Rebel News Podcast - November 21, 2025


EZRA LEVANT ｜ Carney's buzzword economics proves he doesn’t have a clue


Episode Stats

Length

48 minutes

Words per Minute

160.89226

Word Count

7,749

Sentence Count

560

Misogynist Sentences

6

Hate Speech Sentences

12


Summary

Is it possible that Mark Carney doesn t know anything about economics? Ezra Levenant takes a look at what it means when the Bank of Canada's chief economist says things like " catalyze the industry" and "generate generational and transformative investments."


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hello, my friends. Should Canada buy the F-35 jet from America, or should we buy the Saab
00:00:05.960 Gripen? That's a jet made by Sweden. Did you know they made a fighter jet? They say it's the best in
00:00:12.060 the world. That's their opinion. I'll take you through some of the pros and cons of it. But
00:00:16.900 first, let me invite you to get what we call Rebel News Plus. It's the video version of this podcast.
00:00:21.400 Just go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe. It's eight bucks a month, which might not sound
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00:00:29.480 because we don't get any government money, and it shows.
00:00:47.820 Tonight, is it possible that Mark Carney doesn't know anything about economics?
00:00:52.820 It's November 21st, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.
00:00:55.480 Shame on you, you censorious bug.
00:01:10.760 Mark Carney doesn't just have one economics degree. He has several from Harvard and Oxford.
00:01:18.080 I can't think of a finer education. And then, of course, off to Goldman Sachs, and then the Bank of
00:01:23.920 Canada and the Bank of England. It would almost be absurd to say he doesn't know economics. But
00:01:29.780 maybe that's not precisely the problem. Maybe a more accurate phrasing is he's a theoretician
00:01:37.540 who can recite theories and philosophies, but he's never actually practiced economics by
00:01:45.040 building the economy, by running a business, by being an entrepreneur, by participating in
00:01:50.080 capitalism, by hiring people, by taking risks. He's always been a voyeur, watching from the
00:01:56.440 outside, giving his opinions, but never actually being the man in the arena. You can see little
00:02:03.200 quirks like his overuse of phrases like catalyze the industry and generational and transformative
00:02:10.400 investments. Those are weird phrases that you hear at places like a TED Talk or the World Economic
00:02:16.300 Forum or the U.N. or maybe the Bank of England, but I've never in my entire life heard an actual
00:02:21.600 businessman talk like that. Real business people, and I'm talking, you can even be the owner of the
00:02:27.240 local convenience store in your neighborhood. They would say things like taxes are too high,
00:02:31.860 or I have too much government paperwork, or it's hard to compete with online retailers,
00:02:36.560 or the weak Canadian dollar makes it hard to travel, or crime is forcing us to close some of our
00:02:42.240 locations, or if we don't hire foreign migrant workers, we can't compete with the companies
00:02:48.180 that do, or China is dumping cheap goods in our market below cost. That's what real businessmen
00:02:54.140 sound like if you ask them about things. Carney never talks that plainly, does he? He invents
00:03:00.940 things that sound cool, but literally make no sense, or are politics pretending to be economics,
00:03:07.460 like this little speech. Today is not just about what we build, it's also about how we build.
00:03:14.460 We're building sustainably, in each case reducing emissions and investing in a clean energy future.
00:03:21.940 Our energy and critical minerals projects are amongst the lowest carbon in the world, and moreover,
00:03:27.540 they unlock major investments in sustainable growth for generations to come. Secondly, we're building
00:03:35.720 in solidarity with Canadian workers, creating hundreds of thousands of high-paying union jobs.
00:03:43.020 And we are always building in partnership with Indigenous peoples to ensure meaningful Indigenous
00:03:49.180 ownership and major economic benefits, while promoting the conservation of our natural heritage
00:03:56.120 for future generations.
00:03:58.200 No real company says, I want to spend extra money reducing the carbon in my company. There's no
00:04:05.300 economic upside to that, unless there's some fake government program subsidizing that. I'm not
00:04:10.600 necessarily against unions, but typically when the government is involved, that means paying a
00:04:15.780 premium for labor, really to buy ideological allies. And the Indigenous thing, I mean, unfortunately in
00:04:21.700 2025, that probably means giving Indian bands a veto over your business, or even giving up title of your
00:04:27.400 land, which is happening in BC. At least those comments I just played for you are decipherable,
00:04:33.220 though. Sometimes it's just buzzwords that I swear he doesn't even know what he's saying.
00:04:38.300 I'm going to start with something the Secretary General said yesterday, which is that
00:04:42.980 multipolarity without multilateralism can lead to chaos. It certainly cannot achieve the sustainable
00:04:49.780 development goals. And I'm very encouraged by the spirit of the interventions and the spirit of this
00:04:54.020 initiative, Secretary General, and Dhiramina, to bring back multilateralism to these financing issues.
00:05:01.480 First thing we need is to recognize that we need to use scarce dollars to the maximum effect.
00:05:08.100 This isn't just about bigger volumes. It's about using scarce public dollars to maximum effect.
00:05:13.200 And that is catalyzing financial instruments using risk mitigation tools to better allocate risk
00:05:20.380 between the public and private sector. I will just refer for speed to the agenda of the private sector
00:05:25.860 investment lab and what the World Bank has been doing on risk management. The second point is crowding in
00:05:31.020 institutional capital through originate to distribute models. There's a lot of words there. What it basically
