Rebel News Podcast - August 27, 2026


EZRA LEVANT | Danielle Smith just shut down the craziest idea in Canada's trade war


Episode Stats


Length

52 minutes

Words per minute

159.47

Word count

8,330

Sentence count

412

Harmful content

Misogyny

14

sentences flagged

Toxicity

15

sentences flagged

Hate speech

10

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hello, my friends, Danielle Smith puts her foot down and ends this gossipy idea that 1.00
00:00:05.880 maybe Alberta should actually turn off the oil pipeline to America to get revenge on 1.00
00:00:12.400 Donald Trump. 1.00
00:00:13.440 Stupidest idea of the year? 1.00
00:00:15.360 Yes, it was. 1.00
00:00:16.460 But it was being said by people who, well, they're not stupid. 1.00
00:00:20.440 They're just morally backwards. 0.98
00:00:22.560 I'm talking about Naheed Nenshi, Jason Kenney, and Doug Ford.
00:00:26.200 I'll take you through it.
00:00:27.040 But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
00:00:30.580 It's the video version of this podcast.
00:00:32.880 Just go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe.
00:00:36.000 It's eight bucks a month, which might not seem like a lot to you, but it sure adds up for us.
00:00:44.620 You're listening to a Rebel News Podcast.
00:00:47.000 tonight since when can politicians just order companies to shut themselves down
00:01:01.600 to blackmail donald trump it's august 26 and this is the ezra levant show
00:01:06.920 shame on you you censorious bug
00:01:17.000 i saw a story on ctv i think other media jumped on it it was outrage at a store in ontario that 0.91
00:01:30.600 was still selling u.s liquor oh my god holy cow we got to stop them except there's no law against
00:01:37.760 selling u.s liquor it was just a decision made by the government-run liquor board of ontario the
00:01:43.420 ALCBO to take that American product off the shelf as some sort of a tit for tat with America.
00:01:49.740 But imagine the mindset that finds some merchant selling something that's politically incorrect.
00:01:56.960 And it's a mob.
00:01:57.780 It reminded me of the COVID mania.
00:02:00.560 He's not wearing a mask.
00:02:02.240 He's not vaxxed.
00:02:03.960 That mass formation psychosis.
00:02:06.780 And it was just so gross that there was, there's a mob mentality, a wilding.
00:02:12.560 And there's no room for any alternative point of view, including that maybe people are being duped by a lying Mark Carney. 0.60
00:02:20.860 If you watched my interview last night with the ambassador from the United States, he didn't quite call Mark Carney a liar.
00:02:27.520 He just said, well, you'll have to ask Mark Carney for the explanation because I think Carney is lying to us about the deal.
00:02:33.920 When he said that it was a violation of Quebec culture, I think he was lying.
00:02:38.780 when he said it was demanding new things of Canada
00:02:41.960 for not doing trade deals with China,
00:02:43.720 I think he was lying.
00:02:46.000 But you don't need to prime the pump a lot
00:02:48.260 to get Canadians mad at Donald Trump.
00:02:50.100 For 10 years now,
00:02:51.720 the media has absolutely been hammering that drum.
00:02:55.300 And I think probably Donald Trump
00:02:57.760 is hated by 75, 80% of Canadians.
00:03:02.140 And that's what this is, really.
00:03:03.340 It's an erotic expression of hate that is just, it really reminds me of Orwell's Two Minutes of Hate.
00:03:14.060 But there's an idea underneath it that we accept it, which is that somehow the people at that liquor store are not individuals who need to be persuaded
00:03:27.600 or are not individuals who have to sell liquor because they bought it from the wholesaler and
00:03:32.420 you know they can't just pay for something and not resell it they have all this inventory
00:03:37.820 they're small business people they go have to go out of business let them do what they want and if
00:03:41.880 they find a willing buyer that's their business what uh consenting adults do in their own privacy
00:03:48.140 is none of our business there's a larger idea besides the mania and the brainwashing and the
00:03:54.020 minutes of hate, there's an implication that you are not your own. You belong to the state.
00:04:02.080 You must be an instrument of whatever the political fashion of the moment is. And during
00:04:08.640 the pandemic, it was about COVID vaccines and masks. And now it's about doing symbolic
00:04:14.260 things to show you hate America. And one of the things we saw in the New York Times, because
00:04:20.140 we didn't learn about it in our own media, of course, is that one of the quirks of the
00:04:24.820 negotiation was that Mark Carney offered to the United States to get the Keystone XL pipeline
00:04:30.600 going again in return for America giving Carney certain concessions, which you would think that
00:04:36.500 Carney would want the Keystone XL pipeline to proceed himself, that he wouldn't have to be
00:04:41.720 bribed or persuaded or traded with by the Americans for that. The Keystone XL pipeline,
00:04:48.180 It's now renamed. When it was originally planned, it was 800,000 barrels of oil a day that would go to the United States all the way down to Texas to their refineries there. And it was stopped by Barack Obama and Justin Trudeau didn't lift a finger to restart it. And Mark Carney, of course, was Trudeau's economic advisor at the time.
00:05:09.620 But the Keystone XL pipeline is a private project. There's not one dollar of tax money in it. They had an open season, as they call it. They said, who wants, if we revive this pipeline, who wants to have a part in it? And they sold out 20 years worth of commitment.
00:05:27.700 So it's such a going concern. It doesn't need any money to subsidize anything. It'll be a massive source of not only jobs, but of taxes. And Mark Carney did not go into the negotiation with Trump and saying, here's something we want or here's what we have to offer.
00:05:44.860 um he resented it he resisted it he said uh you have to sweeten your pot before we give you this
00:05:53.620 instead of looking at it as an enormous jobs booster for canada i think mark carney hates
00:05:59.700 the keystone excel pipeline and its successor because he doesn't have any stake in it uh as
00:06:05.420 far as i know brookfield asset management doesn't own it he can't take credit for it it's the same
00:06:09.960 reason why the minister of AI, um, uh, Evan Solomon, who crows about a $10 million investment
00:06:19.220 here or 10 million there, hasn't said a word about the $13 billion Facebook meta data center
00:06:25.740 because he can't take credit for it. But again, my point is the same as dealing with the little
