to Canada. Yeah. It's absurd. And
00:11:20.940
in many cases, in almost every case, if you follow the money, you understand why. Those fake colleges
00:11:31.780
that you see in strip malls that are teaching loosey-goosey degrees, they're not teaching medicine
00:11:36.780
or even accounting or law or engineering or something tangible. They're teaching
00:11:41.260
loosey-goosey stuff and, but they're charging monster tuition. So they're basically human
00:11:48.960
traffickers. They say, we'll let you into Canada. Just pay us $15,000 for a six-month course in
00:11:55.400
barbershop marketing. Not that there's anything wrong with barbershop marketing, but we don't need
00:12:00.460
people to come here from India to study barbershop. We don't just cut one here. We cut them all.
00:12:06.100
That's right. Barbershop marketing. I just make it so much. So there's tens of billions of dollars
00:12:12.580
in basically, I'm going to call them, I mean, not quite bribes because they're basically,
00:12:18.500
these colleges are selling visas is really what's going on. Yeah. I think that's largely fair. Yeah.
00:12:25.880
And on the temporary foreign workers side, I like going to McDonald's for breakfast. I like their
00:12:32.040
coffee better than Tim Hortons, but McDonald's is a foreign international company. So is Tim Hortons,
00:12:37.420
by the way, it's owned by a Brazilian American hedge fund. And I would doubt that there's 5%
00:12:43.920
of the staff of those companies are, are Canadian citizens. So basically what we're doing is bringing
00:12:49.200
in temporary foreign workers to subsidize billion dollar foreign companies. So they don't have to pay
00:12:55.720
another bucket, a buck an hour to hire Canadians. I was looking at the stats. There's 350,000 unemployed
00:13:02.320
young Canadians. That's by definition of doing 15 and 24 years of age. So there's 350,000 unemployed
00:13:09.600
young people and there's 750,000 temporary foreign workers. I'm not saying they're all working
00:13:14.980
at McDonald's and Tim Hortons, but a lot of them are. But you know what? There's another side to that
00:13:20.000
too. And, and I know a fellow in Northern Alberta who owns eight Tim Hortons, he could not get
00:13:28.780
unemployed young Canadians to work for. He went to get temporary foreign workers because otherwise
00:13:35.260
he'd have to shut down some of his stores. So we do have a, we do have a double edged problem there in
00:13:43.940
that an awful lot of young Canadians don't want to take those kinds of jobs.
00:13:48.060
Sure. You know what though? I think people could pay an extra buck for the breakfast sandwich
00:13:52.740
or, uh, and employ a Canadian. And I think, but you'd have, you'd have to explain it that way.
00:13:58.740
And, and nobody does explain it that way. The other thing you'd have to do is you'd have to make
00:14:04.620
the, um, ease of getting social benefits harder, because then you, you wouldn't be able to turn
00:14:13.780
your nose up at a $16 an hour, uh, coffee push job at McDonald's. Like, you know, people say,
00:14:20.500
oh, I couldn't possibly. We have to make it socially acceptable to be in the trades or to
00:14:27.460
have that first job. And exactly. I mean, my first job was working when I was 14 years old,
00:14:33.100
I was working in fast food at Calloway park near Calgary. And when I was 14, that was a big deal
00:14:41.280
to go and work for the lowest rung on the ladder, but you can't get to the second rung on a ladder
00:14:45.300
before you climb the first one. I made a buck 65 an hour in my first job working at a dairy queen.
00:14:51.560
And I'm glad there aren't any pictures of me wearing that hat, but you know what you
00:14:56.780
probably, but you know, I learned so much. Doug and Lil Burgess were the franchisees in medicine
00:15:02.980
hat when I was growing up. And I learned so much from them about punctuality, responsibility,
00:15:10.240
customer service. Oh my goodness. There would be people who would come and they'd have to stand in
00:15:14.000
a long line on a hot Sunday evening. And they would be mad when they got to the window. But I learned
00:15:19.300
from Doug and Lil how to use a smile to turn away their frustration. And you know, it's, it, that's
00:15:26.140
a lesson that has served me well all my life. So you can learn an awful lot. There was one time when
00:15:31.220
7% of the U S workforce had had its first job at a McDonald's, not at, at any fast food restaurant,
00:15:41.100
not the Wendy's and, and the Burger Kings and things just at McDonald's 7% of them. And, and that gives
00:15:48.320
people a really good grounding in a, in a tough job for last day. And the other thing is if you work
00:15:57.320
in one of those jobs for a while, you think, yeah, maybe I should go back to school and get a degree
00:16:03.840
or a trade or whatever, cause I'm going to make a lot more money and be more satisfied. So they're
00:16:09.040
good that way too. But, but you know, this is, all of this is just one problem that the liberals
00:16:15.360
have woked away, right? This is one of the examples where wokeness is more important to them than
00:16:22.960
economic theory, than statistics, than business, than the reality of the world. And it, they have
00:16:29.660
run us into the ground with this ridiculous policy. I mean, I think it was interesting that, that earlier
00:16:37.240
today, uh, Mark Miller, the, the immigration minister kind of admitted that they had let the
00:16:43.880
immigration issue run rampant and that even they were trying to scale it back. Now they're not doing
00:16:50.920
anything in, in, in any numbers that would really make a difference. Uh, but anything right now would
00:16:59.320
be a help over what it is that they've been doing for the last three or four years.