00:05:36.820 means is recycling the balance sheets of our international financial institutions. So they are
00:05:42.840 there catalyzing the new lending. Once it matures, it's parked off to other holders that can hold it for
00:05:50.080 the long term. And it's all about action, new action at the MDB. No idea. That's the kind of thing
00:05:57.520 that gets polite applause from other bankers at a conference in Davos. But no real businessman says,
00:06:04.480 yes, I want to take real money and build a factory in Canada because of those ideas. This is
00:06:11.500 a new scheme by Mark Carney. He wants to add, he's invented it, a major projects office. But it's just
00:06:20.240 another layer of red tape. There's no magic in it. We don't actually know what it involves. We don't
00:06:25.160 actually know what the criteria are, who is making the decisions and how, what the new and additional
00:06:30.540 rules are. It's, it's not cutting red tape. It's adding more of it and adding mystery and adding
00:06:35.580 politics. That doesn't work. Didn't work for Stalin or Mao and for the socialists in Europe.
00:06:42.100 So I can work here in Canada, especially now that we're competing with Donald Trump, who's trying to
00:06:46.540 sop up investments from everywhere, including pulling our own factories down there. Trump is
00:06:52.200 using a carrot and a stick, the carrot of lower taxes, the carrot of access to the world's biggest
00:06:58.860 market, new trade deals, a booming economy, cheap energy, high tech. We're competing against that
00:07:05.760 with, with what, a new political office where very smart guys will decide which business projects live
00:07:12.200 and which ones die. If you're good friends with the liberals, maybe, but, but look at this from just
00:07:17.920 yesterday, just a huge story in its own way. Nutrien, that's a fertilizer company, rules out
00:07:25.640 Canada for new export terminal, chooses U.S. site. Let me read a little bit. Canadian fertilizer and
00:07:32.980 agricultural giant Nutrien Limited has selected Longview, Washington for its new export terminal
00:07:39.240 worth up to a billion dollars, a blow to the Carney government after it promised to attract
00:07:43.400 sizable investments in the mining and resources sector. The Washington terminal will export the
00:07:48.460 critical mineral potash to fast-growing markets in the Indo-Pacific, including China, India, and Japan.
00:07:54.480 Saskatoon-based Nutrien is the largest global producer of potash, one of three key fertilizers
00:07:59.600 used in major agricultural operations alongside nitrogen and phosphate. The Washington terminal will
00:08:05.900 have a total capacity of five to six million tons, and the company expects to finalize the investment
00:08:10.920 decision in 2027 and complete construction by 2031. The major investment plan first announced in May
00:08:18.820 was seen as an early test for Prime Minister Mark Carney's government, which has promised to streamline
00:08:23.640 regulations and approvals and get Canada back to building big projects, especially when it comes
00:08:28.240 to critical minerals like potash. So this is a Canadian company in Saskatchewan. They literally chose to
00:08:37.260 go further away into a foreign country, build the port to export Canadian products in America.
00:08:45.840 Here's my favorite line from the story. Nutrien didn't, however, consider nationality or politics
00:08:50.500 when deciding on the location, said Chief Commercial Officer Chris Reynolds in an interview with the Globe
00:08:55.700 and Mail. The decision came down to economics. Now that could be true. But if it's true, it's pretty sad
00:09:02.840 that going further into another country is more economical. It could be. I'm able to believe
00:09:10.820 that's plausible. But I'm guessing there is also an issue about, I don't know, indigenous legal
00:09:16.500 activism. If you're talking about a port in Vancouver, who owns it? Tanker or freighter bans.
00:09:22.980 The federal government has banned tankers. It's not too big a leap about banning freighters. I mean,
00:09:27.760 that's exactly what's going on against oil exporters. Is it too hard to imagine the same war against
00:09:34.100 potash exporters? Let me ask you, if you had to put aside your politics and just make a decision on
00:09:42.360 your life savings, would you invest in a Canadian port under Mark Carney's rules or an American port
00:09:48.660 under Donald Trump's rules? You know, it got me thinking a bit about Carney's latest trip. He really
00:09:53.780 does spend half his time outside of Canada. I guess he loves to travel. He always did when he worked for
00:10:00.380 the UN and the World Economic Forum. He loved meeting foreign big shots in new places. I can see why. I
00:10:06.420 can see the appeal. Lots of variety. Always an adventure. Easier and more fun than running a country
00:10:12.140 with humdrum problems like, I don't know, Hamas violence in our streets and the imploding health care
00:10:17.460 system, out of control immigration, inflation, de facto recession, housing prices. Boring.
00:10:23.780 Remember, he actually said that the other day. He was asked about pipelines and he blurted out,
00:10:28.580 that's boring. Remember that?
00:10:30.340 Is this pipeline going to come? So boring.
00:10:33.900 It's not actually for a big part of the country.
00:10:35.380 It is. It is. No, but it is. It is because it's, look, it's, don't worry, we're on it. We're on it.
00:10:40.240 Like we're on it. But there is this whole world. Okay, hands up. Who's working on the pipeline in this
00:10:45.900 room? Okay.
00:10:48.140 Isn't that a problem?
00:10:48.960 No, no, no, no. Look at all the variety. Like, Nav, like, does your, like, it's, we have.
00:10:59.260 Yeah, if there's more prosperity, they'll get more cell phone, cell phone services.
00:11:03.600 But look, look, okay. So what's going to drive, one of the things with, yeah, don't worry. We're on
00:11:08.840 the, we're on the pipeline stuff. Danielle's on line one. Don't worry. It's going to happen.
00:11:12.260 But, well, something's going to happen. Let's put it that way. Um, I mean, who wouldn't want to hang
00:11:18.020 out in Abu Dhabi instead? By the way, they don't think pipelines are boring. So he was over there,
