Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Carney’s non-answer on energy exports reveals everything Canadians need to know

00:00:00.400 Hello, my friends. Mark Carney is on another European junket. I don't know what he thinks

00:00:04.820 he's going to accomplish there. It's such a small fraction of our trade compared to Canada,

00:00:09.660 U.S., which is the big action, but he has no success there. So I think he prefers Europe

00:00:14.640 anyways. He's a European citizen, as you may know. I talk about that, and I also interviewed

00:00:20.000 Tristan Hopper about self-defense laws in Canada. So that's ahead. But first, I want

00:00:25.640 you to get a subscription to Rebel News Plus. That's the video version of this podcast,

00:00:29.540 because I'm going to play a bunch of clips, especially of Mark Carney and his new energy

00:00:34.380 minister in Europe. And I want you to see what they say. Go to rebelnewsplus.com, click

00:00:39.300 subscribe. It's eight bucks a month. And not only do you support Rebel News, but you get

00:00:43.720 all that content. And you know, we don't take a dime from government. So we actually need

00:00:47.800 the help. That's rebelnewsplus.com.

00:00:54.280 Tonight, why do liberals speak to you in that certain foggy way?

00:00:58.900 It's August 26th, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show. 0.87

00:01:04.740 Shame on you, you censorious bug.

00:01:16.540 When I was much younger, I worked as Preston Manning's assistant in parliament in the late

00:01:21.980 1990s. That was in the last century. One of my jobs was to manage question period for the

00:01:27.780 opposition. Of course, it's not called answer period for a reason. The idea was to make the

00:01:32.880 questions stand on their own, so that no matter what excuse the government would come up with,

00:01:37.260 the point would come across. And the question, I got to know not only the Reform Party MPs,

00:01:42.300 which was pretty fun, but the style of the various Liberal cabinet ministers who answered.

00:01:47.080 Every day, we'd have a dress rehearsal before the actual QP, as we called it. And I would sometimes

00:01:53.800 play the role of different liberals, which was fun. Now, this was a generation ago, so the names might

00:01:59.640 not even ring a bell for you. This was the era of Alan Rock and Paul Martin and Anne McClellan. Rock

00:02:06.520 was atrocious, always was. But boy, I long for the days of the moderate liberal. There used to be such

00:02:13.160 a thing like Paul Martin, who actually balanced a budget and Anne McClellan, who actually helped 0.81

00:02:19.540 birth, at least legally and politically, the oil sands. I mean, don't forget that part. Justin Trudeau

00:02:26.020 and now Mark Carney have spent the last 10 years trying to destroy the oil sands in every possible

00:02:31.840 way. But 25 years ago, the Liberals tried to grow it. They were proud of it. And although Jean-Claude Chen,

00:02:37.920 the Prime Minister signed the Kyoto Protocol, he literally did nothing about it, other than say

00:02:44.220 he cared. I should also point out that the that Chrétien pumped the brakes on Brian Mulroney's

00:02:50.680 immigration extremism. Yeah, you heard me right. Under Mulroney, immigration tripled from around 85,000

00:02:57.840 people a year to around a quarter million. Chrétien actually reduced it a bit, if you can believe it.

00:03:04.420 Yeah. Today's Liberals are completely unrecognizable by those standards. Absolutely dedicated to out-of-control

00:03:11.400 spending and taxing and borrowing. Environmental extremism is so important to them. Feminism and

00:03:18.020 banning anyone who's pro-life. You cannot be a pro-life Catholic in the Liberal Party. You can be

00:03:23.280 pro-life Muslim. Of course, every Muslim is pro-life. It's a very strange party now compared to really 0.89

00:03:30.540 the Big Ten Coalition of Chrétien. Today, it's mass immigration, the diaspora politics. I would

00:03:37.660 actually give anything to reset Canada to what it was like back then. I was always a conservative or a

00:03:44.380 reformer. But now I sort of look at the Paul Martin-Jean-Claude Chen Liberals and say, you know,

00:03:49.100 I'd sort of vote for that now, too, if I could. Bit of a trip down memory lane for me. Chrétien sometimes

00:03:54.940 answered questions in question period, but often he would let his deputy handle them. And forgive me

00:04:00.600 my long detour here, but that's actually one of my points. The deputy prime minister for a chunk of

00:04:05.900 Chrétien's term as PM was a soft-spoken member of parliament from Windsor named Herb Gray. He was the

00:04:12.940 consummate loyalist, self-deprecating. He made an art out of being low energy, low key. He joked about

00:04:20.700 Herb-a-mania. You know, he just swallowed up questions in question period by taking all the 0.97

00:04:26.460 energy out of them. We called Herb Gray the gray fog. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, but I regret

00:04:34.080 I must take issue with the premise of his question insofar as, I mean, he would just, he would bore you

00:04:40.860 to death. No anger, no fire, just a fog machine, a fog into which you could walk and you could never

00:04:47.580 be seen again. But there was something lawyerly about it, I guess. And even though it was low

00:04:53.080 energy, it wasn't just duck speak, as Orwell would say. It wasn't just babbling. It was a bureaucratic

00:04:58.400 answer, but it was an answer, I guess. But the past is a different country, isn't it? What a world

00:05:04.180 we're in now. Did you see the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, at the big gathering at the White House

00:05:09.020 last week for Vladimir Zelensky? Trump and the seven dwarves, I call it, each of the European leaders

00:05:14.380 trying to appear so important, when everyone knew the only decider in the room was Trump himself.

00:05:19.420 But they had all flown over all the way to America. So they were given about two minutes each to say

00:05:24.160 their piece. Do you remember Keir Starmer, it's a British PM. Do you remember his two minutes? Just

00:05:28.100 listen to this and tell me if you understood any of it, or if it was duck speak, not Herb Gray

00:05:34.540 bureaucratic speak, but just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Do you understand what any of this means?