00:17:03.480
Let me, uh, throw to a, a few, we have a couple of clips from Mark Miller and including one from
00:17:09.160
before Danielle Smith's speech. But, um, one of the reasons I believe Trudeau is juicing the
00:17:14.760
immigration numbers, first of all, um, I, I think they believe that mass immigration will turn into
00:17:21.080
mass liberal votes in a few years. And there's, there seems to be evidence for that, or at least there
00:17:25.960
has been in the past, but without mass immigration, Canada would have been in a recession for some time
00:17:33.160
now. What I mean by that is on a per capita basis, Canadians are, are falling behind where we're,
00:17:40.360
our incomes are falling per person. So you personally are poorer now than you were a year ago.
00:17:48.200
How do you mask that if the GDP for the entire country is shrinking? Well, you bring in millions of
00:17:56.360
people. And although that doesn't fix the per capita poverty, it, it gooses the big number because
00:18:03.240
the GDP, Oh, it's gone up a couple of points. Yeah. Cause you brought in, you're literally bringing
00:18:08.440
in 5% of the population in this country. How could it not grow? So it's masking the poverty. Here's a
00:18:16.120
clip where, where, um, Mark Miller basically says he admits it. He says, were it not for mass immigration,
00:18:24.440
we'd have to admit we're in a recession. Uh, the bank of Canada has said it, the international
00:18:27.960
monetary is fund to set of immigration writ large has been in part responsible for preventing us from
00:18:34.040
going into a recession has been important for the net growth in the gross domestic product. Again,
00:18:41.960
this has been important and it's been important to the growth of the country, but I think it's safe to
00:18:47.240
admit that, uh, we have allowed certain aspects of this to get overheated and probably for too long.
00:18:53.160
Well, there you have it. He's admitting that it's basically putting up makeup on a very ugly face of
00:19:00.600
the economy. Yeah. It's, it is a fake growth because it's, it's, and I've heard economists argue this
00:19:09.400
and even economists that I like who say, Oh yes, but without immigration, we'd be in a recession. Yeah.
00:19:16.200
I can guarantee you though, that the average Canadian has felt like they've been in a recession now for
00:19:21.240
about a year and a half or two years. Uh, and only statistically does immigration mask the reality
00:19:29.960
of the economy. The inflation is too high. The carbon tax sucks too much money out of your pocket.
00:19:35.880
They're there. It's harder for your kids to find a job. Housing prices keep going up and lots of those
00:19:43.000
have nothing to do with immigration, but many of them also are exacerbated by immigration. So you bring in
00:19:48.440
all of these immigrants and they suddenly start producing slightly more GDP so that it doesn't
00:19:54.760
look like GDP is shrinking. It's growing very, very small. I mean, there was one, one quarter, uh,
00:20:02.120
this year where I grew by 0.2%. I mean, that's pathetic. Um, so it's growing small, but it's growing.
00:20:09.880
And so you can say, Oh, well, yes, of course the country is growing and that's because we're bringing
00:20:13.320
in all these immigrants. But if you look at the cost of living for the average Canadian and the
00:20:20.760
opportunities that they see and the ability for them to buy a home, even to buy a 480 square foot
00:20:28.840
condo tower apartment in Toronto is evaporating because there's so much pressure on the housing market.
