00:00:00Hello, my friends. A great conversation with my old friend, David Legge. He knows so much about
00:00:04so many things. He's been at the heart of government. For example, he was in the Alberta
00:00:09government. His job was to undo the atrocious effects of the NDP. He knows politics, but he
00:00:15knows business, and it's fun to talk to him about both. I think you'll enjoy our conversation today,
00:00:20but first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus. Just go to
00:00:24rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe, and not only do you get great video, you get the
00:00:29satisfaction of supporting rebel news because we take no government money and it shows
00:00:33david lagg one of the smartest guys i know about politics and commerce we'll have him for the
00:00:54whole show today. It's November 12th. This is the Ezra LeVance show. Shame on you, you sensorious
00:01:04bug. What a hectic political summer and fall it has been. I'm not just talking about Alberta's0.55
00:01:19independence referendum i'm talking about the canada u.s relationship is canada going to join
00:01:25the european union what happens to industries like the auto sector that we're so dependent on
00:01:31the u.s a market that mark carney seems to be ignoring on purpose i think what's the future
00:01:38of canada and our middle class so many questions they blend politics and economics and someone who
00:01:44knows business and politics better than most is our guest today his name is david leg and he joins
00:01:50us from calgary david great to see you again just a reminder for our viewers thank you for taking
00:01:56your time you're such a busy guy you're doing real business but you're also you know you you
00:02:01did a lot of work in government after the ndp were finally extricated from alberta trying to make
00:02:09Alberta business friendly again. How do things look for you today? Alberta's on fire. I'm actually
00:02:15in Calgary right now. You know, a recent transaction, two and a half billion dollar transaction
00:02:20just took place in the oil patch. And there's going to be a lot more consolidation to come.
00:02:25But Alberta has become a very attractive place globally to invest. And that's built on cutting
00:02:31taxes and red tape. And also it's built on the natural advantages Alberta has with energy,
00:02:37But also a lot of advantages that all of Canada has in terms of extraordinary talent and in the case of things like data centers, cool weather and abundant, vast resources in almost every province.
00:02:49We just need to unlock some of the regulatory constraints that keep Canada from building, which I think the prime minister has talked a lot about.
00:02:58But I think he's making deep fundamental mistakes in aligning himself with places like the EU that have had the worst track record for the last two decades on deindustrialization, crazy alarmist green policies that have destroyed Germany's industrial base and given energy security to Russia and manufacturing to China, and open borders policies that are absolutely nutty.
00:03:22uh and have really hurt the social fabric the unity and the cultural unity and and uh economic
00:03:31and and just security of dozens of uh you know you look at spain you look at what's happening
00:03:38in france right now uh they they have you know 20 000 um law enforcement personnel now having
00:03:45to deal with riots that are a weird fusion of hard left and islamist activists so i'm concerned
00:03:52about Canada's latest budget and also the adoption of more insanity on the immigration numbers.
00:03:59Something I really disagree with Andrew Coyne about, I don't know if you've been reading his
00:04:03stuff, but it's almost like he's willfully not wanting to talk about the actual math,
00:04:07which is unusual for him. He and I have our disagreements, but he's typically pretty sharp
00:04:12on his perspectives and grounds them in data to the extent he can. And he's had some critiques
00:04:17of this budget that I think are important. But I think the broken borders and the broken budget
00:04:23are the two biggest themes in Canada that are going to work heavily against Canada's economic
00:04:28development and renaissance. And at the end of the day, Ezra, you know, this was my line when
00:04:34you hosted the debate between me and the great Keith Wilson on the differences of opinion on how
00:04:39we secure Alberta's future. And that line was, you know, the number one form of independence is
00:04:46prosperity, personal prosperity, prosperity for your family, the ability to invest in the things
00:04:52that matter most to you. And as a province, I think Alberta's got to act very quickly on the
00:04:58immigration issue and a few other things that it has mandates on in order to protect the engine
00:05:03of prosperity that's currently running at full speed right now. Wow. You said a lot of things
00:05:08there and I want to touch on them and we'll be spending a fair amount of time on our interview
00:05:14today but i want to share with you something that premier danielle smith said to me a couple weeks
00:05:20ago she was the star guest at our rebel news live event in calgary and i had the chance to put
00:05:26questions to her in front of the audience for about half an hour and i decided i didn't want
00:05:30to re-litigate the independence referendum we've already done that let's talk about the other
00:05:36ideas that passed there were there were nine of them there was one on senate reform there was one
00:05:43on judges but the bulk of them were on immigration and they all the immigration ones if i'm not
00:05:50mistaken passed some of them with quite a margin and i put that to the premier and i said well when
00:05:56are you going to start implementing these when are you going to start saying well you can't get
00:06:00free benefits if you're just a temporary foreign worker or just a temporary student and i want to
00:06:06show you what she said i was a little concerned because it was sort of like oh we'll get to that
00:06:12later maybe we'll do that in after the next election or one answer she said was well we'll
00:06:18just ask mark carney for more money to handle the migrants but that's not what the referendum
00:06:23question said here let me show you a video clip of that back and forth the day after the vote i told
00:06:29the prime minister that we'd be preparing a proposal for us to take more control over economic
00:06:37migration just like Quebec has done since 1991 one thing I'll just put out
00:06:41there for you we just did a member town hall this morning and Bruce had done
00:06:46some digging on these numbers so Quebec they get to choose 45,000 people who
00:06:54come into their onto their province and they get about 860 million dollars
00:06:59worth of settlement services dollars associated with that we don't get to
00:07:05control or have input on the number of people who come into our province. I think we have
00:07:096,400, but we know that we had 600,000 people come in the last five years, and we get about
00:07:15150 million a year, and it doesn't even come to us. It goes to different settlement agencies.