00:06:29.960 shop selling American liquor. Since when is a private asset that has completely lawful has
00:06:37.060 met all the obligations and regulations? Since when is it a tool or a weapon for some politician?
00:06:46.300 And as you can see over the past few weeks, the failures of Mark Carney and Doug Ford,
00:06:51.820 and that is a failure. They all said they wanted a deal. They all promised a deal. Mark Carney said
00:06:57.120 it was what made him different and better than Pierre Paul Levy. It was the central ballot
00:07:00.640 question in 2025. Mark Carney failed. Doug Ford failed. Doug Ford is doing a jester routine to
00:07:08.060 hide that. He's being ruder and ruder and more performative. And it's to the delight of our
00:07:13.160 media, of course. But if you are a steel worker or an auto worker, Doug Ford failed. And so he
00:07:20.100 has tried to conscript Alberta and Alberta's exports into his jester performance. Now,
00:07:29.800 Danielle Smith immediately rejected this on social media, saying it's absolutely not a viable option.
00:07:36.760 It's not going to happen.
00:07:37.600 The idea that Doug Ford floated would be that Alberta would cut off exports of oil to the United States.
00:07:48.200 And it's because Alberta exports so much to the United States and it's so valuable.
00:07:53.320 um ontario exports precisely one percent of american electricity so that's not really a
00:08:01.060 threat that's going to make the uh americans um collapse to their knees although it would
00:08:05.980 certainly get a swift reaction by the way it's not just doug ford every politician around is
00:08:12.800 getting in on it because bashing trump is a great way to switch the subject here's the worst mayor 1.00
00:08:18.400 in Canada, Olivia Chow, going after Trump as if she has anything to do with trade negotiations 1.00
00:08:25.020 or electricity exports. Take a look. Look, this uncertainty is costing us, 1.00
00:08:30.560 it's costing everyone. And when the price goes up, no one is exempt. And I think what we should do
00:08:40.240 is follow Dolly Parton's way. 0.80
00:08:43.800 She lived her life full of love and joy and generous,
00:08:48.000 and President Trump could reflect on it
00:08:50.940 instead of these midnight schoolyard bullying and the vicious.
00:08:56.000 Just take a breather,
00:08:59.720 and my message to your American viewer is this.
00:09:03.760 This is senseless.
00:09:05.540 There's no reason for this kind of attack.
00:09:07.620 Our economy, our auto parts are so integrated, and that's why we're prosperous.
00:09:14.460 So give your local elected rep a call and say, come on, it's supposed to love for your neighbors as yourself, but stop the attack.
00:09:28.040 And let's negotiate, let's talk, because we are always stronger together.
00:09:34.180 Let me ask the question then this way, because I didn't hear an answer there.
00:09:37.020 Doug Ford also told the Associated Press that if this fight gets worse, the way he put it is everything is on the table, including cutting off electricity from Ontario going into the United States.
00:09:49.060 Do you support that move?
00:09:53.560 Well, whatever it takes, whatever it takes, uping the price of electricity, we have to get attention because this cannot continue.
00:10:04.480 The uncertainty is costing everyone.
00:10:08.380 And I have this, and we, as Canadians, are having a buy local, love local campaign.
00:10:17.000 There would be two apples, one's from America, one's from Canada.
00:10:22.320 We're going to buy Canadian apples.
00:10:23.880 Right, but proactively cutting off electricity going into the United States.
00:10:27.680 You would support that move as a measure to get the U.S. to the negotiating table.
00:10:37.600 Well, I think whatever our premier needs to do, we cannot continue this way because our economy is quite integrated.
00:10:50.660 If you think about the cars, how they're being built, because of this integration, we're more efficient.
00:10:55.940 We have good cars coming out because of the integration. So we cannot continue to fight and destroy each other economy. And the prices of everything is going up. It's painful. So we have to stop this.
00:11:12.780 Yeah. Every single politician in Canada, other than Scott Moe and Daniel Smith, would rather talk about Donald Trump and show how performative they are in hating him than to talk about the mess they've made out of their own jurisdiction.
00:11:28.880 So, of course, Libyan child is the front of the line. In Alberta, Nahid Nenshi, the opposition leader, I have to admit I'm surprised because when he was mayor of Calgary, he wasn't viciously anti-pipeline. In fact, I saw him on one occasion defend the Keystone XL pipeline. 0.96
00:11:45.660 He's absolutely in there now, demanding that Alberta cut off American oil as some sort of appeasement to Ontario or something, as some sort of poke in the eye to Donald Trump.
00:11:59.240 We weren't quite sure why, other than he and she wanted to go along with the bandwagon.
00:12:04.180 But the craziest part is Jason Kenney, the former leader of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, the former Stephen Harper cabinet minister who is known as one of the most conservative, the former premier of Alberta whose lifeblood is oil and gas.
00:12:20.480 Jason Kenney is now calling for Alberta to turn off the taps as a threat or punishment to Donald Trump.
00:12:28.540 Jason Kenney, the taxpayer's guy, is calling for the de facto nationalization of the oil industry.
00:12:37.420 What's the difference between Jason Kenney ordering a stop to oil production, using oil production as a weapon?
00:12:45.980 What's the difference between him doing it and Pierre Trudeau and Mark Lalonde doing it in the National Energy Program?
00:12:51.140 What's the difference? Both are a de facto nationalization.
00:12:54.700 Both of them are a continuation of what we talked about with the liquor store.
00:13:00.340 You invested, you put your money in, you built something up with the sweat of your brow.
00:13:05.740 You followed the rules.
00:13:07.180 You built something of value, unlike politicians.
00:13:11.300 And now those politicians are telling you that they will come along and use your works
00:13:17.420 for their politics.
00:13:18.640 By the way, Jason Kenney, I don't think it's an accident that he was undermining the premier
00:13:23.360 of Alberta who had just said that this is a non-starter. Not just undermining the premier,
00:13:29.040 but of course undermining those very Alberta ideas like the rule of law and the sanctity of
00:13:35.460 contract. You know, one of the reasons why Alberta is so successful is precisely because it respects