00:20:37.400
And that is largely, although not entirely, but largely from immigration. And it's, it's,
00:20:44.040
so it's ridiculous for people to say immigration has kept us from being in a recession. Statistically,
00:20:49.720
yes. I mean, but it's, it's like wallpapering over a giant hole in your house and hoping that
00:20:54.920
that's going to keep the cold air out in, in the wintertime. It's not, you know, um,
00:21:00.760
there are some major institutions in this country that benefit from that gross GDP. And,
00:21:07.880
and even if we're getting poorer individually, like if you're a bank, pretty much everyone in
00:21:12.440
Canada needs a bank account. And in fact, if you only have a little bit of money, you actually
00:21:17.160
proportionally pay more in fees. Um, pretty much everyone in Canada needs a cell phone.
00:21:21.960
Um, everyone needs a landlord. Um, so, so you've, there are some powerful lobbies, developers of
00:21:31.720
condos and apartments. So there are some people that the raw numbers is golden to them. Um, but
00:21:38.120
that's very different than, than the average or ordinary person. I want to move on to the second
00:21:43.880
clip from Mark Miller, because this is the one you were alluding to where he's sort of
00:21:48.920
admitting that maybe they've gone a little too far. Listen to these astonishing numbers.
00:21:54.360
He talks about the number of visa applicants from India alone is 50,000 per month. Do the math on
00:22:05.480
that. That's 600,000 people a year from India alone who want to come here. Here, listen to the exact
00:22:13.160
stats as he says it. Take a look. Those measures that we have taken internally
00:22:17.720
to be a little more restrictive on who gets visas. Looking at countries where we are seeing
00:22:25.560
people exploiting the visa system, that is to say that those that are claiming for asylum are not
00:22:32.280
legitimate asylum claimants, uh, is a challenge to the system, particularly given the volume of people
00:22:40.280
that are looking to come to Canada. Again, as I said in French, it is a privilege to come to Canada. It is
00:22:45.240
not a right. If you compare the numbers of people that have come in, for example,
00:22:51.960
in one country where we have had some of those challenges from India, we have seen those visas
00:22:56.920
jump down from around 50,000 in January to less than 10,000 in August. Again, these are preliminary
00:23:05.160
numbers, but it is an indicative sign that the measures that we have taken over the summer after
00:23:09.960
discussions with my provincial colleagues are working. There's more work to do. And again,
00:23:14.520
there are a number of measures that we need to take to make sure that when asylum seekers come to this
00:23:19.160
country, they, uh, they, they get due process, but that there is no abuse in the system. And it is
00:23:25.480
incumbent on the federal government to act when it controls the levers, particularly at the border.
00:23:31.240
So he started grudgingly admitting that it was out of control, but this isn't news to him. He's known
00:23:35.800
this the whole time. He's been in favor of this the whole time. In fact, until about five minutes ago,
00:23:41.160
if you, if you criticize this, you were a racist.
00:23:43.800
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I'm, I am amazed that he named the country that was responsible for
00:23:53.240
sending the most, uh, uh, of these asylum seeker tourist temporary visa because that alone would have
00:24:03.000
been verboten in the liberal caucus until a month ago. Uh, you know, they've made, they've now started
00:24:10.280
to say, well, we're going to cap the number of foreign students. We're going to cap the number
00:24:13.960
of, of, uh, temporary foreign workers. The thing about the temporary foreign workers that drives me
00:24:20.120
up the wall is that when Jason Kenney was the immigration minister and Stephen Harper was the
00:24:25.800
prime minister, they made provision to allow 70,000 temporary foreign workers into Canada, largely because
00:24:34.440
there was this, uh, job deficit. We, we had too few workers, particularly in oil and gas, and they
00:24:43.160
needed bodies. So they let in 70,000. Well, the unions and the NDP and the Prado star, and oh my
00:24:51.400
goodness, they're ruining the country, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The liberals are letting in 700,000 or
00:24:57.880
more a year and only just now. Yeah. Has anybody thought to criticize them over this? It did the,
00:25:04.600
the hypocrisy, uh, if legacy media, we wonder sometimes why we're losing credibility. And I,
00:25:11.400
and I think that's a particularly good reason why we, we examine one side of the issue vigorously
00:25:19.080
and ignore the flaws in the other side. And, and one of the reasons I got into this business 30
00:25:25.080
some years ago was it was fun to be able to sit in the middle and pick apart both sides.