00:11:24.620 he says, doing business. I mean, could be. His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nayan and I
00:11:32.360 are ready to capitalize on the massive economic opportunities between Canada and the UAE.
00:11:37.620 With a new investment protection agreement and the launch of free trade negotiations will create
00:11:41.840 more opportunities for workers, businesses, and investors. Nothing specific. No businessman
00:11:47.460 talks this way. We'll catalyze a new arrangement and capitalize or whatever. This is what someone
00:11:53.800 says when they need to pad things a bit. Make nothing into something. Reminds me of when I was in
00:11:58.320 college and I had to, you know, double space things and use really big print to get the length that I
00:12:04.740 needed for an essay assignment. He's got that weird British spelling thing. Again,
00:12:09.280 he spelled capitalized with an S instead of a Z. That's the British way of spelling. I think
00:12:14.580 that his communications are being run out of the United Kingdom. There's no other explanation that I
00:12:19.580 can imagine. I mean, he lived in the UK for a long time. He, as far as I know, still has his home
00:12:24.900 there. I think he's got a British team working for him. But back to the substance, he says he's
00:12:30.800 negotiating an investment protection agreement with the United Arab Emirates. Now, what's that?
00:12:35.240 It's not a free trade agreement. That's sometimes called an FTA, free trade agreement, like NAFTA.
00:12:41.700 He's talking about a foreign investment promotion and protection agreement. That's usually called a
00:12:46.280 FIPA. And it's usually used in a place where politics are iffy and the rule of law is up in the
00:12:52.360 air and you need a special treaty so that people who invest in a country with wobbly rule of law and
00:12:57.760 unreliable courts, they have some extra protection if they get swindled. I mean, you can see a list
00:13:03.780 of Canada's FIPA agreements. There's dozens of them. And they're usually with third world governments
00:13:09.500 that don't have reliable courts. So if a Canadian company invests in, say, China or Cameroon, I'm
00:13:16.280 just picking a few, the FIPA agreement gives them extra legal protection than if they just went into
00:13:21.520 those wild regimes on their own. So why do we need a FIPA here? I suppose it's theoretically possible
00:13:28.740 that an investor from the United Arab Emirates would want some political security before investing
00:13:33.060 in Canada to make sure they weren't screwed over by environmental extremism like the last three
00:13:37.320 pipelines were. But I think it's actually probably more likely so that Canadians can invest in the
00:13:43.460 United Arab Emirates because they're not a liberal democracy like we are. They're not independent
00:13:48.780 courts and laws like we are. In other words, unless Carney is pretty much admitting that we no longer
00:13:54.840 have the rule of law in Canada, I don't think that's what he's saying. This deal that he says
00:13:59.560 he's negotiating suggests that Canadians would be investing in the United Arab Emirates, not the
00:14:06.560 other way around. So Canadian money is going to go to the United Arab Emirates. That's why they need
00:14:11.320 this investment protection agreement. Hang on, is that what he went over there for? It's like he's
00:14:19.440 still working for Brookfield Asset Management or something, taking Canadian money and investing it
00:14:24.900 in other countries. I think maybe he's forgotten his job, which is to work for Canada to get investments
00:14:31.160 here, not for other countries. And it's been on my mind since I've been watching the full court press
00:14:36.600 to get Canada to buy new fighter jets from Sweden instead of from the United States. Now, Sweden has
00:14:43.140 been neutral until just the last year when it joined NATO. And as a neutral country, one of its policies
00:14:49.840 was to build its own weapon systems. And so Saab, which is better known for making cars, they also make
00:14:57.680 fighter jets, which is pretty cool. We don't do that in Canada, do we? And one of their planes is the Saab
00:15:04.260 Gripen. I'm not saying it the right Swedish way. It's a pretty cool jet, no doubt about it.
00:15:17.300 Gripen is always ready to participate in any mission, anywhere around the world. Maximum time
00:15:24.320 in the air is essential for any air force. And Gripen's smart design delivers high availability
00:15:29.680 with minimal effort, making it a true mission-enabled.
00:15:40.900 While refueling on the ground, the pilot can keep the engine running. The capability, which is called
00:15:47.000 hot refueling, saves time where it matters most, to keep the downtime to a minimum and allow a quick
00:15:53.680 relaunch for the next sortie. Gripen, ready for any mission, anywhere.
00:16:02.560 The Saab Gripen was first flown in the 1980s, though. So it's sort of on par with Canada's CF-18 jets,
00:16:10.960 a little bit more modern, to be candid. And Sweden sells them around the world to their credit. Good for
00:16:15.760 them. They sell them to places like Brazil and South Africa and Thailand. The United Kingdom has a few that
00:16:22.240 they operate as training jets, but they're not really used by any countries in the world that are on the
00:16:27.760 front lines of a serious battle. Like Israel doesn't have them and, you know, Taiwan doesn't have them.
00:16:38.080 The front line jet, that would be the US built F-35. It's 20 years newer than the Saab Gripen and
00:16:45.360 there's a lot more advanced technology, including stealth. F-35s are what Israel has been replacing its
00:16:51.360 older jets with. And they had amazing success in recent wars, including the 12-day war against Iran.
00:16:57.920 So Canada signed a deal two years ago, Justin Trudeau signed it, to buy F-35s from America. 88 in total,
00:17:05.920 with the first jets arriving next year, actually. But as part of the trade dispute with the United
00:17:11.920 States, Mark Carney and his cabinet have said they're rethinking that deal. They signed the deal,