00:13:42.320 the law. It's not some gangster run place like many oil fields in Central Asia are. In Alberta,
00:13:50.180 you can rely on the law you won't be shaken down too much jason kenny is coming to shake down the
00:13:56.080 oil patch for political purposes we don't even know what jason kenny's purposes are actually
00:14:01.620 he talks about nationalizing the oil in albert and he uses the first person plural we should do this
00:14:08.700 but who is we jason kenny doesn't run anything he's not the boss of an oil company certainly
00:14:15.440 but he's not an elected official he was thrown out of office um if any contract was broken with
00:14:25.360 the united state there would be immediate massive strategic split with the u.s that would be the
00:14:31.580 most shocking thing that ever happened to canada's economy would make the great depression look like
00:14:36.480 a blip if there was a venezuela style nationalization of oil companies and when i mean
00:14:42.700 I don't mean actually expropriating the entire company, but imagine if Jason Kenney, a lobbyist, we don't know who's hiring him now, imagine if a lobbyist, Jason Kenney, and the rest of the we, Doug Ford from Ontario, apparently, imagine if they had their way and the oil was cut off.
00:15:00.800 imagine what america would do in return uh you could imagine that the canadian dollar by the
00:15:09.220 end of that week would be worth about 25 cents that the lights would be going off in canada i
00:15:15.300 mean in ontario they have to realize that 100 of their oil comes from the united states
00:15:20.680 most of it comes from alberta through the united states up to ontario about a quarter of it goes
00:15:26.760 straight from the United States to Ontario. You don't think that Trump would do that in a heartbeat
00:15:32.900 if Canada were to do something as destructive, illegal, shocking, jarring, defiant. China would
00:15:40.320 be thrilled, but that's about it. You know, I think I've shared with you before my theory about 1.00
00:15:44.900 banks and insurance companies and Trudeau's invocation in the Emergencies Act. Remember the
00:15:49.680 Emergencies Act and the way banks and insurance companies were instructed, ordered to seize and
00:15:56.560 freeze accounts and cancel accounts without any judicial process that's what was so insane and
00:16:01.460 what the federal court of appeal unanimously ruled was illegal and unconstitutional my theory and
00:16:07.300 i've never been able to to confirm it or i don't think it would be possible to confirm it unless
00:16:12.460 someone involved you know in 20 years in their memoirs wrote about it is that those same rules
00:16:19.100 applied to american banks and american insurance companies doing business in canada they did they
00:16:24.740 just simply did. But if you're running an American bank or an American insurance company and the
00:16:30.700 Canadian government orders you to rip up a contract with someone because they went to a peaceful
00:16:36.820 protest, that's quite likely going to violate a number of U.S. laws, not just the First Amendment,
00:16:41.880 but customer privacy and things of that sort. My theory, and I have no basis for it other than just
00:16:48.020 I was thinking about it, would be that those banks and insurance companies probably had the
00:16:53.640 commerce secretary, call up Chrystia Freeland or whoever and say, listen, you've had your moment,
00:16:59.240 but if you actually want us to comply with your order, we can't. Because if we have to choose
00:17:06.960 between American law or Canadian law, we're American banks, we're American insurance companies,
00:17:12.220 and we will withdraw from Canada the same way American banks withdrew from Venezuela when
00:17:18.820 things were nationalized the same way they withdrew from russia recently and my theory my speculation
00:17:26.120 is that faced with this trudeau and the finance minister said you know what if there was a run
00:17:32.640 on the banks literally if american banks pulled out because we were the new venezuela that would
00:17:37.700 tank the economy in the manner i described earlier that's my theory is that america secretly and
00:17:43.780 quietly said, Canada, we're not going along with your banana republic ideas here, so wrap
00:17:49.940 it up.
00:17:51.160 I think Jason Kenney probably knows it's insane to turn off the pipes to America, but I think
00:17:58.240 he's doing it to undermine Danielle Smith, to undermine her authority, and actually to
00:18:02.880 undermine Pierre Paglia by basically saying, hey, Pierre Paglia, you better match me.
00:18:07.880 I'm Jason Kenney, and I'm your potential rival, so you'd better be as radical as I am.
00:18:14.960 And I guess most importantly is Jason Kenney is known across the country as the former Alberta Premier.
00:18:20.740 So when he talks about sticking it to Alberta, stabbing Alberta oil men, he's giving a form of license to the rest of the country, certainly the rest of the media, to attack the oil patch.
00:18:31.180 He's normalizing the idea that all those private sector people in that wonderful industry that
00:18:38.580 has given so much to the country, they are fair game to attack them and demand that they
00:18:43.820 undo themselves.
00:18:45.980 Well, luckily, Alberta and Saskatchewan are not really agreeing to this.
00:18:50.920 I mean, they're using language lamenting the failure of the negotiation, and they're putting
00:18:57.940 on a bit of a performance about how mad they are, but they're not performatively insulting
00:19:03.800 or attacking Donald Trump or the Americans like Wab Canoe and Doug Ford did or E.B. and Premier
00:19:10.840 E.B. in British Columbia. Here's Scott Moe saying, yeah, no, he's not going to participate. Take a
00:19:17.040 look. Similarly, we cannot in any way support the adding of export tariffs on a product like oil.
00:19:23.780 Again, it would be an unsustainable hit to our Canadian economy, and in particular, our Saskatchewan and Alberta economy.
00:19:30.820 Canadians would lose jobs immediately.
00:19:33.120 We as a nation would lose investment immediately.
00:19:36.580 And I would put forward that an export tariff on oil would have a far greater impact on those that are living in eastern Canada
00:19:42.560 than it would even on those that are directly working in the energy industry.
00:19:46.560 20-50% of Canadians' refined petroleum products, our diesel, our gasoline, is produced through products that are produced in Western Canada, travel through the United States of America back into Canada to be refined and utilized.