00:25:31.240
You know, um, Danielle Smith showed a lot of courage saying what she said in the political
00:25:36.360
media environment. She's already getting bashed online for it. Um, other premiers have shown that
00:25:41.000
courage to the premiers of Quebec has basically, I mean, about a month ago, he said without temporary
00:25:47.320
foreign workers, uh, we would solve our housing problem immediately, which is I think statistically
00:25:53.240
true or close to true Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Alberta, Quebec, that's four provinces have spoken
00:25:59.160
out boldly. And what's interesting to me is those are all provincial leaders, um, who again, don't have
00:26:05.560
really constitutional authority. It's just through agreements that maybe they speak out. Whereas the
00:26:11.400
federal conservatives in the form of Pierre Polyev in particular is still sort of timid previous
00:26:18.120
conservative leaders, uh, Aaron O'Toole and Andrew Scheer basically said, whatever the liberals say,
00:26:23.320
we say it too. Please don't call us racist. Pierre Polyev is slowly and carefully finding his feet.
00:26:28.840
He's saying, well, we'll track it to home building and employment, but he's not, which, okay, that's a
00:26:34.920
baby step, but he's not saying stop it. He's not saying stop the bogus stuff. Stop the, like he's not calling
00:26:41.320
out, uh, things in the same way that Danielle Smith did. And until Harper, until the end of the Harper
00:26:47.960
era, through Christian, through Martin, you know, so for what, however many years of liberalness that,
00:26:55.160
that was, um, uh, back through Mulroney, basically our immigration were decisions were based on economic
00:27:03.400
need. Right. If the country had an economic need for what you possess, the skills you possess, the
00:27:09.080
entrepreneurial, uh, smarts that you had, uh, the trade, whatever it was, we were happy to let
00:27:15.720
you in because it was a win-win. We needed those skills. You wanted to come to Canada, but that all
00:27:22.920
had that connection with the economic side of things has gone out the window under the liberal.
00:27:28.120
You know, it's true. And I'm glad Pierre Polyev is slowly finding his courage, but I think he's so
00:27:35.320
terrified of the traditional liberal media weapon against conservatives, your racism that he, that's,
00:27:41.320
I think that's the only reason holding him back. And I, and I think that that, that, that weapon
00:27:46.600
has been disarmed a bit. I think in, in some ways now, if the Toronto Star editorializes that you are a
00:27:55.800
racist because you don't want to have, uh, you know, 700,000 foreign students in the country.
00:28:01.320
Yeah. A lot of people who are reading are going to say, I agree with that. I don't think you're
00:28:05.720
racist. I just think that that's smart. And, and yeah, like for instance, on my own case,
00:28:11.960
I have, I was reluctant to go too hard on the subject of immigration until it became a mathematical
00:28:20.040
issue. I am not against immigration. I'm not against immigrants from any particular area of the,
00:28:25.320
of the world. I don't have a lot of strong feelings about family reunification, for instance,
00:28:32.600
as long as economically you're viable, but the math now just simply does not work. It just doesn't.
00:28:42.600
And so I think we're getting to that realization among the population where, you know, we understand
00:28:48.520
now that one and a half or 2 million new people a year is unsustainable. I, I, and I think it's
00:28:55.320
really, really funny because of course the people who are the, the most, uh, adamant about maintaining
00:29:01.480
these high numbers are the very people who think that, well, our current use of fossil fuels is
00:29:10.520
We're not big on sustainability when it comes to the population or the economy. There's so much
00:29:18.920
inconsistency among progressives and the left in the country, whether they're media or politicians
00:29:24.920
or advocates, uh, that it's, I, some days I just wake up and I wonder, am I bashing my head against
00:29:30.680
the wall? You know, the other day I came across a podcast, I think it was called Toronto Tings,
00:29:35.960
sort of spoken in a Jamaican accent and sort of Caribbean Torontonians. And they were just
00:29:40.520
flabbergasted with the immigration numbers. When, when Caribbean Torontonians who have been here for
00:29:47.480
20 or 30 years, but still have a bit of that Caribbean accent, when they're saying,
00:29:51.080
this is crazy, please stop, you know, it's safe to come out. But I think there's some politicians
00:29:56.200
in shell shock. I saw this just the other day, my friend, Steve Edgington interviewed Nigel Farage,
00:30:01.160
the head of the UK Reform Party that was elected really on stopping the migrant boats.
00:30:06.600
Their Roxham Road is basically a flotilla of dinghies coming across every day.
00:30:11.080
And Steve said, are you for mass deportations? Um, I think Tony Blair at his height was deporting
00:30:16.920
55,000 a year. Here's Nigel Farage saying, no, I'm not going to try and take that one on. Here's a
00:30:23.880
quick clip of that. It's a political impossibility to deport hundreds of thousands of people. We simply
00:30:29.400
can't do it. At the moment, it's a political impossibility. But is it your ambition? No.
00:30:37.080
I'm not going to get dragged down the route of mass deportations or anything like that.