00:17:17.440 but now they're rethinking it. And they might go with the Saab Gripen instead. I mean, it's cheaper,
00:17:23.440 for one thing, but mainly it's not American, which I think is their point. Now, I'd be careful about
00:17:29.360 breaking a signed deal with a major US strategic company, especially given how much Canada has flip
00:17:34.880 flopped on replacing our jets so far and how reliant we are on the US. You might remember a story about a
00:17:41.840 month ago where a US-based aircraft was sent over Vancouver when there was a plane that they thought
00:17:49.840 was maybe a terrorist plane. No jet from Canada was ready for it. Same thing with that Chinese hot air
00:17:56.960 balloon. It was American jets. We have our defense provided by the United States. You knew that. But
00:18:04.240 imagine if we didn't buy the F-35s. Now, I just don't think that's what you do if you want your
00:18:11.360 trade talks to succeed. You don't rip up a multi-billion dollar contract that you already signed.
00:18:15.920 But look, it's been a full court press. I don't know if you saw the Swedish royal family came
00:18:20.320 to Canada for a visit. And so did a bunch of Swedish politicians. Here's a senior Swedish politician,
00:18:27.040 Ebba Bush, writing in a tweet that the Gripen is the best fighter jet in the world. And if we dump
00:18:33.600 the American deal and buy the Gripen instead, they'd give thousands of jobs to Canada.
00:18:39.120 The short answer is yes. Sweden is open for business. And I mean,
00:18:43.200 Jos Gripen is probably the best fighter jet in the world. And I think we are prepared to increase
00:18:52.240 that production. And I mean, Prime Minister Carney has made it very clear and me speaking to Minister
00:18:58.400 Jolie as well. And that would also then entail job opportunities here in Canada, working for Canada
00:19:05.840 in the interest of the Canadians. But of course, it would be a great opportunity for the strategic
00:19:11.840 partnership to go from paper to action between Sweden and Canada.
00:19:17.280 Really? Thousands of jobs? CTV reported on the same thing. And they said that if the Gripen were
00:19:22.080 actually to be produced in Canada, that would take about five years to get the first one to build
00:19:28.480 the factories and to get them up to spec. Five more years. Now, the F-35s are starting to arrive
00:19:35.520 in 2026, which is just a month and a half away. I'm pretty skeptical that either the United States
00:19:39.760 or Swedish jets will be made in Canada, though there will be obviously some local jobs, including
00:19:44.480 maintenance, whichever is bought. But again,
00:19:46.880 where's the foreign investments in Canada? Where are the foreign dollars coming here as opposed
00:19:53.360 to us buying things from other countries? Carney was just in Korea a week ago or two,
00:19:59.680 promising them billions of dollars to buy their submarines. I get it. I'm a believer in building
00:20:06.320 up our military, but how does taking Canadian dollars from Canadian taxpayers to give to foreign fighter
00:20:12.480 jet makers and foreign submarine makers? How does that create jobs here? I mean,
00:20:17.600 I guess on the maintenance side and some crews for the submarines, but I just thought that this was
00:20:24.080 the guy who was going to give us all these investments and jobs. I mean, check out this weirdness.
00:20:30.720 Just out of the blue, a week after the budget, a half billion dollars from Canada as a gift
00:20:36.800 to the European space agency. We're not in Europe. Why are you, why are you giving them free money from
00:20:45.440 us? I mean, why can't the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, why can't all those rich countries
00:20:52.480 pay for their own space agency? I don't understand it. I don't understand. I honestly don't know what
00:20:58.480 kind of economic plan you would call all this. I say again, on paper, Mark Carney should be the
00:21:03.360 smartest guy in the room, but maybe that's the problem. Maybe he thinks he's the smartest guy
00:21:07.360 in the room. So he thinks he doesn't have to listen to anyone else, including anyone who's actually run
00:21:12.160 a business, run a company, not just run his mouth. You know, just over the last couple of days, the Saudi
00:21:20.000 royal family, the crown prince visited the white house while the Swedish royal family were here.
00:21:26.480 And the Saudi royal prince Mohammed bin Salman, he announced he was going to be bringing
00:21:33.920 an investment to the United States. He had originally said 600 billion dollars, but he announced he was
00:21:40.400 going to increase that to a trillion dollars. But thank you very much. Well, thank you, Mr. President.
00:21:48.320 President, this relation has been in relation for about nine decades, and we've been working together
00:21:53.760 for a long time. But today, it's a very important time in our history because there's also a lot of
00:22:01.520 things that we're working on in the future. We believe in the future of the United States of America.
00:22:06.560 We believe what you're doing, Mr. President, is really creating a lot of good things and good
00:22:11.360 foundation to create more economical growth, more business in America. And it will also your work
00:22:16.880 for the world peace. I believe, Mr. President, in the — today and tomorrow, we're going to
00:22:22.960 announce that we are going to increase that — that 600 billion to almost $1 trillion of investment — real
00:22:28.640 investment and real opportunity by details in many areas. And the agreement that we are signing
00:22:34.000 today in many areas — in technology, in AI, in air materials, magnets, et cetera — that will create
00:22:41.920 a lot of investment opportunities for our countries.
00:22:43.520 So you are doing that now? You're saying to me now that the 600 billion will be $1 trillion?
00:22:49.040 Definitely, because what we are signing, it will facilitate that.
00:22:51.440 And we will look on it.
00:22:53.280 I like that very much.
00:22:58.480 No, that's great. I appreciate that. That's great. It's — no, we're doing numbers that nobody's ever done.
00:23:03.280 A trillion dollars from Saudi Arabia into America. And Mark Carney is tootling around the Gulf,