00:20:01.040 An export tariff on that Canadian Western oil would most assuredly result in a much higher price on gasoline, largely in Eastern Canada.
00:20:11.700 Again, this is only a function of a flawed policy discussion that we have had in this nation over the course of the last decade or better, where we see those very, and all too often, those very same individuals that are promoting export tariffs on a product like oil.
00:20:27.440 Ten years ago, we're the very same individuals standing up and saying we should not build important energy security infrastructure like the Energy East Pipeline.
00:20:35.620 Flawed policy ten years ago, flawed policy today, we should not make the same mistake twice.
00:20:41.700 And today, in fact, just about half an hour ago, as I record this, Danielle Smith had a sort of an address to the nation.
00:20:49.940 It was a video address. And I was very worried about this because you can only imagine the amount of pressure that's being put on Danielle Smith.
00:20:57.600 You've got Mark Carney, Doug Ford, all the other anti-Trump maniacs.
00:21:03.340 You've got the media, the worst of all. You've got the official opposition. You've got Jason Kenney.
00:21:08.140 All of these hounds are baying and screaming and shrieking.
00:21:15.420 And I was a little bit worried that she would bend the knee.
00:21:18.600 She didn't.
00:21:19.660 Here's a clip from her press conference today.
00:21:21.860 First, I want to address the calls I've seen from some, including the NDP official opposition leader,
00:21:27.680 to threaten export taxes or curtailment of Alberta's energy resources as a bargaining chip in this dispute.
00:21:35.140 Although I understand the need to respond strongly to these tariffs, I cannot think of a more disastrous policy decision than cutting off or taxing Alberta's oil to the United States.
00:21:47.220 Doing so would absolutely devastate the Canadian economy.
00:21:51.200 It would not only extinguish the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Albertans, it would economically hobble our friends and neighbours in other provinces to the east.
00:22:01.780 Danielle Smith actually walked people through what happened, what would happen step by step
00:22:07.180 if such an insane idea were to come to fruition. Let me play a couple of minutes for you
00:22:11.960 of her belief of what would happen if we turned off the pipelines. The most interesting,
00:22:17.600 which I think was right, is that those refineries in Texas that we serve with our oil
00:22:21.500 would immediately be filled up with Venezuelan oil. And America would say,
00:22:26.080 we actually don't need your oil anymore.
00:22:29.000 I thought that was an interesting and plausible scenario here. 1.00
00:22:32.440 Watch Danielle Smith be the grown-up in the room 1.00
00:22:35.320 and walk people through the scenario 1.00
00:22:37.540 that they were too stupid to think of for themselves 1.00
00:22:40.900 or, like Jason Kenney, motivated by some external malice. 1.00
00:22:44.900 Take a look at this lecture from Danielle Smith
00:22:47.340 that I thought was excellent.
00:22:48.620 And it's important that this be understood by every Canadian.
00:22:51.780 If Canada were to put, let's say, a 50% export tariff
00:22:55.080 on the 4 million barrels of oil that we export daily to the United States.
00:22:58.540 The United States would immediately respond with a 50 to 100 percent export tariff
00:23:02.700 on oil and natural gas that they export to Ontario,
00:23:05.480 along with millions of barrels of diesel fuel and gasoline
00:23:07.840 that Ontario and Quebec import from the Midwest.
00:23:10.300 This would bring the economies of Ontario and Quebec to a grinding halt.
00:23:13.480 Meanwhile, all those refineries in the United States
00:23:15.340 that currently use Alberta's heavy oil would start looking to Venezuela
00:23:17.660 for replacement heavy oil and reverse the pipelines northward
00:23:20.160 to get it to Midwest refineries.
00:23:21.680 As a result, we would lose the United States as a customer entirely
00:23:24.480 and likely forever. This would result in the loss of about half a million jobs, at a minimum,
00:23:28.240 mostly in Alberta, but also hundreds of thousands of jobs in Ontario and Quebec. And if we cut off
00:23:32.540 our oil entirely, what then? The same results, but even worse. The United States would, of course,
00:23:36.440 respond and cut off all gasoline and diesel from their refineries to Ontario and Quebec,
00:23:39.680 right as we turn into fall and winter. And unlike Canada, the United States has strategic oil
00:23:43.840 reserves that Canada does not. So although their gasoline prices will increase, they will be able
00:23:47.480 to keep them at relatively manageable prices, just as they have done through the Iran war.
00:23:50.920 And without strategic oil reserves, Canada has no way to supply Ontario and Quebec with the
00:23:54.460 oil, natural gas, and fuels that they would need in a timely fashion. The Toronto Stock Exchange
00:23:58.120 would nosedive, along with millions of Canadians' investments, particularly our seniors, and small
00:24:02.220 and medium and large energy companies across Canada would shutter and lay off their employees,
00:24:05.860 unable to find a market for their product. There is a better way forward.
00:24:09.280 You know, there's a renaissance of socialism and communism these days. There's a number of
00:24:15.380 reasons for that. An entire cohort of students from K to 12 and university has been educated
00:24:23.220 in wokeness. I mean, 25 years of socialist education, it has a ramification in the world
00:24:30.480 when people move on. The election of communists like Olivia Chow in Toronto, Zoran Mamdani in
00:24:37.100 New York, Sadek Khan in London, it's normalized socialism again, and even socialist violence.
00:24:43.920 Luigi Mangione, who murdered the healthcare executive out of capital, despised for capitalists,
00:24:51.580 that kind of mania, that Antifa mania, Jason Kenney of all people is dipping into it, as
00:24:59.580 is Doug Ford, who was never more than a nominal conservative, but it's sort of shocking to
00:25:03.520 see from Jason Kenney.
00:25:05.040 And I think Danielle Smith was right to push back, but all of us need to push back because
00:25:09.780 every part of our political society now, from the media to industry leaders to politicians
00:25:17.980 are acting as if your life, that liquor merchant, that oil man, and that politician that we
00:25:27.220 all must become political weapons in this insane cult of personality attack on Trump.
00:25:34.600 There's a cult of personality for Trump, but even more powerful and even more deranged