00:30:41.720
Yeah, I mean, people are always going to come and go. And we are a country that's engaged in
00:30:45.720
international trade. And we have relationships around the world through the Commonwealth, etc.
00:30:51.480
Um, but yeah, we have to aim at a balanced migration policy. But net zero still means hundreds
00:30:58.120
of thousands of people coming into Britain, immigrants coming into Britain. Isn't that too
00:31:02.360
many? I know it may well be, but we have to start somewhere.
00:31:05.800
As Trump says in America that he wants mass deportations, we're talking about hundreds
00:31:09.160
of thousands of illegal immigrants are in Britain at the moment. Some estimates say the number could
00:31:13.320
even be in, you know, a million plus. So do you support deporting all of those people?
00:31:17.560
It's impossible to do. Literally impossible to do.
00:31:20.600
If Nigel Farage himself is so terrified of being called far right that he's abandoned the idea of
00:31:26.520
deportations, you can see how scary it is. But I'm glad to see that the conservative
00:31:31.240
party is fielding Jamil Giovanni, who's one of their newly elected MPs. And he's a visible minority
00:31:39.000
himself. So I think that the conservatives are leaning into it. Here's a quick clip of Jamil Giovanni.
00:31:44.520
Maybe he doesn't have to be so worried about being called a racist, being a black man himself.
00:31:48.840
Take a look. I rise in the House today to oppose Bill C-71. And I do so wanting to recognize the
00:31:57.720
context that our country finds itself in right now. We have too high immigration levels. We are now
00:32:06.440
approaching an average of 1.5 million people coming into the country per year. And the reason we know
00:32:13.320
that's too high is because population growth is now outpacing the job market. It's outpacing the housing
00:32:21.480
market. It's also outpacing investment in social services like hospitals, schools and child care
00:32:28.920
facilities. The quality of life for the average Canadian is in decline because of the stress being
00:32:35.960
placed on our local economies and on public services. Well, look, I think this is good news.
00:32:42.680
I wish it happened years ago. Frankly, I wish it happened under Stephen Harper. I am motivated,
00:32:48.760
I think, more by cultural issues than you are, Lauren, because I look at these Hamas hate marches
00:32:54.040
in Toronto and Montreal and other places. And I see that it's 90 percent newcomers. It's about 10 percent
00:33:01.160
woke university kids that maybe you'll grow out of it, just like they have maybe a lesbian phase
00:33:06.440
when they're on campus that they grow out of. They'll have a Palestinian phase where they grow out
00:33:10.600
of. But I'm talking about people who come here from endemically anti-Semitic places. They're not
00:33:16.920
going to grow out of it. They were never screened for it. They never were told it was wrong. The people
00:33:23.000
I see leading the Hamas marches with masks and with violence and uttering threats and mischief and
00:33:28.760
trespass. I'm not talking about hate crimes. I'm talking about real crimes. They are overwhelmingly
00:33:33.480
new Canadians. And we did not do a values test. So I'm much more motivated by that because I'm
00:33:39.960
alert to it because I'm Jewish. And so I see this anti-Semitic crime wave. But no matter how you get
00:33:45.880
to it, I think bringing in refugees from Gaza is insane. But that's happening right now.
00:33:54.280
Anyway, I'm very pleased to see that. And doubly insane without screening them.
00:34:00.040
So the NDP caucus and members of the Liberal caucus are aghast at the idea that Global Affairs
00:34:06.760
Canada, or Canada Border Security Agency, will ask the Israelis if the person who's thinking of
00:34:13.880
coming to Canada has any outstanding security issues back in Gaza. Oh, how can you ask the
00:34:20.120
Israelis? Of course, they're going to hate all those people. They're not going to let anybody.
00:34:24.200
Nobody knows better, person for person, who in Gaza is a threat and who is not.
00:34:30.200
Yeah. Well, yeah. Who else are you going to ask? The Hamas administrators?
00:34:37.400
Yeah, that's right. Here's one last clip of Mark Miller. Now, this was from a few days ago. So this
00:34:42.440
was before Danielle Smith delivered what I thought was a very persuasive remark. Here he is referring
00:34:48.600
to refugees and migrants almost as a punishment, as a weapon. And if you don't take your fair share,
00:34:54.760
we'll put them in your province no matter what. We'll just buy a hotel and plunk them down. We'll
00:35:03.240
But we've never said anything of this sort. Well, look, right now we could open up a hotel
00:35:07.880
in any particular province and ship people there. That's an option. We have been moving
00:35:12.680
people around to relieve pressure from Ontario and Quebec. That's not a financially viable model.