00:23:12.720 announcing, what, a FIPA agreement for if we want to invest in the United Arab Emirates.
00:23:19.200 Whatever Mark Carney is doing, whatever he calls us, it's not working.
00:23:23.440 When was the last time you saw a foreign company put billions, let alone a trillion, into Canada?
00:23:28.400 Canadian companies are finding ways to get their money out of Canada, like that new port.
00:23:33.840 Foreign companies are happy to take our money and throw us a bone. I mean, F-35, grip and whatever.
00:23:38.400 But I don't know if it makes any sense. I checked, by the way, Canada's annual exports to Sweden
00:23:44.400 are about $2 billion. And our annual exports to the United Arab Emirates are about the same.
00:23:49.600 Now, that's not nothing. But it's close to nothing. When you compare with our annual exports to the
00:23:55.200 United States, which are about a hundred times bigger than Sweden and UAE combined. You're not
00:24:01.200 going to be able to offset our failure to get a trade deal with the United States. But the weird thing is,
00:24:07.360 it looks like we're not even trying to get that trade deal. I'm actually really worried. Is it
00:24:12.640 possible that we have a prime minister who, despite his academic credentials,
00:24:15.680 is actually worse at building the economy than Justin Trudeau ever was? Stay with us for more.
00:24:31.520 Our government is introducing Bill 9, the Protecting Alberta's Children Statutes Amendment Act. Bill 9 will
00:24:39.120 invoke the Canadian Charter's notwithstanding clause to amend and uphold three critical pieces of legislation
00:24:45.600 without further court delay or uncertainty. The Health Statutes Amendment Act 2024, the Education
00:24:51.280 Amendment Act 2024, and the Fairness and Safety and Support Act 2024. The notwithstanding clause will
00:24:56.960 apply to the following pieces of legislation. Bill 26, the Health Statute Amendment Act 2024 prohibits
00:25:03.040 both gender reassignment surgery for children under 18 and the provision of puberty blockers and hormone
00:25:08.720 replacement treatments for the purpose of gender reassignment to children under 16. Bill 27,
00:25:14.080 the Education Amendment Act 2024 requires schools to obtain parental consent when a student under 16
00:25:20.240 years of age wishes to change his or her name or pronouns for reasons related to the student's gender
00:25:26.960 identity and requires parental opt-in to, pardon me, and requires parental opt-in consent to teaching on gender
00:25:35.840 identity, sexual orientation, or human sexuality. Bill 29, the Fairness and Safety and Support Act,
00:25:42.800 requires the governing bodies of amateur competitive sports in Alberta to implement policies that limit
00:25:48.800 participation in women's and girls sports to those who were born female. Welcome back everybody. You
00:25:53.440 know the Alberta political party called the United Conservative Party, that's basically the merged right of
00:25:59.440 center party that Danielle Smith leads, they are having their annual general meeting in just over a week. Rebel News will be there in a big way. We think that Danielle Smith is an interesting
00:26:09.760 newsmaker and perhaps the most effective of all the provincial premiers, not only in championing Alberta causes, but trying to get Canada some action in the United States, while Doug Ford of Ontario drops stink bombs like his 75 million dollar attack ad during the US election. Yeah, that didn't really work out, did it?
00:26:33.760 Danielle Smith is trying to woo our southern neighbor, we'll see how that goes. But she is doing other things like invoking the notwithstanding clause of the Constitution to protect her bills from what she is certain will be legal attacks by activist lawyers and judges who don't share her views. Joining us now to talk about this is our friend Lauren Gunter, who wrote an article just today entitled,
00:26:57.760 Smith Government's Government's Government's Use of Notwithstanding Clause is Within the Spirit of the Charter. And that's in the Edmonton Journal. Lauren, great to see you again. Thanks for joining us.
00:27:06.760 Yeah, you're welcome. Thanks. Good to see you.
00:27:08.760 You know what, I'm excited about Alberta. I'm from there originally, and it was always a laboratory for ideas. Ralph Klein was from there, Stephen Harper, Preston Manning. I think Daniel Smith...
00:27:18.760 Well, even before that, the CCF. Yeah.
00:27:21.760 You know, which became the NDP. So, yeah, lots of ideas come out of Alberta. Some of them good, some of them not so good.
00:27:28.760 Well, you could even say the social credit. I mean, that's...
00:27:31.760 Yeah.
00:27:32.760 And, you know, a mixed bag there as well. How is Danielle Smith doing in this tradition of ideological innovators? And how would you rate her recent move of bringing in rules to treat... of how to handle transgender curious kids in school?
00:27:53.760 I like both her policies and her invoking the Notwithstanding Clause. Just start with one simple number. A couple of professors, one at UBC, one in Guelph, did a study of Supreme Court decisions pertaining to provincial laws.
00:28:16.760 And in the first 30 years that the charter was in force, the Supreme Court only overturned 20% of provincial laws based on a charter focus. Since that time, the number has risen to 60%. So they strike down more than half of provincial laws.
00:28:37.760 And if you have a provincial government and you got a law that you really want to keep in place, I think you have to put the Notwithstanding Clause in because some judge, either at the Superior Court level or up at the Supreme Court, is going to strike it down.
00:28:51.760 No. And particularly if it's not one of the progressive ideas. And so the three bills that Smith has brought in, that are covered by the Notwithstanding Clause in this case, are barring transgender women and girls from participating in women's and girls' sports.
00:29:12.760 If a child has a desire to change their name or gender at school, the school must inform parents.
00:29:21.760 And there's to be no permanent treatments, no gender affirming treatments for under 16 year olds.