00:05:39.020 Thank you very much, Mr. President, and thank you for hosting us here. Can I start where Emmanuel

00:05:44.880 started, which is we all want peace. The war in Ukraine has had a huge impact, particularly

00:05:51.500 on the Ukrainians who've borne the brunt of it, but it's also had an impact on Europe and

00:05:57.060 on the United Kingdom. There's not a family or community that hasn't been affected. And

00:06:01.820 when we talk about security, we're talking about the security not just of Ukraine, we're talking

00:06:06.260 about the security of Europe and the United Kingdom as well, which is why this is such

00:06:10.240 an important issue. I think this is such an important meeting. As a group, I think we've

00:06:14.540 had a discussion on the phone a number of times, Mr. President, but be able now to be around

00:06:18.900 the table to take it forward. And I really feel that we can, I think, with the right approach

00:06:25.260 this afternoon, make real progress, particularly on the security guarantees. And your indication

00:06:30.620 of security guarantees of some sort of Article 5 style guarantees fits with what we've been

00:06:35.960 doing with the Coalition of the Willing, which we started some months ago, bringing countries

00:06:39.720 together and showing that we were prepared to step up to the plate when it came to security.

00:06:45.380 With you coming alongside the U.S., alongside what we've already developed, I think we could

00:06:50.740 take a really important step forward today. A historic step, actually, could come out of

00:06:55.420 this meeting in terms of security for Ukraine and security in Europe. I also feel that we can

00:07:02.460 make real progress towards a just and lasting outcome. Obviously, that has to involve Ukraine. 0.98

00:07:10.220 And a trilateral meeting seems the sensible next step. So thank you for being prepared to

00:07:16.280 take that forward. Because I think if we can ensure that that is the progress out of this

00:07:23.880 meeting, both security guarantees and some sort of progress on trilateral meeting of some sort,

00:07:29.460 of bringing some of the difficult issues to a head, then I think today will be seen as a very important

00:07:36.660 day in recent years in relation to a conflict which has gone on for three and a bit years. And so far,

00:07:42.900 nobody nobody's been able to bring it to this point. So I thank you for that. The only part I

00:07:47.380 understood was that Keir Starmer believes that every single family in the United Kingdom has had their

00:07:53.780 lives changed by the war in Ukraine. I'm just not sure that's true. And Trump gave a funny look right

00:08:01.220 at that moment to J.D. Vance, who was standing in the room when Starmer said that. But Starmer is one

00:08:05.300 of those modern robotic duck speakers who say nothing. And after a while, you realize it. And then you can't

00:08:12.820 unhear it and you begin to despise even the sound of his voice. If you don't follow UK politics, you won't

00:08:18.980 know what I mean about Starmer. But it's basically the bizarre style of speaking that Chrystia Freeland

00:08:25.300 has perfected. We have a very impressive deficit of some 60 billion dollars in the last budget. So

00:08:32.500 when do you foresee a return to a balanced budget? Ms. Freeland speaks first. Mr. Jobin,

00:08:40.100 we are all liberals and we will not repeat conservative misinformation. We are not going

00:08:52.180 to do the conservatives work for them. The reality is that Canada's financial record is very strong.

00:08:59.700 We have a triple A credit rating. We have the lowest debt to GDP ratio in the entire G7. But

00:09:08.260 speaking of our economy, we have to begin with the fact that we're living in a completely different

00:09:15.300 world. Let's begin with the threat that Donald Trump poses. And as Karina suggested, we have to seize

00:09:22.820 the opportunity of this wave of Canadian enthusiasm to build, to attract investment and jobs.

00:09:31.700 Just so irritating, usually starting with an obsequious thank you for your question,

00:09:36.660 and then giving a rambling response that is completely unconnected to the answer that just

00:09:42.580 burns up the time, talks out the clock. And after you hear it a half dozen times, you realize it's not

00:09:48.740 an answer at all, but it's actually a kind of insult delivered with a straight face. How dare you ask me

00:09:54.500 about that? I'm going to thank you for it and then just burn up the clock talking about whatever I want

00:09:59.460 to talk about. Yeah. Well, Mark Carney and his clones have perfected it too. Just take a look.

00:10:05.380 So Carney was in Europe because of course he is. He's a citizen of Europe. He has an Irish and a UK

00:10:12.180 passport. So that's his favorite place. He quit Canada to go there for a bigger opportunity. And

00:10:17.700 I'm not sure he's done social climbing there yet. He said he wants Canada to join the European Union.

00:10:23.620 So he's back there and he thinks that's the place for him to be. Donald Trump is holding our

00:10:28.500 country's private parts in his fists. But instead of dealing with Trump, which is the vast majority

00:10:34.820 of our trade, Carney is over in Europe pretending that they can in some way replace our access to

00:10:42.420 the largest market in the world that's just across the border by car and truck and train. You know,

00:10:47.060 90% of Canadians live within an hour of the United States, but Mark Carney thinks Germany is going to

00:10:54.180 save us. It's so weird. So let's start with a question put to Carney when he was in Germany

00:10:59.220 about selling energy to Europe. Now the Germans came to Canada a couple of years ago, begging for 1.00

00:11:04.340 our energy, real energy, natural gas, not solar energy or electric vehicle, fake subsidies, green

00:11:11.700 scam energy, but actual natural gas, because that's what they use. And they're buying it right

00:11:17.380 now from Russia. And it's not just shaming them, but it's undermining them because they actually 0.89

00:11:24.340 Europe spends more on Russian natural gas and other energy, including oil than they do to give Ukraine

00:11:34.420 in aid and weapons each year. Let me say that again on a sheer mathematical basis. If you ask me

00:11:40.260 which side of the war Europe is on, the mathematical answer would be Russia, because if you're measuring 0.79

00:11:46.660 strictly on who Europe gives its money to, Europe gives more money to Russia than to Ukraine because

00:11:52.820 of energy. But Justin Trudeau said, no, we're not going to sell you any LNG. There's no business

00:11:57.780 case for it. So Europe wants to change that. Justin Trudeau refused to sell oil and gas, refused to let

00:12:03.620 it even be produced, let alone shipped, let alone sold. 180 degrees opposite of Jean-Croix and McClellan.