00:35:18.040
It's not an effective model. But it's one that needs some reform in order to make sure the
00:35:23.560
provinces are stepping up. Looking at what their labor force needs are, what the capacity is to help
00:35:29.400
some of these folks as they wait, the determination of their protected person status. And it's one
00:35:34.440
where we actually need coordination with provinces. Most of the provinces are at the table talking to
00:35:38.920
us about what these models would be. It's far from being complete. But again, there's only so far
00:35:46.600
the federal government can actually be nice and say, please, please. We also have levers that we need to
00:35:51.800
pull and push. And provinces do get the benefit from immigration. So it's something that we need to deal
00:35:57.800
with in a responsible fashion. And we expect every single province to be responsible.
00:36:01.320
Well, there he is. He's toned down a little bit since I was like, I tell you, this Mark Miller,
00:36:06.120
he would not be in cabinet were he not part of Justin Trudeau's wedding party. He's like,
00:36:10.360
Exactly. It was a dumb crew. Seamus O'Regan was dumber. I'll grant you that.
00:36:14.360
Mark Miller is as smart as he is beautiful. I mean, this guy is rough. But, but he's one of the,
00:36:20.600
he's one of the last remaining palace guard who supports Justin Trudeau.
00:36:23.800
It's not like, it's not like Trudeau is a genius. Trudeau is lightweight. So he picked all sorts of
00:36:29.800
lightweights from his, his university classes, his university days and his wedding party to join
00:36:34.920
him in cabinet. I, the only, the only one I think in, in that whole group, that was the little Trudeau
00:36:39.960
cabal at McGill, who's worth their weight is probably Dominic LeBlanc.
00:36:46.680
Yeah. But he, he himself could be a serious cabinet minister in a more serious prime minister's
00:36:54.200
cabinet, could have been in Martin's cabinet, could have been in Christian's cabinet. You know,
00:36:58.280
he, he is a grownup, but he's one of the only ones there. And, and, you know, Miller is,
00:37:03.880
Miller is astonishing in that the constitution does not give the feds the sole say on immigration. It's a,
00:37:13.160
it is a shared responsibility between the provinces and the federal government. They cannot simply
00:37:20.440
impose a solution on the provinces, except maybe they could buy a hotel in every major city in the
00:37:29.000
country, put a fence around it and make it one of their little internment camps for asylum seekers.
00:37:37.640
I, but the, the, the very idea of doing that on both sides is repugnant and, and why they would
00:37:46.200
even think about it. I don't know. And, you know, in one of the earlier clips you showed, he said,
00:37:50.920
well, I don't know why these premiers are so upset. They have this document they think that proves we
00:37:56.920
are about to foist tens of thousands of asylum seekers on provinces who don't have them now.
00:38:03.400
That's just ridiculous. No, I saw the document. The, the Alberta guys gave me a copy of the document
00:38:09.560
they had. And he, and Miller at one point says to the reporters, well, I could give you the document
00:38:14.280
and, and it would clear things up for you. So why did he do it? He didn't do it because the document says
00:38:19.800
exactly what the Alberta and the New Brunswick and the Nova Scotia government say it says, which is, here is how
00:38:26.760
many asylum seekers we have in Canada right now. It's about 238,000. You divide that by each province's
00:38:32.520
population, Alberta gets 28,000. Nova Scotia gets 9,400. New Brunswick gets, I think it's 8,200.
00:38:39.880
It was very clear. I mean, you didn't have to be a genius to read through this document and see
00:38:44.200
exactly what they were planning and they got caught at it. And now he, oh no, no, no, no. It was never our
00:38:49.480
intention to do that. These people are politicizing. They're weaponizing this for political purposes. Oh, old
00:38:55.000
feathers. Yeah. Here's a quick clip of Mark Miller saying that, saying that the provinces are
00:38:59.640
weaponizing immigration. Here, take a look. But sadly, three particularly conservative ministers
00:39:05.720
have stood up, the premiers of Nova Scotia, of New Brunswick and Alberta, and decided to weaponize
00:39:12.200
this working group. They took a theoretical number of asylum seekers based on the last year's number of
00:39:18.600
asylum seekers, divided it up by the population as, as they would, and assumed that the federal
00:39:24.520
government would impose a number of asylum seekers on them. Let me restate, Ontario and Quebec are
00:39:29.800
doing more than their fair share and the other provinces need to step up. But there was no
00:39:34.280
point in time where anyone said that the federal government was going to impose thousands of asylum
00:39:40.840
seekers on unprepared provinces. I should probably give you the documents that they themselves leaked
00:39:45.960
because it would probably be quite helpful for your analysis. But this was a productive working
00:39:50.760
group that has been weaponized by three premiers in particular for their re-election or their
00:39:57.240
or their leadership review. And I think it's really irresponsible.