00:07:20So I'll be open-minded about if there's other ways that we can defray the cost of our social
00:07:26services. Maybe it's a transfer from the federal government so that we can pay for the cost of
00:07:31education and healthcare. But my intention is to take the mandate that we've got and implement
00:07:35every single one of those policies. Well, that's the conversation with
00:07:38former Premier Kenney yesterday about the immigration situation and what I was reading,
00:07:45because nobody knows the immigration policy of this country better than Jason Kenney. He helped
00:07:51restructure all of immigration around a skills-based entry structure. When the Conservatives left
00:07:58government in 2015, we had 15,000 asylum seekers that were in a very clear pathway for assessing
00:08:05them as asylum seekers to make sure they were authentic and then providing them a path to
00:08:10citizenship. And, you know, and I said, what do you think Alberta should be doing? And it was
00:08:16interesting. It seems like, and I imagine this may be one of the things that came up in your
00:08:20conversation with the premier in your session. It seems like there's a gun-shy aspect to trying
00:08:27to act on the questions that were asked during the referendum because it seemed to be relitigating
00:08:33things that key constituencies sort of voted against. Now, I think, and again, it's easy to
00:08:38do from the sidelines now. I was involved before, and so I don't want to sort of double, you know,
00:08:44sort of question what the data looks like for them. But I think immigration across the country
00:08:51has very strong support to have better controls than we have today, which is not happening in
00:08:55budget. In Alberta in particular, because Alberta is such an economic magnet right now, is 80% of
00:09:01all the new jobs and the vast majority of all the private sector jobs in the entire country,
00:09:06even though we're only 14% of the population of the country. And so it has become a magnet for
00:09:13people that are coming to start a new life. And I think there's very clear criteria that we can
00:09:18look at other countries on to say, these are the legitimate ways that other countries and
00:09:22other jurisdictions have handled this. If you've never paid into or contributed to the system,
00:09:27you need to pay in. In most other countries, Jason, you know, I work between a few countries.
00:09:32I can't go into a country and just use the hospital system there. It's impossible. I have
00:09:36to show that I have health insurance and that insurance has to cover it or I need to pay at
00:09:40the point of utilizing their system because their population has paid into that system in order to
00:09:46support themselves. And they've paid into it far more than I ever have using their taxes in order
00:09:51to sustain that system so it's available to them when they most need it. And I think for some odd
00:09:57reason, this issue of immigration has become so politically correct for people that it's being
00:10:03seen as sort of a political litmus test of compassion or social justice. There's some
00:10:07bizarre language around this that has nothing to do with the actual fundamental math, making sure
00:10:12that for everybody, no matter what their race or creed or doctrine or background or sex or anything
00:10:18is we make sure the promises that we've made
00:10:47And I love that they'll come and I welcome everybody like my father, maybe your dad, too, who came as a penniless immigrant, in my case, from the UK to build a life in Canada.
00:10:58But he came to contribute and build. And a lot of the people that are in the immigration system right now are coming to contribute and build.
00:11:04But they're being swamped by a lot of people that are openly abusing the system, intentionally so.
00:11:09And you see this most profoundly with the asylum fraud that's moved from 15,000 people over 350,000.
00:11:16And we know that many of them are frauds, and we know that criminal syndicates and terrorist fundraising groups are actively using Canadian asylum to bring people into the country and knowing that by claiming asylum, they can't be removed until the judges had the chance to review their case.
00:11:32they've lost track Ezra of 36,000 deportees in Canada 36,000 people mostly military-aged males
00:11:42who have no business being in Canada who they know have no business being in Canada who've
00:11:46already been determined to be the wrong people to have in the country and they've lost track of
00:11:51them so until they fix the system how could they possibly be saying that as part of this budget
00:11:56they're going to add another 360,000 new entrants, plus make 200,000 people that are waiting in a
00:12:03broken system that they haven't vetted to become permanent citizens. When our health care and
00:12:10public service delivery is at its worst point in 20 years. To me, it's absolutely extraordinary.