00:12:10.980 But German reporters are more honest than many Canadian reporters. And here's a little exchange.

00:12:19.460 Prime Minister, just one question about raw materials. Could you please explore a bit more

00:12:25.220 what Canada can realistically actually offer to Germany and Europe, given the fact that ports on

00:12:31.540 the east coast and also pipelines are still lacking? Okay. Okay. You can, you're welcome to take the

00:12:37.300 second part of that, my question, if you wish. Thanks for the question. Look, there's a huge range of

00:12:44.260 immediate opportunities with respect to critical metals and minerals. And there are medium-term

00:12:49.940 opportunities with respect to all forms of energy, including LNG and hydrogen. And I'll quickly

00:12:56.340 explain how we make those happen. Our government is in the process of unleashing half a trillion dollars

00:13:04.180 of investment in energy infrastructure, port infrastructure, particularly intelligence infrastructure

00:13:10.900 as well with AI. And a number of those investments, the first of which we will be formally announcing

00:13:19.620 in the next two weeks, are with respect to new port infrastructure. And some of the examples in the

00:13:26.660 public domain will include from reinforcing and building on the port of Montreal, a new port effectively

00:13:37.540 in Churchill, Manitoba, which would open up enormous LNG plus other opportunities and other east coast

00:13:45.620 ports for those critical metals and minerals. So there is a lot happening. It's the number one focus of

00:13:54.100 this government is to build that infrastructure and particularly infrastructure that helps us

00:14:01.380 deepen our partnership with with our European partners and particularly Germany.

00:14:06.580 So, yeah, no pipelines, more money for a port in Montreal. Gee, that's a shocker. A plan for Churchill,

00:14:14.580 Manitoba. So that will be 10 years. Are you kidding if you think it's going to be any faster? Just

00:14:20.820 Just duck speak. Throw in a mention of AI. Why not? Half a trillion dollars. That's what he's going to

00:14:27.620 unleash. Does that mean tax dollars? What does it mean that he's going to unleash half a trillion dollars?

00:14:33.940 Why is he the decider? Do we have a centrally planned economy now? Just a bunch of baffle gab.

00:14:39.380 Was there a single word in there that answered the actual question? How are you going to move any of

00:14:44.180 this energy to Germany without pipelines or ports? And by ports, those big LNG liquefaction ports where

00:14:53.060 they take natural gas, super cool it, which it liquefies, it puts it in those funny looking tankers

00:14:58.660 and sends it over there. You can't just build those. Oh, but we have a huge range of opportunities,

00:15:04.340 he said. And how long do you hear that? How long do you hear him say those things again and again and

00:15:10.980 again before like Chrystia Freeland and Keir Starmer, you realize that you're just being lied to. It's just

00:15:16.980 a way to burn up the time here. He's been prime minister for 166 days, by the way. Do you think any

00:15:25.940 of these things are going to be built even in his first term? God forbid there's more.

00:15:30.340 But in fact, Canada does sell our natural gas to Europe, just like we do sell our oil to the

00:15:38.820 world. Now you might find that surprising because we don't have LNG export ports. But the answer is

00:15:45.220 it goes to the United States of America. We sell, I don't know, 90% of our oil directly to the United

00:15:50.500 States, same with our gas and our exports that's going to America. And they take it and they might

00:15:58.660 process it or mark it up and then they resell it on the world market. And maybe that's why

00:16:03.380 Donald Trump prefers Mark Carney. No pipelines built in Canada means more profits for the U.S.

00:16:08.420 to resell our good stuff. Here, get a load of the Polish prime minister to Canada speaking some truth 1.00

00:16:15.060 on the CBC of all places. Take a look. Former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau kind of famously

00:16:19.220 said there was no business case to sell Canadian LNG to Europe. Well, when you look at what the Americans

00:16:24.900 are doing, they sent 44 million tons of LNG to Europe last year. They're obviously seeing

00:16:30.020 a business case for what they're producing. Is Poland interested in Canada's natural resources

00:16:35.620 and LNG in particular? Is that something that you would like to see advance as these two countries get

00:16:40.660 closer together? Yeah. Well, remember some of that LNG that is coming from United States to Europe to

00:16:46.660 Poland is also Canadian LNG. But it's being sold for a much higher price, I would say, than when it would

00:16:59.860 come from Canada. Yes, we are constantly interested. We would like the Canadian LNG market to open to Europe.

00:17:10.420 We would like to see the Canadian gas flowing to the east coast on Canada and the Canadian

00:17:18.340 gas flowing in European pipelines. This is, you know, one of the energy topics that we are working

00:17:27.060 on with Canadians for a number of years. There are others which are also very significant and we are

00:17:34.740 very much more successful in the other areas than gas so far. But if you're able to make a push in that

00:17:42.420 regard, that will be to the benefit of Europe and that will be to the benefit of Canada.

00:17:47.060 Hey, but remember, guys, there's no business case for our energy. That's what the master industrialist

00:17:52.580 and tycoon and oilman Justin Trudeau said. Hey, have you ever seen this guy before? I hadn't. His name is

00:18:00.420 Tim Hodgson and he's Canada's new energy minister. He used to work for Mark Carney at Goldman Sachs

00:18:07.060 and at the Bank of Canada. They're old friends. Take a listen to him in Europe. He was announcing he

00:18:14.420 was so excited to go there. Parliament is coming back on September 15th. And until then, we're making

00:18:19.700 every minute count. That's why I'm heading to Berlin with the prime minister to build Canadian-German

00:18:25.140 partnerships in energy and critical minerals to shore up our economies, industries and security.