00:40:00.360
Ilona, I've been trying to study immigration around the world. I've traveled to various
00:40:04.520
countries. I met with Kurt Wilders, the anti-immigration politician who actually got the
00:40:08.920
most votes in the last Dutch election. I went to Marseille when they had race riots there.
00:40:14.760
Very interesting town, about 40 percent Muslim and no integration whatsoever. Just astonishing the
00:40:22.760
divide between ethnic French and ethnic Algerians mainly. And I've spent a little bit of time in
00:40:29.160
Ireland recently and they had this crazy policy. Lauren, if you think Canada's policy is crazy,
00:40:35.640
listen to this. They have this policy of taking migrants, but one in five Irish these days is a
00:40:42.680
newcomer. Like they've gone crazy with their immigration. But instead of putting them in
00:40:47.000
in Dublin or the big cities, they're spreading them out in small towns. But in like, here's an
00:40:51.720
example. I was in a tiny village called Dundrum, population about 200. The government booked
00:40:59.000
the whole hotel and is moving in 280 migrants, all military aged migrant men, 280 newcomers in a town of
00:41:09.560
a village of a village of 200. How? How do you cope? How do you get doctors? How do you like that?
00:41:15.160
You've just made the Irish a minority in their own town. And this is a country that fought British
00:41:21.560
plantations, as they call them, for centuries. And I've never seen such rage and anger. Just in a
00:41:27.880
residential area, they're putting 500 in an old sort of factory warehouse across from schools or kids
00:41:35.320
stuff. Like, it's almost like they're designed to irritate people. Why would you put 280 people
00:41:40.920
in a town of 200? Well, I tell you, it's exciting, Lauren. We're finally talking about this issue in
00:41:47.080
the dying days of Trudeau's tenure. Give me your quick prediction. Do you think he's going to be able
00:41:53.560
to tough it out and stick around? He lost a pretty key by-election in a very old liberal riding. Paul
00:42:00.520
Martin's old riding. David Lametti's old riding. Really safe liberal turf. They lost, you know,
00:42:06.360
there was a while it looked like they were, you know, they never really had a chance. There's a
00:42:11.880
while where the NDP was leading there. Do you think Trudeau can tough it out? Do you think there's
00:42:16.600
enough loyalty in the party to let him continue? Or maybe it's just too late. I saw Percy Brown,
00:42:23.240
Percy Downs rather, a liberal senator, writing, Trudeau should have stepped aside, but it's too late now.
00:42:29.720
No one could come in with enough time to get their legs under them before the next election.
00:42:33.800
It's a shame, but we're stuck with them. It's quite a piece for him to write.
00:42:37.640
Yeah. You know what? Do they have enough time? I think they do.
00:42:43.400
All you have to do is look at the hope among American media and American Democrats for Kamala Harris.
00:42:53.320
I mean, Kamala Harris, if she had the amount of time left that the liberals have left, which is 13 months,
00:42:58.200
right? She would be exposed as the ultra left, vacant, angry, staff bullying person that she is,
00:43:07.560
but she might just be able to squeak out for two more months. So, you know, you bring somebody new
00:43:15.720
and you bring Mark Carney in and he just, he's not Trudeau. For two months, he's not Trudeau. They call an
00:43:21.000
election, they get a win. And then you find out that he's a smug elitist who has all sorts of
00:43:27.320
conflicts of interest. And, and, you know, I, he probably isn't any better than Trudeau.
00:43:32.440
But anyway, I, do I think Trudeau will tough it out? Yes. Until spring. I can't say beyond that.
00:43:41.160
He's going to make deals. There's a confidence motion coming up for a vote next week in the
00:43:46.920
House of Commons. And the conservatives have brilliantly made this as simple as possible.
00:43:52.040
The House has no confidence in the prime minister or the government, period. It's not about the carbon
00:43:58.440
tax. It's not about any issue. It simply says the House has no confidence. And Jagmeet Singh for
00:44:03.800
three weeks now has been saying Trudeau is done. I have no confidence left and blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:44:08.920
But he's going to find a way to vote for the liberals. And, and I'm told that the way they're
00:44:14.760
going to go with this is the Pharmacare bill is stuck in the Senate. And if you were to suddenly call
00:44:21.800
an election, the Pharmacare bill would die. And so the NDP are going to say, well, until at least the
00:44:28.120
Pharmacare bill is passed because it's so vitally important to Canadians, uh, we have to keep this
00:44:34.200
government in power. And so we're going to vote against the confidence motion by the conservatives.