00:25:40.340 is this cult of personality against Trump that think he's some cosmic evil, the source
00:25:46.580 of every problem in the world. And you must show your own virtue by outdoing everyone else. And
00:25:52.800 as we talked about the other day, the two minutes of hate, as Orwell would say. I'm furious with
00:25:58.460 what's going on and I'm disgusted what's happening with Jason Kenney, who used to be a champion
00:26:03.620 of the free market, property rights, and sanity. I don't know who he's working for now. I want to
00:26:09.700 know. And I think he's deeply discrediting himself. Why is he doing this? Money is one
00:26:14.600 One possible explanation, another might be, he wants to be premier again, so of course
00:26:19.560 he's undermining Daniel Smith.
00:26:21.840 Or really, he wants to get back to the big game, and he wants to undermine Pierre Polyev.
00:26:28.360 I was talking about these ideas earlier today with my friends on our daily livestream.
00:26:33.640 Let me throw to that for about 15 minutes.
00:26:35.700 Take a look.
00:26:44.680 There's a couple of things on my mind.
00:26:46.140 I had the opportunity yesterday to talk to the U.S. ambassador for half an hour on the show.
00:26:52.040 And in fact, we're going to release the video on YouTube today.
00:26:55.520 Last night was on my show, which is Behind a Paywall.
00:26:58.640 And one of the questions I asked, Olivia, do you have this clip ready?
00:27:01.200 is I asked about a report in the New York Times that Mark Carney raised the possibility of the
00:27:08.720 Keystone XL in the trade negotiations. And you would think that's a great thing because, I mean,
00:27:14.860 the Keystone XL now is a different name and it's slightly different, but it is still bringing in,
00:27:18.620 I don't know, $25 or $30 billion a year worth of revenue for, I mean, you have six, seven,
00:27:24.380 800,000 barrels of oil. You can, a day, you can do the math on that yourself. And so I thought,
00:27:30.280 oh, wow, this is sort of amazing.
00:27:31.840 But no, here, put it up.
00:27:34.720 If you have the New York Times tweet from Peter McCaffrey,
00:27:39.160 basically Carney said,
00:27:41.520 we'll give you the Keystone XL pipeline
00:27:43.720 only if you give us certain concessions.
00:27:46.960 So he was saying, he was implying
00:27:49.580 the Keystone XL was not something Canada wanted,
00:27:53.640 but it was something that Canada would grudgingly
00:27:55.740 give the United States if they made other concessions.
00:27:58.680 Here, let me read from the New York Times.
00:27:59.860 Mr. Carney had brought up the idea of reviving it during his first White House visit last year.
00:28:04.540 Officials said that when Mr. Carney and Mr. Trump spoke by phone early in the week, Mr. Carney again mentioned the pipeline, saying that for the right deal on tariffs, Canada would consider bringing its side of the pipeline back to life.
00:28:17.800 Mr. Trump was thrilled, a former official briefed on the talk said, but by Friday, the Keystone XL pipeline idea was buried again.
00:28:24.500 A U.S. official said that in the last few hours, Canada had expressed reluctance to cooperate.
00:28:32.340 A Canadian official said that the trade deal on offer was not good enough to make the pipeline make sense.
00:28:39.780 Hang on one second here.
00:28:41.160 This is a completely privately funded pipeline.
00:28:45.080 There's no government money in it.
00:28:47.420 The route has already been approved.
00:28:49.320 There's no regulatory or environmental hurdles.
00:28:51.400 There's no land claim issues.
00:28:53.140 how could it not make sense and but the whole framing was will grudgingly do you this favor
00:29:02.280 if you give us other things and if you won't give us our list of demands we will not give you the
00:29:10.060 we will not give you the keystone that is 30 billion dollars a year that's thousands of jobs
00:29:16.420 not just in the construction of the pipeline but in filling it with oil to him that was a negative
00:29:22.620 a burden, a concession. He didn't go in wanting it, asking for it, lobbying for it. He said no.
00:29:31.980 The New York Times published that saying he said no. I asked the ambassador about that yesterday.
00:29:36.740 Do we have that clip, Olivia? Here it is. One thing I learned, I think it was in the New York
00:29:43.020 Times, came as a surprise to me, is that Prime Minister Carney offered to the US side to revive
00:29:50.420 of the Keystone Excel Pipeline.
00:29:52.040 I think it has a different name now.
00:29:54.220 And this was sort of an offer to the U.S.
00:29:58.800 asking for some sort of concessions in return.
00:30:02.880 Can you speak to this?
00:30:04.020 Because, I mean, I'm from Alberta originally,
00:30:06.620 and the idea that Alberta would only get that pipeline
00:30:09.820 if a favor was done to Mark Carney
00:30:14.460 as opposed to him asking for this, trying to get this,
00:30:18.580 it seems rather upside down.
00:30:19.900 Can you shed any light on how the conversation around that pipeline went?
00:30:25.260 Because it sounds like Carney was reluctant.
00:30:29.120 Well, I mean, again, I as I was not in the room, OK, and it wouldn't be my role, even if I was to talk specifically about how the negotiations went or whatever.
00:30:43.040 You know, the there is no secret. OK, this was talked about way back in October.
00:30:49.220 that the Canadian-U.S. relationship,
00:30:56.280 you know, one of the strong features was that you have oil.
00:30:59.820 We process oil.
00:31:01.400 We process it into all types of byproducts
00:31:04.680 and those types of things.
00:31:06.540 I really, you know, can't shed any light
00:31:10.880 other than it was something that we were interested in.
00:31:16.180 I think everybody knows that we're interested
00:31:18.360 in getting more oil, you know, again, it will be the prime minister that will have to designate
00:31:27.900 or put some context into it as to how shipping more oil into the United States from Canada,
00:31:39.020 you know, would be viewed by the federal government. That's not us.
00:31:46.160 in other words um carney can answer that not me do you think a single regime journalist
00:31:54.540 has asked carney about that that was a 30 billion dollar a year revenue project completely privately
00:32:01.520 paid already permitted and licensed and carney says no it's not worth it on our side to proceed
00:32:07.960 what do you make of that from my perspective this is a complete and total affront to alberta and
00:32:15.580 Danielle Smith. We have said from the very beginning, we are staying out of your stupid 1.00