00:18:31.860 And we're not showing up alone. We are bringing a Canadian business delegation to find new European

00:18:38.100 markets for our energy and minerals. By working with our allies, we can give Canadian industry

00:18:45.140 the market certainty it needs to build projects of national interest and ensure our resources reach

00:18:51.780 across oceans, not just across our borders. Thank you. And again, welcome aboard.

00:18:58.500 Hey guys, they're building. They're shoring up. They're finding new markets for energy. They're

00:19:03.220 giving certainty to investors and they're not small-minded people who think America's the answer.

00:19:08.740 They're crossing oceans, not just borders. How do you sell energy to Europe if you don't have any

00:19:15.140 pipelines? And if you won't for probably a decade, why do you think people in the industry don't

00:19:23.940 already know where energy is bought and sold? We're discovering new markets. You don't think

00:19:28.740 oil men know where oil is bought and sold? And they need politicians to tell them about new markets. 0.99

00:19:34.740 We're doing a favor to the industry by showing them new markets. Was that the missing piece of the puzzle

00:19:39.380 here? Canadian oil men just didn't know where to sell their oil and gas. And the Europeans just didn't

00:19:43.380 know who makes oil and gas. And luckily, Mark Carney and Tim Hodgson are going to connect them and

00:19:48.100 unleash this. Was that the problem the whole time? Or maybe has it been the anti-pipeline laws,

00:19:53.140 the anti-tankership laws, the anti-oil sands laws, the anti-emissions laws, and until a few months ago,

00:19:58.660 a carbon tax, which was going up every year. And by the way, has not been abolished. It's just been

00:20:04.660 temporarily set to zero percent, but it could be reset tomorrow to a higher number. Yeah, talk about

00:20:10.580 uncertainty. But you know who can make sense of all this? A government journalist named David Akin.

00:20:17.140 He knows what the oil and gas industry needs for the Goldman Sachs boys, Mark Carney and Tim Hodgson,

00:20:23.620 to do what the private sector can't do. To them, private industry isn't even in the game. This is

00:20:29.860 about governments making the decisions, government making the deals, government making the funding.

00:20:35.620 When things fail, government's bailing them out, just shoveling more money into it until it happens.

00:20:41.220 Here, take a listen.

00:20:42.180 Quick question on financing. I wonder if the government of Canada, as it did with Trans Mountain,

00:20:47.220 is considering participating in an equity stake in either mineral developers or transporters of energy,

00:20:53.940 or might assist with some other levels of financing as we approach the budget. In other words,

00:20:58.340 other than signing partnerships, is there some tangible way the government of Canada

00:21:02.580 will put some skin in the game financially to help private sector proponents? 0.59

00:21:06.740 So there's a number of different tools that we have, be it through the Canada Infrastructure Bank,

00:21:16.820 through CDEV, through EDC, through BDC, through SIF. Some of these are so risky, these projects,

00:21:24.500 that even BDC is not going to take that risk on. That's why we bought Trans Mountain, because of

00:21:28.980 the risk profile needed the government backing it, right? So again, there are tools like the Canada

00:21:36.020 Growth Fund that take first-of-a-kind risk. So the government is going to use all the tools it has

00:21:45.860 to responsibly develop projects, to do it in a way that's responsible for Canadian taxpayers,

00:21:52.180 and do it in the right environmental way, and in conjunction with First Nations.

00:21:56.980 Did you hear that part where David Aiken did some liberal-splaining, where he said the Liberals bought

00:22:01.940 the Trans Mountain pipeline because the company couldn't handle the risk? That's a lie. The

00:22:08.260 government of Trudeau is what killed the pipeline. The US owners were about to sue Canada for billions,

00:22:16.660 but instead, Liberals said, no need to sue us, we'll just give it to you. We'll buy

00:22:21.940 this dead pipeline that we killed for billions of dollars. Huge profit margin for Kinder Morgan,

00:22:28.180 which was actually building it with private money. And then the Liberals bought it at a massive

00:22:33.460 premium. And do you think the Liberals know how to build pipelines? They use tax dollars to do what 0.99

00:22:37.780 a private company was going to do on their own. Absolute financial disaster. I think in the end,

00:22:43.460 it was four times more expensive than the original budget. But to David Aiken, it's a success story.

00:22:48.980 And did you hear Hodgson? Not a word about Canadian entrepreneurs, Canadian companies,

00:22:53.380 it's all government funds, government subsidies, government banks. These guys are not capitalists,

00:22:58.740 they are crony capitalists. It's a big difference. By the way, how soon until this will happen? How

00:23:06.340 soon?

00:23:06.660 The pipeline for building the kind of port and pipeline infrastructure that would just allow you to

00:23:12.980 export as much as you want to sell and as much as they want to buy. So I'm not an engineer. I think

00:23:20.260 the goal and what I've seen the proponents talking about is being able to ship in as little as five

00:23:28.340 years from. So that's what their goal is. Oh, five years at the soonest. Got it. So we're going to be

00:23:36.740 shipping LNG to Europe by 2030 earliest. Hey, thanks guys. Thanks for helping get Europe off of Russian 1.00

00:23:45.460 oil and gas. I shouldn't say oil though. There are no plans to get Canadian oil to market. Not a word

00:23:52.340 about oil other than it's not going. I'm not aware of a proponent who's talking about that right now.

00:24:03.140 Yeah, that was a pretty quick clip. The last question I think was the best though. Why would

00:24:07.700 anyone trust a liberal to get an energy deal done? I mean, these aren't the Christian liberals. 1.00

00:24:13.540 These are the Trudeau Carney liberals. Do we face a credibility gap because it takes time to get

00:24:19.700 projects going approved and actually being developed and exploited? What's what's the kind of conversation

00:24:26.900 you're having with? I looked around that room today and there were an awful lot of

00:24:31.860 awful lot of German companies that were pretty interested in working with us. The liberals destroyed

00:24:37.460 the oil and gas industry. Do you think they're going to rebuild it? They're not even saying that they will.