00:44:38.600
And he's got it. Trudeau is going to find some way to get the block to do that for him every
00:44:42.600
once in a while, get the NDP to do it for him every once in a while. And I think they'll limp
00:44:46.840
through until spring sometime. And then it's just going to be too exhausting and they'll have to let
00:44:53.000
it go. I think you're right. Well, great to see you. Thanks for spending so much time with us today.
00:44:57.320
You bet. All right. There you have Lauren Gunter, a senior columnist
00:45:01.400
for the Edmonton Sun. Stay with us. Your letters to me next.
00:45:17.480
Hey, welcome back. Your letters to me. Someone nicknamed water bottle says at this point is no
00:45:22.680
longer a question if the liberal party will be out of power with the next election. The question is
00:45:26.920
exactly how far will the party be decimated in terms of amount of seats? I think you're right.
00:45:32.840
Um, I showed you that David Coletto abacus poll that showed how firmly people were voting for
00:45:40.920
Pierre Pauliev. They just were not movable. They weren't even listening to Trudeau except out of
00:45:45.960
disgust. You never know what can happen. I mean, God forbid, may it never happen here. Look what
00:45:51.720
has happened twice to Donald Trump in the last month. Two assassination attempts. May it never
00:45:55.880
happen. God forbid. But I guess what I'm saying is you never know what's going to happen in the course
00:46:00.760
of the next year. Um, that's the most dramatic possibility, but something else could happen.
00:46:06.360
Uh, I think what's going to be interesting and what I hope Pierre Pauliev does if he wins is to have a
00:46:13.480
proper audit and accounting of all the corruption that happened over the last nine years. And I think
00:46:18.920
frankly, that's something Donald Trump could have done in the United States, all the crooked deals and
00:46:24.120
payoffs and commissions. And frankly, the Jeffrey Epstein stuff, I think Donald Trump could have shone a
00:46:30.200
light on a lot of that bad behavior and it would have exposed, frankly, some of his perpetual enemies.
00:46:36.040
Um, it's not just about vengeance. It's about truth and reconciliation, to coin a phrase,
00:46:40.360
to know what was happening and to stop it from happening again. So I think that a lot of that has
00:46:44.920
to happen in Canada if Pauliev wins. H. Chow said, if I were Trudeau, I would consider abandoning the
00:46:51.400
sinking ship of the Liberal Party and join the block or NDP to continue ruling Canada.
00:46:56.680
I think Trudeau is the problem. And he has such a weak team around him. As Lauren and I discussed,
00:47:02.760
he really hired his wedding party and they weren't the sharpest knives in the drawer. And don't tell me
00:47:08.120
Chrystia Freeland is that bright. I just don't believe you. Robin Breesbois says,
00:47:13.080
not really progress. Montreal traded socialism for a more extreme version of socialism.
00:47:18.600
I accept what you're saying. I mean, the Bloc Québécois, the NDP, the Liberals, they were all
00:47:23.080
atrocious candidates. I suppose, though, having the block win there is a more significant rebuke
00:47:29.320
to Trudeau. And they are sort of the natural opposition in Quebec. If we don't want Trudeau to
00:47:35.320
win seats, that's going to surely mean the block will win some, given the block has no chance to form
00:47:40.760
government. Frankly, I'm not too concerned. That's the show for today. Until tomorrow,
00:47:46.840
on behalf of all of us at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night
00:48:03.400
It's the news event of the year. Canada's most controversial premier sits down with Canada's
00:48:10.920
most controversial journalist. And everything is on the table. Come watch Ezra Levant one-on-one
00:48:16.920
with Alberta premier Danielle Smith in front of a live studio audience in Calgary. Nothing's
00:48:22.680
off limits. Nothing's held back. Questions that would make Justin Trudeau invoke martial law. Answers
00:48:29.240
that will make Stephen Gilboa pee his pants. You're not going to want to miss this one. But you have
00:48:35.160
to be there in person at the Rebel News Live mega conference in Calgary on October the 5th. Tickets
00:48:42.120
are limited, so drop everything and go to rebelnewslive.com right now. Special discounted prices for Patriots and
00:48:49.640
special extra high prices if you're with the CBC. Go to rebelnewslive.com now.