00:32:21.280 little trade war, Doug Ford and Mark Carney. And yet, and yet, Mark Carney dragged us into this. 0.99
00:32:28.120 This was a pipeline that Trump has already approved once. Justin Trudeau didn't fight for it
00:32:34.560 under Biden. It wasn't fought for under Obama. The idea that the Keystone XL should be dragged
00:32:44.500 into this mess when it wasn't even a part of it it shouldn't be used as a bargaining chip
00:32:48.340 Albertans and our premier have all said we do not want our oil and gas used as a bargaining chip
00:32:56.120 in this mess and somehow Mark Carney still did that and he's getting away with it with the full
00:33:02.300 support of Jason Kenney I might I add yeah not just that but the total I mean you would think
00:33:10.160 that we're talking about this monstrous $35 billion taxpayer investment in some pipeline
00:33:16.920 through BC that you just know will be blocked by a judge saying, oh, I've discovered a new
00:33:22.080 indigenous title to this land. So that is apparently interesting, a $35 billion taxpayer
00:33:29.640 sinkhole. But this completely privately financed pipeline that's ready to rock and that is full
00:33:35.920 of customers south bow which i think is the name of the company that owns it now uh went to market
00:33:41.860 they call it open season and they have 20-year commitments to fill that thing carney doesn't
00:33:46.960 want that developed because he he can't take credit for it he can't steer contracts to brookfield
00:33:52.580 what do you think of that well you know as far as this pipeline goes it's just from anybody
00:33:58.600 rational looking at it it's nothing but win there is a difficult trade conflict going on right now
00:34:05.900 This would be one of the things, doesn't cost Kearney anything to actually soothe the relationship.
00:34:11.200 I mean, it brings more revenue into Canada, brings revenue and jobs into Alberta.
00:34:15.820 We've been hearing that the Trans Mountain expansion is already at capacity with outgoing oil exports.
00:34:23.100 It's just, it goes back to that ideology that the Liberals at best grudgingly will allow any further development of oil and gas.
00:34:31.300 They have a deep-seated opposition to that resource in general, and he doesn't look at it as an asset to be developed.
00:34:40.560 He does look at it as a carrot to try and dangle, saying, oh, you know, well, we'll cut you off from spending billions of dollars on one of our domestic industries.
00:34:49.540 It's just insane, but it's not that unexpected, unfortunately.
00:34:53.620 Makes me very mad.
00:34:54.840 um lise what do you think of um jason kenney joining the bizarre chorus of socialists in
00:35:04.300 alberta rachel notley naheed nanshi and saying yes our oil exports to the states should be
00:35:12.500 weaponized we should use them as to blackmail donald trump does that work by the way you think
00:35:20.240 that's going to work i mean and kenny uses the the pronoun we we should do who who's we do you
00:35:29.120 have a frog in your pocket or something like like you're not a we anymore you were kicked out by
00:35:34.920 right on the screen there are two albertans who were repudiated rejected and thrown out by their
00:35:40.060 own people and he's saying we should do this who's we who's your client who's your paying client
00:35:46.140 Exactly this. The way that Jason Kenney has been force teaming with other former premiers or current premiers, whether it be Rachel Notley, whether it be Scott Moe, reeks of a desperate attempt of a washed up politician who wants to remain relevant.
00:36:04.180 And are we really expected to trust the COVID bros who made all of the mistakes not a handful of years ago and who are doing their level best to blow up this, you know, our diplomatic relationship with our friends in the United States? 0.78
00:36:21.640 They're always going to be our neighbors.
00:36:24.080 And this kind of, you know, the promotion of this kind of anti-American sentiment is it could be really damaging.
00:36:31.480 And Jason Kenney should not be trusted, I don't think.
00:36:35.020 What do you think?
00:36:36.080 I don't know who this exactly appeals to, except the anti-American liberals.
00:36:41.420 The NDP are already wildly Federalist.
00:36:43.600 You don't need to go out and convince them.
00:36:46.660 Jason Kenney's the guy.
00:36:47.820 They trot out to convince the 50% of conservative voters in this province that they need to stay within Confederation.
00:36:55.740 It ain't going to work.
00:36:56.800 These two job killers combined wiped out 400,000 jobs.
00:37:02.160 I pulled the numbers before we came on air.
00:37:04.540 During COVID, Alberta lost, I think it was 117,000 jobs for a time. 1.00
00:37:10.200 Rachel Notley responsible during her term for 183,000 jobs that just vaporized thanks to her weird commie climate policies and collusion with the federal liberals.
00:37:24.100 If these two are the ones that they're trotting out to make the business case, I don't know who they think they're convincing because we are not hard of remembering. 0.64
00:37:33.520 If they're making the business case, they should have made it when they were in office, when they had the opportunity.
00:37:38.100 But instead, the two of them attacked businesses.
00:37:41.380 They don't get to rebrand now.
00:37:43.560 No, truly, because if they're interested in nation building projects, we hear every day about the big and important and weighty things that they're doing.
00:37:50.560 This is the definition of a nation building project.
00:37:53.660 And it doesn't seem to be important to them.
00:37:55.960 It just goes to show that the Western provinces have every right to want to explore other options.
00:38:05.000 Because leaving it up to the Feds, leaving it up to Mark Carney, the economic genius that he is, look where it got us.
00:38:11.880 Well, and, you know, they say, Jason Kenney has said, Alberta's oil should be on the table as a bargaining chip.
00:38:19.180 This gives the NDP exactly what they want.
00:38:21.520 They've sought for years to put an end to Alberta's oil and gas sector.
00:38:26.580 This is exactly how they do it.
00:38:28.440 Well, this changes the political dynamic in Alberta, too.
00:38:31.600 Kenney has at least carefully never really been critical of his successor in Premier Smith.
00:38:36.560 He stayed out of that.
00:38:37.620 He's been activating himself politically.
00:38:39.280 He's obviously got some ambitions.
00:38:40.900 People are thinking maybe he's looking federal.
00:38:42.640 But now he's come out in an outright contrarian position to Premier Smith,
00:38:46.300 who came out clearly and said, our oil is not on the table.