00:24:42.820 They're maybe going to get some gas going. They're not going to get the oil industry growing. They

00:24:48.980 say the soonest they expect anything to be built is in five years. So that means 10.

00:24:54.740 Not a word about private industry, all managed from the top like the UN does, like the World Economic

00:25:00.260 Forum does, which makes sense. That's where Carney is from. How long do you think Canadians will put up 0.56

00:25:05.940 with all these buzzwords and all these self cheerleading press conferences and all this fog?

00:25:16.020 Well, my observation is Canadians will put up with it indefinitely. Stay with us for more. 1.00

00:25:22.820 Well, I measure the success of rebel news journalism in various ways. Sometimes the reaction we get,

00:25:39.060 sometimes if we change public policy, but the depth of the reaction, not just journalistically, but in terms of

00:25:45.700 people chipping into the legal defense fund, tells me that the case of Lindsay, Ontario native Jeremy

00:25:53.700 McDonald has struck a chord, not just with Ontarians, but with people across Canada. You know the story.

00:26:02.100 Jeremy McDonald asleep in his home at 3am, which is a good thing to do at 3am when someone breaks into his

00:26:10.820 home with a crossbow, which is a weapon that means to kill. Incredibly McDonald manages to get the best

00:26:19.940 of it. And in an altercation leaves the intruder, a serial criminal known to police. Well, I won't

00:26:28.660 describe the details of it. I'll let the court hear them. But let me just say the intruder was repelled.

00:26:34.900 Police came, charged the intruder, but also charged Jeremy with very serious offenses. I think

00:26:40.500 assault with a weapon was the name of one or aggravated assault. These are not minor charges. And if the

00:26:46.580 intruder happens to die, and I hope he doesn't, those charges could be elevated to manslaughter. So what is

00:26:53.460 the state of self-defense in Canada, especially in your home? There is no excuse whatsoever. There's no lawful

00:26:59.940 justification for breaking into a man's home at night. So why is it that the police have charged him?

00:27:06.740 We've done some talking and interviewing on this subject. My colleague Tamara Ugolini talked at

00:27:12.260 length with a criminal lawyer on the matter. But I think an excellent survey of the state of the law

00:27:17.620 was done by Tristan Hopper, a columnist with the National Post. In his compendium called First Reading,

00:27:24.580 he writes, you can legally shoot, stab, and bludgeon home invaders in Canada.

00:27:31.060 But that doesn't mean prosecutors won't put you through a years-long legal odyssey. And joining

00:27:38.500 us now to talk about that is Tristan Hopper. Tristan, thanks so much for making the time.

00:27:42.900 You really went through these cases. How did you find them all?

00:27:45.940 Pretty easy. It's something I've sort of been looking at on and off since 2011. So there are

00:27:53.460 some sort of, if you speak to sort of legal experts or lawyers who specialize in them,

00:27:57.940 there's a few sort of cases they'll point you to. There's a few that are high profile and then

00:28:02.900 there's a few that have gone under the radar. So I guess what's interesting about Lindsay Ontario

00:28:06.980 is this is obviously getting a lot of attention. You have everybody from Daniel Smith to Doug Ford

00:28:11.700 weighing in on them. But it's not an atypical case. There's been any number of cases just in

00:28:16.900 the last few years very similar in which someone's asleep in their home. Home invaders, they either

00:28:23.140 kill them or injure them and they are faced with criminal charges. So cases like this have happened

00:28:29.780 a lot. This one, probably because crime is so high right now and it's easy for all of us to sort of

00:28:35.380 imagine ourselves in the shoes of Mr. McDonald is getting more attention than is typical.

00:28:42.100 I think you're right. I think there's a few layers. First of all, this guy is a known serial criminal

00:28:46.900 and he was out on the street. I think that bothers a lot of people and we hear that story more often

00:28:51.780 than the opposite. I think the brazenness of it, I mean, breaking into a house at that hour

00:28:57.940 and there were accomplices on the street and the crossbow is just crazy. And I think my theory,

00:29:05.380 Tristan, is that one of the reasons police charged Jeremy McDonald, the homeowner,

00:29:10.740 is because they want to tamp down any member of the public who's getting big ideas

00:29:16.100 about finding an alternative solution to home security other than the police. I mean, we all know

00:29:21.780 the Toronto police officer whose advice was have your key fob to your car near the front door so

00:29:30.900 that when your home is raided, it's easy for the criminals and they don't linger. If that is what

00:29:36.020 the state does to protect us, maybe some more adventurous men are going to say, yeah, you know what,

00:29:44.580 I'll let others take that advice. I'm going to defend my own house. My theory is police charged

00:29:49.860 Jeremy McDonald, not because he did something wrong, but because they want to set an example

00:29:54.820 and stop anyone else from thinking of defending themselves. What do you think?