00:29:33.760 So no puberty blockers, no surgeries, none of the things that cannot be reversed.
00:29:39.760 And I hear experts on the transgender side all the time say that puberty blockers can be reversed.
00:29:46.760 But I have seen study after study after study that says that's simply not true.
00:29:52.760 And so those are the three bills that the Smith government wants to protect from the courts.
00:29:58.760 Yeah.
00:29:59.760 And I think that the Notwithstanding Clause, which was brought in when the charter was debated in 1981, is perfectly in keeping with that.
00:30:09.760 That's what it's there for.
00:30:11.760 Yeah.
00:30:12.760 You know, some judges have said it's a dialogue between the legislature and the judiciary.
00:30:19.760 And I don't mind that description because let it be a dialogue of at worst equals, because I think what happened was the judges thought they were supreme.
00:30:30.760 And that goes contrary to centuries of Canadian and British lawmaking where parliament is supreme.
00:30:36.760 So the legislature needs a way to knock the judges down a peg, not out of malice, just to keep things balanced.
00:30:45.760 One thing that is on my mind, Lauren, is, as you know, judges are put through ideological training sessions.
00:30:51.760 Twenty years ago, it was about feminism.
00:30:53.760 Then it was about racism.
00:30:56.760 Now every single judge in Canada goes through transgender orientation where they basically taught a particular ideology.
00:31:05.760 My point is there is a 100% chance that a judge who would hear a challenge to these laws from Danielle Smith would at the very least be primed to strike them down because they have been told you have to or you're transphobic.
00:31:21.760 So I think it's critical that she preventively and preemptively make sure that the judges don't get a big idea.
00:31:30.760 Well, and I would say not just judges, but also doctors and a lot of educators.
00:31:38.760 Right.
00:31:39.760 Not all doctors, but many doctors who got into sexual reassignment into transgender treatment are very much the advocates for it.
00:31:53.760 And so I have heard case after case after case of parents who've taken their child to a transgender specialist thinking that that person would then do a lot of evaluations.
00:32:06.760 You do psychological evaluations, you do cultural and social evaluations.
00:32:10.760 And often they're offered the first treatment that day.
00:32:15.760 Right.
00:32:16.760 So, you know, this gender affirmation treatment is built right into the system.
00:32:23.760 And there are lots of very one of the arguments against the use of notwithstanding clause here is that sometimes parents in Alberta will give their consent to their child under 16 having gender affirming care.
00:32:38.760 But I know that there are not every case, but lots of cases where that's the parent trying to show how progressive they are.
00:32:52.760 If you're not 16 years old, it is just too messy to start messing around with that.
00:32:59.760 And I think I think Smith and the UCB government are quite right to protect that with the notwithstanding clause and just let it sit there.
00:33:07.760 Yeah.
00:33:08.760 You know, I haven't seen any recent polls on the subject, especially in Alberta, but I would be willing to wager that ordinary people find this so obvious and such common sense, especially not having biological men in the changing room.
00:33:24.760 Right. I mean, those American cases of the swimming teams.
00:33:27.760 Yeah.
00:33:28.760 Every person was freaked out by that.
00:33:30.760 And Trump, by the way, just reached in and stole the crown by saying we're going to end it.
00:33:35.760 That should have been a feminist cause.
00:33:38.760 But yeah, but many feminists were terrified or were on the other side.
00:33:43.760 I think she's going to have a lot of support from this.
00:33:46.760 I don't have statistical proof of that.
00:33:49.760 Have you seen any polls on the subject?
00:33:51.760 Because I've got to think this is popular with the people, even if it's not popular with the lawyers, teachers and doctors of the world.
00:33:58.760 The last one I saw was in 2024.
00:34:00.760 It was a Canadian study and it showed that over a little over 70% of people agreed with the idea that people who are born male should not participate in women's sports.
00:34:13.760 And is that unfair?
00:34:16.760 Yes, it is.
00:34:17.760 But is it an unfairness that that cannot be explained?
00:34:22.760 No, you know, you can't have everything in life.
00:34:26.760 If you've decided that you're in the wrong body sexually, well, there are going to be things you're going to be excluded from.
00:34:33.760 You know, I wish I would have been a better hockey player because I really wanted when I was about 12 years old to play in the NHL, but my body wasn't built for it.
00:34:43.760 Yeah.
00:34:44.760 So is it unfair?
00:34:45.760 Should there be a law that says I can be given whatever drugs are needed in order to beef me up until I can play professional hockey?
00:34:53.760 No, it's just there's there are things that happen in people's lives that are unfair and we can be sympathetic.
00:35:00.760 We can be supportive.
00:35:01.760 We can find them all sorts of therapies and treatments, but that doesn't mean then we have to change the whole rest of the world.
00:35:08.760 Yeah.
00:35:09.760 So they get to do everything they want.
00:35:11.760 Yeah.
00:35:12.760 You know, billboard Chris Elston sometimes has a sandwich board.
00:35:16.760 You probably know who I'm talking about.
00:35:17.760 And he and some of his signs are so basic and they're so hard to argue with.
00:35:21.760 Like, no one is born in the wrong body.
00:35:24.760 When you stop and think about that, that's so basic and profound.
00:35:28.760 And imagine arguing, no, I was born in the wrong body.
00:35:31.760 No, you weren't.
00:35:32.760 No, you weren't.
00:35:33.760 And of course, when you're a teenager and you have hormones and you're confused and you're politics, sure, you have questions, but that is not the time to have, like you say, irreversible surgeries.
00:35:44.760 When you said that the doctors sometimes are the advocates who are racing to perform these treatments, it reminded me a little bit of MAID, Medical Assistance in Dying.