00:38:50.180 And now we've got a former Premier Kenney hand in hand with Rachel Notley of the NDP, you know, representing a party that is in opposition to the sitting government right now and taking a position opposed to our Premier.
00:39:04.120 That's a big step and a big change in where things are sitting right now.
00:39:07.960 And I suspect Mr. Kenney is going to end up regretting this.
00:39:11.440 Yep. 0.94
00:39:12.300 You know, I think Danielle Smith has held her fire on Jason Kenney in a number of ways.
00:39:17.060 you know, it's a tradition, a convention, you might even say, that when one leader loses to
00:39:25.980 another, there's a bit of a transition period where they put aside partisanship. Like there
00:39:30.940 was a period of time overlapping when Stephen Harper lost, but Trudeau had not yet been sworn
00:39:38.340 in. So he was called the prime minister designate, but Harper was still the prime minister.
00:39:42.700 And in that interregnum, Harper did what you would expect.
00:39:47.160 And by the way, they have this in the United States, it's very much formalized.
00:39:50.340 They call it a transition team to help the new folks get up to speed with the files to start their private briefings right away.
00:40:00.100 Jason Kenney did not do any of that.
00:40:03.280 He refused to participate in a transition for the new premier of Alberta, Danielle Smith.
00:40:10.120 He refused and I can understand having a personal grudge that's life you know you lose an election you're mad you think you're superior you're furious with the voters because they didn't see how good they had it in you but to erode the ability of the incoming premier to do her job put aside if you like her or not.
00:40:34.820 You know, when John F. Kennedy had the botched Bay of Pigs invasion, he was talking to Dwight D. Eisenhower, his predecessor, and Eisenhower, private conversations on how to handle these critical foreign and military matters, the two were in different parties, but they both understood that America needed to win in the Cold War.
00:41:00.520 nothing was more serious the idea i mean even i mean presidents do this all the time you know in
00:41:06.780 fact sometimes i think it shocks voters to see how collegial ex-presidents can be but to have 0.52
00:41:13.540 a loser mentality an angry sore loser refuse to brief danielle smith coming in and then undermine
00:41:23.060 her as if we want to use oil as a blackmail tool give me 30 more seconds on this 0.94
00:41:30.040 how exactly would that work these oil companies have contracts decades-long contracts to serve
00:41:40.440 u.s refineries so are you going to order a company not to pump or like are you physically
00:41:49.800 going to turn like who's going to turn off the pipe and and on what basis and what are you going
00:41:54.860 to do when those refineries sue you and for astounding damages but do you think that a
00:42:02.480 strategic asset that is specifically covered in the USMCA um in fact there's a there's a special
00:42:10.620 section of the USMCA right now that predates it goes back to the Canada US free trade agreement
00:42:16.260 that the United States gets preferential access to our oil over others you're going to cut them
00:42:22.880 And how do you think the United States is going to react to that?
00:42:25.680 Legally, politically. But more than that,
00:42:28.280 what will the banking world, what will the financial world... 0.84
00:42:31.780 So you're gone full Venezuela.
00:42:33.480 You're effectively nationalizing the oil and gas. 0.99
00:42:36.380 When you say you cannot sell to him, you cannot sell to her.
00:42:40.380 Do you think that will be met, not just with political impunity,
00:42:44.280 but who would ever invest again
00:42:48.880 in a place where contracts mean nothing?
00:42:52.180 the rule of law means nothing the constitution means nothing promises mean nothing jason kenny
00:42:58.740 would shut off oil to the united states as a as explicitly as a blackmail to for
00:43:07.900 for the benefit of a prime minister who who threw a deal away because he wants to be known
00:43:16.320 as Captain Canada it makes no sense other than who is Jason Kenney now because I thought I knew
00:43:24.160 who he was 20 years ago when he was a cabinet minister in Stephen Harper I thought he was
00:43:29.240 the taxpayers federation guy I thought he was the religious freedoms guy then I got to know
00:43:36.600 a different Jason Kenney when he started putting pastors in jail during COVID oh okay I didn't
00:43:41.520 know that and now we have the champion of the oil patch and small government say no i want to
00:43:47.540 nationalize the oil patch to command them to stop sending oil to our 99 customer about 90
00:43:54.220 customer forgive the rant but it's growth well we gotta look at some of the motivation possibly
00:44:01.400 i'm reading in but we gotta remember jason kenny got a very bad political black eye over the keystone
00:44:06.300 when he pumped 1.5 billion Albertan tax dollars into that to guarantee it,
00:44:11.060 to try and get it across the line, which ended up vanishing when Joe Biden shut it down.
00:44:17.640 Could it be that there's even a little envy that he just doesn't want to think,
00:44:20.660 well, I don't want to see another premier get this done when I couldn't manage it while I was in?
00:44:25.160 That's exactly it, Corey.
00:44:26.720 He's being petty and bitter because she's doing a better job than him.
00:44:30.400 because because by not ensuring that there was a an organized transition of power between like
00:44:38.960 this changes everything Ezra this story that you just told me because that shows a serious
00:44:43.140 disinterest by Jason Kenney to keep serving the people of Alberta in that in that he would not
00:44:50.580 cooperate with her during the transition that just shows that he has contempt for the people
00:44:56.180 of alberta and uh this might be pettiness and bitterness that's left over from that time and i
00:45:01.360 think we're on to something there i'll bet you a dollar that he has not spoken to her
00:45:05.820 since she became premier in fact i'm lucky lucky danielle smith but imagine the audacity
00:45:13.940 the chutzpah of saying i am going to make proposals and he's he's he identifies as a
00:45:22.440 political leader, doesn't he? He expresses as a political leader,
00:45:26.740 but he leads no one other. I'm just so curious of who his
00:45:30.740 clients are. Or maybe he's... I checked, and there are no
00:45:35.540 Senate seats open in Alberta, so he can't be gunning for that.
00:45:39.540 But I've never seen such an obsequious cheerleader for Mark Carney,