00:29:58.500 It's keeping the peace principle. So, you know, deeply embedded in Canadian culture is this idea

00:30:04.260 that we keep the police, they keep the peace rather than doing the right thing. And those are very

00:30:08.180 different things to do. I mean, an issue you covered quite often is all these anti-Zionist protests

00:30:14.260 on the streets all the time. I mean, the right thing would be to stop, you know, open terror

00:30:19.460 supporters from illegally blocking roads, but instead you keep the peace. You do the less

00:30:25.940 disruptive option, which is to let the anti-Zionist to step free reign over the street. So, yeah,

00:30:31.460 you could argue about it from that perspective. The pattern I saw when I was looking at, because

00:30:36.580 there are cases, there was one in Alberta, one I found in Ontario, in which there is a dead or injured

00:30:43.540 home invader and no charges are laid. So you have a homeowner who was not put through this legal

00:30:49.860 odyssey that Mr. McDonald's put through. The ones I looked at in which that wasn't the case, and

00:30:54.660 usually the pattern is, you're hit with second-degree murder or manslaughter or assault charges,

00:31:00.020 and, you know, you're arrested. You have strict bail conditions. You have to spend tens, if not

00:31:05.620 hundreds of thousands of dollars on your legal defense. And then a few months later or two years

00:31:10.340 later, the Crown ends up dropping the charges. So, yeah, you basically put through this two-year

00:31:15.540 legal odyssey. Now, in all of those cases, and this isn't universally the case, the homeowner, there was

00:31:22.180 something that they weren't squeaky clean. So maybe their son sold drugs from his bedroom. You know,

00:31:29.860 maybe there was one illegal .22 firearm in the house. You know, maybe they were facing

00:31:35.940 unrelated drug charges somewhere else. So police are called to the scene. There's a dead guy on the

00:31:42.020 ground, and they say, well, you know, you've got drug. How do we know that, you know, this wasn't just

00:31:47.540 a drug that had gone wrong. So rather than actually investigating the true case of it, you know,

00:31:52.260 you just have an imperfect individual who was still placed in a dangerous situation and had to defend

00:31:57.060 themselves. You just refer it to Crown, and the truth eventually comes out. But in the interim,

00:32:04.180 whether it's five months or two years, you put this essentially innocent individual through illegal

00:32:09.060 hell. So that seemed to be the pattern that emerged for me. It was just police, rather than

00:32:16.500 determining what the case was here. You found, you know, you saw a marijuana pipe, and you said,

00:32:22.740 no, okay, this, you know, this is a job for the prosecutors, rather than getting to the root

00:32:28.260 of what actually happened. You know, I think that's a very wise perception. I think you're right.

00:32:33.140 You know, Lavrenti Beria, the old Soviet secret policeman said, show me the man,

00:32:37.860 I'll find you the crime. And the thing is, none of us are perfect. And if we are in our own homes,

00:32:43.300 maybe there's something that, that's, you know, uninvited police into our homes might see something

00:32:48.900 that maybe, I'm not making a confession here, by the way, but I think you're exactly right. Police

00:32:54.500 might say, oh, you're not as squeaky clean. But the thing is, the right to self-defense doesn't

00:33:00.340 depend on you being a squeaky clean, you know, virtuous saint. And that I, what I love about the

00:33:08.100 castle doctrine, as the law is sometimes called where a man's home is his castle, it's ancient.

00:33:14.500 It's not just an idea cooked up in the United States. It's an ancient principle from the United

00:33:20.660 Kingdom, from which we take our laws also. And in particular, the king or his soldiers cannot come

00:33:27.940 into your house without a warrant. Imagine that you're in a kingdom, especially centuries ago,

00:33:34.580 but the king himself cannot bust down your door without a, without a legal reason. And I find that

00:33:43.140 so important to our whole notion of our place in democracy, property rights, just so many things

00:33:51.460 depend on that. We don't seem to have that. You know, I take your point in the end, we have that,

00:33:57.140 but anyone who dares to assert that right is put through two years of hell first. That's what,

00:34:01.700 that's what your report basically says. Yeah. The, the, the typical response is yeah. Yeah.

00:34:06.260 If someone breaks in and you've been here to kill them, you're probably going to be arrested that

00:34:10.340 night. And the best case scenario is that you're home the next morning and no charges are laid. And

00:34:14.740 that, that does happen. Um, but yeah, if, if you're an impaired individual and you know,

00:34:20.740 the people profiled, they didn't do anything wrong. Um, but you know, maybe they weren't, uh,

00:34:25.940 just an upstanding member of the rotary club, um, who just happened to have someone in their

00:34:30.900 basements. Um, you know, they lived in a rough neighborhood, things have gone wrong in their

00:34:34.100 lives. So, um, it seemed to be more of a case of just bad police work. Um, now I guess one factor

00:34:40.820 in the police's defense is if you've actually killed someone and you're guilty of it, you always,

00:34:45.860 almost always claim self-defense. So it's the most common cause. So police show up, there's a body,

00:34:51.140 you killed them, uh, over a drug debt. You say, oh, he charged in and he tried to kill me. So I had

00:34:55.460 to shoot first. Um, so there's been several cases which did not succeed at the Supreme Court level,

00:35:02.180 uh, in which you've had a pretty obvious case of, um, it's a gangland killing or it's a crime of

00:35:08.340 passion. Uh, someone claims self-defense and that's slapped down by the courts. Uh, so I guess I would

00:35:13.380 argue in these cases, it's, it's the job of the police before that two-year legal odyssey has proceeded

00:35:19.140 to sort of determine what is, is the truth. You know, this, this person claiming defense,

00:35:23.140 self-defense is potentially different than the actual criminal claiming self-defense to get

00:35:27.460 away with killing someone. You know, I want to talk about, uh, Doug Ford and, and he took to the

00:35:33.620 microphone very soon after this. Let me play a clip of, of Ford referring to the case of Jeremy

00:35:39.620 McDonald. Here, take a look. Everyone hear about the story in Lindsay? So this criminal that's wanted

00:35:44.740 by the police, breaks into this guy's house, this guy gives him a beating, and this guy gets charged.

00:35:52.820 Like, and the other guy gets charged. But, like, something is broken. I know if someone breaks

00:35:58.340 into my house or someone else's, you're gonna fight for your life. This guy has a weapon. You're

00:36:03.620 gonna use any, any force you possibly can to, to protect your family. I'm telling you, I know

00:36:09.700 everyone would. I'd be scared to break into Kevon's house. Look at the, he's like a linebacker. He'd beat

00:36:15.140 the living crap out of the guy, as he should. I, I, because no, enough's enough here. There, 0.99

00:36:23.140 violent, violence and, and, uh, breaking into people's homes, putting guns in their heads.