00:35:54.760 Where there are some activists who are doctors and they almost immediately point depressed people in the, in the direction of suicide.
00:36:04.760 And I think there's a real problem with doctors who were not following the do no harm Hippocratic oath.
00:36:11.760 And I think they're on the MAID and I think they're on the trans.
00:36:14.760 Yeah.
00:36:15.760 There, there are a pair of doctors, for instance, on the west coast, who between the two of them have done over 800 MAID deaths.
00:36:24.760 Yeah.
00:36:25.760 And that's because they were both strong advocates before the law was changed.
00:36:30.760 Yeah.
00:36:31.760 That you should be allowed to determine when your own death is.
00:36:34.760 And, um, and so now that the law is there, they're, they're very active in assisting people to get MAID.
00:36:43.760 Yeah.
00:36:44.760 That's frustrating.
00:36:45.760 Hey, let me switch gears.
00:36:46.760 I really appreciate you talking to me about those things.
00:36:48.760 Let me talk for one minute about Canada's new approach to building things.
00:36:54.760 And by Canada's, I mean, Mark, Mark Carney, he has something called the major projects office, which is an, another layer.
00:37:03.760 Mm hmm.
00:37:04.760 A bureaucracy.
00:37:05.760 It doesn't remove any other layers.
00:37:07.760 It doesn't replace anything.
00:37:08.760 It's not a consolidation.
00:37:10.760 It's not a one stop shop.
00:37:12.760 It's extra, which is, it really reminds me of when I remember in, when I was in grade eight, we studied the Soviet Union and we learned about Goss plan, which was the central planning agency in the Soviet Union and their five year plans.
00:37:26.760 And they knew best how many tons of wheat.
00:37:30.760 And I mean, that's really how it feels to me.
00:37:33.760 And I think it's scaring away investors because it feels, even though you've got a Goldman Sachs banker on top of it, it still feels like a managed economy, a directed economy, or as they would say at the world economic forum, stakeholder economy.
00:37:51.760 And I, I'm really worried about it.
00:37:56.760 I, the thing that bothers me is that they're going to identify winners and losers.
00:38:01.760 Yeah.
00:38:02.760 They haven't come up with an economic plan that would help any industry, any entrepreneur, anyone investor who had an idea to get it up and going.
00:38:14.760 You have to come to us as an investor and say, I would like to get this project going.
00:38:23.760 And then if they say yes, they don't guarantee you the project will get going.
00:38:28.760 They just guarantee you that they will try to help you get rid of the regulation.
00:38:32.760 Or so for instance, Danielle Smith has what she calls the nine bad laws.
00:38:38.760 Yeah.
00:38:39.760 And basically what she's talking about is the tanker ban off the west coast, the hard cap on emissions for oil and gas and the no more pipelines impact assessment act plus a bunch of others.
00:38:54.760 Right.
00:38:55.760 And those are the three that she sees as the big deterrent to investment in Alberta's oil and gas industry.
00:39:02.760 Well, they're not talking about getting rid of those.
00:39:05.760 They're talking about saying, well, let's ask these bureaucrats if you can have permission to work around those.
00:39:13.760 If you're, you know, and so Carney has said several times, but there is no lead business that's come forward to take on the pipeline project.
00:39:23.760 So maybe that means there isn't a business case for it.
00:39:26.760 Oh, it means you still have these ridiculous laws.
00:39:29.760 You haven't gotten rid of the laws.
00:39:30.760 You put a bureaucracy in between the project and the law to somehow try and help the project.
00:39:38.760 And I just think it's destined to fail.
00:39:41.760 You know, he, he was, uh, the head of the bank of England, the head of the bank of Canada.
00:39:47.760 I don't think 99 out of a hundred people could explain what he did.
00:39:51.760 I mean, what are those banks do?
00:39:52.760 They set interest rates.
00:39:53.760 Okay.
00:39:54.760 What do you do the rest of the time?
00:39:55.760 I don't know if anybody knows.
00:39:56.760 Um, okay.
00:39:57.760 Before that, he was at Goldman Sachs as a consultant.
00:40:00.760 Um, and since then he's been a board member of the world economic forum and he worked for the UN and he had something called the globe, the global financial alignment.
00:40:07.760 For net zero, which he basically tried to have a capital strike, like basically to boycott investing in fossil fuels and channel direct investing in sort of an affirmative action kind of way.
00:40:20.760 And so he did this while he was the chairman of Brookfield.
00:40:23.760 And if, and Brookfield is a huge asset manager, a trillion dollars, but he wasn't a hands-on, he's never been a hands-on entrepreneur.
00:40:31.760 He's never built a business.
00:40:33.760 He's never run a business.
00:40:34.760 He's been more a spokes model for philosophies, a crusader for ideologies.
00:40:41.760 Like if you look at those jobs, I don't actually know what the job description of any of them is.
00:40:47.760 And now he's in charge of things.
00:40:50.760 I don't know.
00:40:51.760 I think he, he's about to find out that the world is not a world economic forum, Ted talk.
00:40:56.760 I think you're right.
00:40:57.760 I think he's going to find out that this isn't just some sort of, uh, upper club of Rome, uh, world economic forum where nice people get together.
00:41:09.760 There are some experts who then talk to a bunch of multimillionaires and billionaires.
00:41:16.760 So if the billionaires and millionaires can feel good about themselves, that they have learned something from these progressive great thinkers, but yeah, it's not the real world.
00:41:26.760 Uh, I'm worried about it.
00:41:28.760 I really am worried about it.
00:41:30.760 Give me, I've taken a lot of your time.
00:41:31.760 I don't want to trap you too much longer.
00:41:33.760 Lauren, some people are musing that we're about to be surprised.
00:41:38.760 And then Mark Carney will cut a deal with Danielle Smith.
00:41:42.760 And there will in fact be a, an oil pipeline to the West coast.