00:45:43.740 and that's fine. I don't begrudge a man his personal political
00:45:46.640 uh peccadillo's but he is giving his blessing to the venezuelization of alberta's oil patch
00:45:58.660 and saskatchewan too saskatchewan is a lot of oil that's why the keystone itself pipeline goes over
00:46:02.900 saskatchewan to pick up that oil from the bakken formation go down to north dakota i have a piece
00:46:09.240 brewing and it's called saskatchezuela okay because this is happening too on the ndp side
00:46:15.780 who would like nothing more than for our oil and gas sector to tank in that way too so it would be
00:46:21.660 an interesting look at what would happen if we went full communist with our oil and gas and i
00:46:27.300 think we're getting a sneak peek yes please we're not getting a sneak peek this is who jason kenny
00:46:32.000 has been for quite some time in 2018 he colluded with the ndp to support their production cuts
00:46:38.140 which unemployed people and artificially jacked up the price of oil so um he was perfectly fine
00:46:45.420 with that. It's funny now that he's all Mr. Anti-supply management for milk, but he was all
00:46:49.640 for supply management for oil and gas. And just to answer Ezra's question, do they need to just
00:46:56.200 turn off the taps if they really want to use Alberta's oil and our jobs as some sort of
00:47:03.120 bargaining chip because Doug Ford can't keep his mouth shut? It doesn't have to be that way. I
00:47:07.980 noticed this tweet from our friend Keith Wilson, who is very smart on this subject. He is a
00:47:15.280 So he points out that there's still a Pierre Trudeau era power on the books that Ottawa can use to impose an export charge of up to 55 bucks a barrel on Alberta oil shipped to the United States.
00:47:30.180 So they would export tariff it out the door instead of turning off the tabs to inflate the price headed to the Americans.
00:47:40.460 Now, all this does in the long term is make our oil completely uninviting to the Americans who now have access to Venezuelan heavy oil, which their refineries are perfectly tooled to deal with.
00:47:57.320 You know, imagine you're a worker in oil.
00:48:00.380 So if those pipelines were cut off, well, you don't want to keep filling them then.
00:48:05.440 I mean, there's a certain amount of storage, but, you know, it's not like people talk about the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the United States, which is essentially an enormous underground caverns, actually, in which they store it because the U.S., it produces an enormous amount of oil, but it exports and it needs – Canada is always in a surplus for oil, at least the West.
00:48:30.880 So we don't have these huge storage facilities.
00:48:33.840 We don't have 2 million barrels a day worth of place to put the oil.
00:48:38.260 We don't.
00:48:38.780 So immediately, if some Hugo Chavez wannabe cut off the pipelines to the states, immediately, within days, there would be literally no place to put it.
00:48:53.280 And so they would stop production.
00:48:54.940 And imagine stopping production at $100 billion worth of capital investment.
00:49:00.880 Imagine shutting those things down and then what are you going to do with the men?
00:49:04.960 You're just going to pay them to do nothing? Pay them with what money? Because you stopped selling
00:49:08.400 to the refineries. It's so absurd. It's so shocking. It is tantamount to nationalizing
00:49:16.560 the banks and then expecting to be part of the world financials. It's so insane on the face of
00:49:24.400 of it, that either Jason Kenney actually doesn't mean it, and he's just lying, or he's lost
00:49:32.060 all his faculties, and the man who once ran the Canadian Taxpayers Federation has gone
00:49:36.920 mad.
00:49:37.760 And maybe it's a bit of both, I don't know, but I think he actually believes that he can
00:49:42.840 take another crack at being the Premier of Alberta, or more likely, he sees himself as
00:49:49.620 the man to come in, help push out
00:49:51.760 Pierre Polyev, or maybe let
00:49:53.660 Corey Janik and Doug Ford take the lead on that.
00:49:56.440 And then being
00:49:57.640 the leader of the federal
00:49:59.380 conservatives, saying, I'm the one who
00:50:01.680 slayed the 0.91
00:50:02.900 separatist demon.
00:50:06.160 I'm the one who
00:50:07.340 I don't know.
00:50:09.760 I mean, I think he
00:50:11.460 is willing to sell out
00:50:13.720 Alberta to become
00:50:15.620 the conservative leader who can then say to
00:50:17.600 Ontario and the Atlantic,
00:50:18.820 I sold out Alberta. I'm not one of those anti COVID crazies. I'm not one of those separatist
00:50:24.480 crazies. I'm not one of those oil patch cowboy crazies. I undid my own people for you. Now make
00:50:32.040 me prime minister. He's always wanted to be prime minister. Hey, welcome back your letters to me
00:50:46.500 On the U.S. ambassador interview, RAF says it was never about the deal.
00:50:51.140 It was about orange man bad for political purposes. 0.99
00:50:54.520 You were so right. 0.99
00:50:55.420 And I guess in one sense, I understand it.
00:50:58.780 I mean, if you go anti-Trump, almost all your sins will be absolved.
00:51:03.760 Olivia Chow has ruined Toronto. 0.61
00:51:06.320 It used to be called Toronto the good. 0.51
00:51:07.800 Now it's Toronto the crime capital, Toronto the tax capital, 0.82
00:51:11.520 Toronto the anti-Semitism capital.
00:51:13.220 But maybe she can switch the subject by talking about how much she hates Donald Trump.
00:51:18.720 The Lawrence White says what he did not directly say is China is already using Canada on many products to enter the U.S. duty free.
00:51:25.580 Apparently, Carney wants this arrangement.
00:51:27.520 I saw an interesting headline today from the year 2012.
00:51:33.100 Take a look at this.
00:51:34.060 Here's Mark Carney saying American firms should reorient towards China.
00:51:38.200 He's been saying this his whole adult life, people.
00:51:44.000 Radicalized Canadian says, no, the U.S. ambassador won't be helping us to prove whether Carney is lying or not.
00:51:49.720 That job is for Canadians to accomplish.
00:51:51.840 If we can't do that, then WTF are we?
00:51:54.680 Well, that's sort of the ambassador's point.
00:51:56.480 When I gave him the opportunity to take a swipe at Carney, he declined.
00:52:00.220 And he said, well, you put those questions to Carney yourself.
00:52:02.680 And I think he was right to say it that way.
00:52:05.280 Well, that's our show for the day.
00:52:07.260 Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night.
00:52:12.260 and keep fighting for freedom.