00:36:27.780 And guess what? Some bleeding heart judge, little Johnny, he didn't have a good upbringing. So we're

00:36:34.020 gonna let him out on bail five more times, uh, because he's on his fifth, uh, you know,

00:36:38.660 being let out on bail five times, just to go do the same thing, uh, the next day. I'll tell you one

00:36:44.100 thing. I get more calls than anyone in the country. People are done with this. They're absolutely done.

00:36:51.140 They're finished. You should be able to protect your family when someone's going in there to harm your

00:36:56.900 family and your kids. You should use all resources you possibly can to protect your family. And maybe these

00:37:03.300 criminals will think twice about breaking into someone's home. That's not the first time

00:37:07.220 Doug Ford has talked about this. In fact, he used the phrase castle law, uh, himself before. I just

00:37:13.460 want a quick flashback to that. Take a look. Uh, I mean, he's talked about it several times and he

00:37:17.540 himself, uh, would have had a car was stolen from his property, but because police are stationed at his

00:37:25.060 house, they quickly intercepted it. But here's, here's where he was talking about castle law. Take a look.

00:37:29.860 Did you hear about the guy that these thugs came up, you know, ready to steal his car. They're all

00:37:35.380 in their masks and everything. So I guess he was a hunter or something. He shot, he shot a shot up in

00:37:40.340 the air. I don't recommend that by the way, but he gets charged. I got to find out this guy's name and

00:37:46.580 number and I'm going to hold a fundraiser for lawyer fees for him. He should get a medal for standing up.

00:37:52.340 It's like down in the U S we should have the castle law. Someone breaks into your house. And I know any of

00:37:58.100 these people here, someone breaks in your house and they're coming after your kids and you're

00:38:02.260 coming after your spouse. You're going to fight like you've never fought before. You're going to

00:38:06.660 use anything that you have, be it weapons, baseball bats, knives, you're protecting your family.

00:38:12.420 These thugs shouldn't be coming in there. Here's my point, Tristan, you got the premier of the

00:38:17.140 province. He's been premier of Ontario for seven years. During that time, he has appointed many judges

00:38:22.900 to the provincial court. Um, he is in charge of the prosecutors. Of course, he doesn't meddle in

00:38:29.220 each case, but he sets broad policy. He's in charge of the legislature. He could make amendments to,

00:38:35.780 to certain things. I know the criminal law is a federal matter, but there are certain things

00:38:39.540 provinces can do. He, he supervises the police. He supervises the prosecutors. Here's my point.

00:38:45.220 Do you buy it when the, when the politician most responsible for the state of affairs in policing

00:38:54.180 and prosecutions says he's for castle doctrine, but he stands by passively while a man is charged?

00:39:02.900 I mean, how can, on the one hand, he claim he's for it when for seven years, he's done nothing to,

00:39:07.460 to bring it into effect. Are you going to ask me to argue if Doug Ford says things that are not backed

00:39:13.780 up by any kind of policy or, you know, systemic changes whatsoever? Um, I, I, I guess so. Yeah.

00:39:20.420 Um, so, I mean, he could argue, he could be comforted by the fact that, um, I mean, the reason

00:39:26.500 these issues, you know, are so easily seized the public narrative is because we can all imagine

00:39:30.420 ourselves in those situations. So that's why it's very hard for prosecutors to make these charges.

00:39:37.060 I couldn't find a single case in which there was a case of a home invasion and someone actually was

00:39:41.460 convicted. Um, unless it was a lesser charge, uh, sort of, they did have an illegal firearm in the

00:39:47.140 house, uh, or something, because all you have to do is once you get in front of a jury, you're like,

00:39:51.540 you know, uh, I'm sitting there. I did not ask for this. I hear glass breaking downstairs. I grab a lamp

00:39:57.540 or something, um, and, and, and charge in. So, um, yeah, I think there are like a lot of things,

00:40:05.220 um, you know, be at the, the rise in auto thefts, the rise in stranger attacks, any number of horrifying

00:40:11.700 crimes that are becoming more and more regular. Um, there are fixes that can be done to make these

00:40:16.660 go down sometimes incredibly simple fixes. You know, I remember the days when fixing crime was

00:40:21.220 complicated. Now it's quite easy. Uh, just stop, stop letting, um, you know, serial criminals out to

00:40:27.460 continue break, uh, breaking the law, you know, find a way to stop that. Um, so yeah, if you're just

00:40:33.220 going to sort of express, uh, sympathy, uh, with Mr. McDonald, uh, but you're not going to sort of

00:40:39.620 back it up with potential changes to enshrine this case. So, um, I, I guess I could, if I could get

00:40:46.020 into Doug Ford's head, maybe he's being a little cautious. He's still thinking, well, what if we

00:40:50.580 find out Jeremy McDonald knew the guy, um, or, you know, he, he was coming in for some other reason,

00:40:55.860 and this wasn't a pure case. That's a good reason for the premier not to meddle in any live case to

00:40:59.860 begin with. I mean, the right answer is not to talk about any cases before the courts,

00:41:04.180 but Doug Ford didn't choose that, uh, discretion. And that's what the police are saying. So the police,

00:41:10.180 Canadian police, you know, classically give very few details about any of these things.

00:41:14.420 So it's easy for us to speculate, but they're claiming if you follow this through the court,

00:41:19.060 you're going to, you're going to come around to our side. Uh, now they've said that in all of the

00:41:22.660 prior cases I mentioned in which someone didn't do anything wrong and five months later,

00:41:26.740 their life is ruined and now the charges are dropped. Um, but that's what their claim is.