00:41:46.760 Boy, I want to believe that even if it came with outrageous conditions, a pipelines, a pipeline, I don't believe it though.
00:41:54.760 Do you think that in Mark Carney's term, we will see an additional oil pipeline, not gas, not clean grid, but an oil pipeline.
00:42:06.760 No, either to America or to the West.
00:42:08.760 No.
00:42:09.760 I mean, we might see Keystone, but, uh, and that would be lovely.
00:42:13.760 I look like I'm turning my nose up at that.
00:42:16.760 I'm not.
00:42:17.760 Um, but we're not going to see one to the West coast.
00:42:21.760 If you watch the liberal caucus and the cabinet this last week, they've said there are four things that have to be satisfied by Alberta before they will approve a pipeline.
00:42:32.760 Now on all the other projects they have, like they have ring of fire mines in Ontario that are environmentally damaging, but they haven't said, Oh, they have to have four or five conditions that they have to live up to before we'll approve them.
00:42:47.760 They will approve them right away.
00:42:48.760 Yeah.
00:42:49.760 So, uh, in the, what they've said in Alberta's case is BC has to agree.
00:42:55.760 Yeah.
00:42:56.760 Well, that's unlikely.
00:42:58.760 First nations have to agree.
00:43:00.760 Lots of first nations have, but a few first nations won't, which will give the liberals an excuse to not have a pipeline, which is I think really what they want.
00:43:09.760 They don't want to have a pipeline.
00:43:10.760 They don't want to have a pipeline.
00:43:11.760 So they're looking for excuses.
00:43:12.760 They, they've said Alberta has to increase its, uh, uh, industrial carbon tax by six fold $25 a ton.
00:43:23.760 Now it needs to go up to $150 a ton.
00:43:27.760 And they have said that we have to build a very expensive carbon capture system that takes the emissions out of, uh, the oil drilling and out of the pipeline.
00:43:39.760 Well, you know, at any point in that process, they can say, you're not satisfying, uh, our requirements.
00:43:47.760 So therefore you can have the pipeline and what company is going to come in and commit 10, $12 billion with all those hoops there to jump through.
00:43:59.760 Yeah.
00:44:00.760 And even if they jump through the hoops, they'll change the rules afterwards.
00:44:02.760 That's what killed energy East pipeline proposal a decade ago, which was the biggest of all the proposals would have taken more than a million barrels a day from Alberta all the way to St. John, New Brunswick.
00:44:13.760 So it could, by the way, it's the largest refinery in Canada. Like it was such a, it was such a lovely project.
00:44:18.760 It was nation building. It was helping the East. It was, you know, getting us off foreign oil.
00:44:23.760 There was so many things to love about it. And they just said, no, to European ports.
00:44:29.760 Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's sort of, uh, depressing to, because I think, I think we have exactly the prime minister that he looks like.
00:44:38.760 I think we have sort of like if Al Gore became prime minister, it's just sort of the same circles.
00:44:44.760 Yeah. He's Justin Trudeau who looks more like a prime minister.
00:44:48.760 Yeah, that's exactly right. More ideological. I think Trudeau was sort of a mascot in a lot of ways. He wasn't particularly deep.
00:44:54.760 He memorized a few lines and he looked good saying things. I think Mark Carney is, um, I don't want to say deeper, but I think he's more a true believer.
00:45:06.760 Yeah. I agree. I mean, I will, hopefully we can survive this Lauren. Great to see you. Thanks for taking the time with us.
00:45:13.760 You bet. All right. There he is. Lauren country.
00:45:15.760 He's the author of the latest article in Edmonton journal entitled Smith government's use of notwithstanding clauses within the spirit of the charter.
00:45:22.760 Stay with us. Your letters to me next.
00:45:25.760 Hey, welcome back. Your letters to me. The first one is on the Palestinian flag raising.
00:45:38.760 Eleazar 40 says flags are a claim of jurisdiction. Fascist flags must never be permitted on Canadian shores.
00:45:44.760 You know, a flag is, is about jurisdiction. That's true. It also has meaning. Every flag has meaning. I think a lot about the British Union Jack and how there's the Scottish and the English and there's like different flags unite.
00:45:59.760 That's why they call it the Union Jack, because you have the English and the Scottish and the different parts of Great Britain together in that flag.
00:46:06.760 I think of the United States and the meaning of the stars and the stripes. Flags are meanings. That's why people wear branded clothing, because they think the logo means something.
00:46:16.760 That's why people wear the jerseys of their teams they root for. They have an affiliation.
00:46:21.760 They want to show you by wearing on the outside what they feel on the inside. That's a flag.
00:46:27.760 And to put up the flag of a foreign terrorist group, which is what Gaza is run by.
00:46:35.760 That's not the Canadian way. I don't know. I hated that.
00:46:39.760 Another letter by Nunu says about the nudge unit.
00:46:45.760 We saw their nudging, psychological tactics and behavioral engineering in their bloody slaughter of the ostriches.
00:46:51.760 You know, you're onto something there. There was such a psyop going on. There was such an enormous government response of which maybe 10% had to do with the birds.
00:47:01.760 90% of it was about propaganda, stopping journalism, intimidating journalists. It was so weird. So weird.
00:47:10.760 And I think that weirdness raised a lot of red flags with ordinary people. I don't know. That was such an atrocious thing.
00:47:17.760 By the way, I've heard from three sources that the police are investigating Rebel News.
00:47:22.760 Boy, I tell you, that would be a foolish, foolish thing for them to go down that road.
00:47:27.760 I mean, they already have a bad enough reputation as being censors. We'll be ready for them if they come.
00:47:32.760 That's our show for today.
00:47:34.760 Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters to you at home,
00:47:39.760 good night and keep fighting for freedom.
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