00:41:31.620 They're saying, well, there's something that's going to come out that's, this isn't going to be

00:41:34.820 your, your pure case of home invasion. So, um, I, I guess that's the, that's the biggest credit

00:41:40.340 I could potentially give to the police service in this case. Um, but at the worst case scenario,

00:41:44.660 yeah, he just defended himself and they decided to throw the book at him because, you know, he was,

00:41:49.620 he punched him once more than he should have. Yeah. You know, Justin Trudeau legalized marijuana.

00:41:55.700 It's now in every corner, uh, store of this country, any, every corner of this country.

00:42:00.340 Um, but for a decade or two before that police forces, prosecutors, usually at the provincial

00:42:06.820 level all made the decision. We are not going to prosecute people for simple possession of a small

00:42:13.220 amount of marijuana. It's just not in the public interest. And frankly, there is not a reasonable

00:42:18.260 chance of conviction. It was a decision to use discretion, not to do something, even though

00:42:22.980 it was in the criminal code. And we see that all the time. There is nudity, for example,

00:42:27.220 in pride parades, uh, nudity than in other cases would yield a prosecution under the criminal code.

00:42:32.820 There's a section against nudity. My point is police have the ability to make these decisions.

00:42:37.700 And for some reason, neither Doug Ford nor frankly, Danielle Smith of Alberta have said,

00:42:42.980 we simply as a matter of policy will not prosecute these. And my hope is that the case

00:42:48.260 of Jeremy McDonald changes that by the way, folks, if you haven't chipped in yet, feel free to go to

00:42:53.700 castle law now.com. That's a website we've set up with the only authorized crowdfund to help

00:43:00.740 Jeremy McDonald. I've spoken to a few times on the phone and, you know, obviously he's rattled by this

00:43:05.620 whole thing to say the least. Uh, Tristan, thank you very much for taking the time. I really would

00:43:10.500 recommend to anyone to follow Tristan in the national post. He, he has columns, but he also does these

00:43:16.580 compendiums that I just think are great surveys of the news. Uh, what are you working on now? How,

00:43:21.940 and what's the best way for people to follow you? Go to the national post, buy my book,

00:43:27.220 don't be Canada. Uh, or we have a new season of my podcast. Uh, Canada did what?

00:43:34.020 Canada did what? Excellent. Thanks for taking the time with us. I really appreciate it. And it was an

00:43:38.740 excellent read. I think you, if I can contrast that the CBC, it felt like they were deploying expert

00:43:44.900 after expert to say, no, do not defend yourselves. It felt like a weird campaign by the CBC. Do not

00:43:51.700 defend yourself. And I, I think your, your essay here is a good counterpoint to that. So thanks

00:43:56.740 very much. All right. I hope everyone stays safe. Thank you very much. There he is, Tristan Hopper.

00:44:02.820 Stay with us more ahead. Hey, welcome back. Your letters to me. Cecilia 9169 says,

00:44:18.580 it's my understanding is there was already a law against burning the American flag,

00:44:23.620 like what those people were burning our flag. So I'm so glad that he has done this

00:44:27.460 because in Obama white house, they let it actually, um, burning the American flag has

00:44:34.660 repeatedly being held by the courts to be expression and protected by the first amendment.

00:44:42.820 I read Trump's executive order and about two thirds of it really is saying that they will respect the

00:44:50.340 US first amendment. Otherwise this thing would be struck down in a moment. He said two things,

00:44:54.820 really three things. The first is they would sort of test what the limits of the first amendment is.

00:44:59.220 Okay. Recognizing that first amendment covers a lot of it. The second thing is that if you burn a flag

00:45:06.100 while in a riot, where it's not really about expressive comment, uh, expressive content,

00:45:13.220 you're not expressing a view. It's a becoming a weapon or something that that will be prosecuted.

00:45:18.740 How often does that happen? I don't think it happens very often. And then the final part was

00:45:24.740 if you are here on a visa, if you are a foreigner and burn the flags, get out. And that's not even a 0.99

00:45:31.140 first amendment thing. It's a, you are expressing your opposition to America as a country. I don't

00:45:37.300 know if that will survive the first amendment. Um, I would think that the first amendment is something

00:45:41.940 that citizens can avail themselves of. I don't know if it'll work in the deportation context, but I

00:45:47.540 think Donald Trump, or at least the lawyers who crafted that executive order, know that burning

00:45:53.780 a flag is part of the first amendment, which is why the flag is so powerful in a way, because that's

00:46:00.580 the free, the freedom, so free that you can burn the flag and it's still allowed. I don't know. It's a,

00:46:08.580 it's an interesting way to approach the culture war. If you read the executive order,

00:46:13.140 it really realizes that free speech is strong. Uh, next letter from Mark Hachette, 1809,

00:46:19.460 it says, Queers for Palestine is like turkeys for Thanksgiving. It was quite a showdown between

00:46:25.220 the Queers for Palestine and the regular pride parade. Um, the police didn't do anything to move

00:46:33.060 the Queers for Palestine because they know the pecking order. I remember a decade ago, I wrote a 0.99

00:46:38.820 column about politically correct poker, probably 20 years ago now, where I said, you know, straight

00:46:45.620 white men, it's like playing poker and maybe you have a pair of twos or something pretty low hand. 0.59

00:46:51.620 And then I said, well, if you're a woman, it's slightly more, if you're black, it's slightly more 1.00

00:46:56.180 disabled, gay. What's the tippy top political poker? Well, these days it's obviously Hamas. It's 0.99

00:47:03.540 obviously Islam. I mean, LGBTQ2SL plus is pretty powerful, but nothing can top Hamas. It's a very 1.00

00:47:13.540 upside down way we're living. I think that's our show for today until tomorrow on behalf of all of

00:47:18.500 us here at rebel world headquarters to you at home. Good night and keep fighting for freedom.

00:47:33.540 heart.

Rebel News Podcast - August 27, 2025

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Carney’s non-answer on energy exports reveals everything Canadians need to know

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