00:12:15And it reminds me of what's been happening in the EU. And so I connect, maybe not completely fairly,
00:12:20But I'm certainly connecting the conversations with Ursula von der Leyen, the EU policies on broken borders and broken budgets for the last 20 years and what's happened to Europe as a result of those policies with the current situation of an obviously broken border that they're now, instead of taking a step back and saying, let's fix things, let's secure everything before we start amping up the numbers again, and let's restructure everything around skills and contribution.
00:12:47Canada is an opportunity society, but it's also a responsibility and contribution society.
00:12:52Anybody from around the world should be welcome here.
00:12:54But they should be welcome here on terms that we set, which are you have to come here to contribute.
00:13:03You have to come here to make Canada what it needs to be 20 years from now.
00:13:07And without that right now, you've got there are so many people I'm talking to in Calgary who are disappointed with their kids losing places at schools,
00:13:14with the environment, with obviously specifically ethnic related crime stats, extortions up 200%
00:13:22across the country, violent crime is up 25% across the country. And a lot of this is tied to people0.56
00:13:28that are not citizens, because when you're not a citizen, you can just leave the country and you
00:13:33get away with doing things that citizens that are resident here would never attempt to get away
00:13:38with. So there's a lot of this that is got to be restructured, the communications have to change.
00:13:42Maybe if we can shift the conversation to responsibility and contribution, the Premier will feel more comfortable about stepping in on the thing that she's given a mandate on.
00:13:52Half the people that voted not to leave Canada on question 10, half of them, of that 75%, voted for the restrictions on immigration in the first five questions.
00:14:03so to treat to treat the idea of the mandate on immigration as if it's the same as the things that
00:14:09didn't work in that referendum it to me is just you know listening to the wrong voices you know
00:14:14there was a campaign called no on the nine and those are the nine other questions besides
00:14:21independence yeah um so that was no on all these immigration reform questions there were mark
00:14:28carney himself came in and campaigned against those immigration questions i don't think there
00:14:32was a single campaign in support of these limits on immigration and yet they all passed which is
00:14:38incredible you had this enormous turnout by the left by the center left by the liberal left i mean
00:14:46it was i i estimate between 40 and 100 million dollars was spent on the other side compared to
00:14:52maybe cumulatively a million on the on the yes side and yet all those good liberals who voted
00:15:00against independence. Like you say, they voted for immigration reform. And so it was a little
00:15:04startling for me to see the premier back away as if she's afraid of being called racist. But it's
00:15:10my observation, and I think the polls bear it out, is that legitimate immigrants to this country1.00
00:15:17resent the clear lawbreakers, fakers. One of the things, I go to the UK and Ireland and places like1.00
00:15:26that a lot and i think the most palpable thing about opposition to immigration is that everyone0.96
00:15:32knows they're all faking it like if you're coming from a dinghy from france you are not in danger
00:15:38of your life which is the definition of a refugee so there's such bad faith behavior by people0.98
00:15:44gaming the system like these migrant dinghies off the coast of the uk everyone sees that that's bs0.99
00:15:52and yet you're not allowed to say it and so it's not just a scientific or economic opposition to0.89
00:15:58mass immigration people feel like we are being tricked and if you dare mention it well you're
00:16:04a racist obviously i don't it there's something well the irony the irony about that too ezra
00:16:10knowing and this is an interesting thing i don't see this in our mainstream press
00:16:13but in both the united states and the uk where they're really polling this heavily
00:16:18the group that is most opposed to illegal immigration are recent immigrants in both
00:16:25in both in both countries which is extraordinary but think about this in canada if you ask the seek
00:16:32if you ask seek moms right what they thought about illegal immigration i guarantee you
00:16:38they do not like the bishnoy gang the extortion gangs everybody that that has come in illegally
00:16:45in a systematic way that are running the extortion rings. They're running the trafficking
00:16:50rings. They're running the trucking rings that are part of the drug rings. Everybody knows this
00:16:55is going on. You want to talk to, again, I have, you know, a few Sikh friends that pointed this
00:17:00out to me. They despise the lack of border controls that protects their sons from being
00:17:05pulled into these violent, sadistic, horrible people that operate with complete impunity in
00:17:12canada because they leave for punjab anytime he comes on and our judges do nothing about it right
00:17:17so so the idea that it's racist is actually the opposite what's happening is genteel uh people
00:17:24living in largely white communities are being told we're going to call you a racist if you don't do
00:17:30the following we're going to call you islamophobic if you decide that you don't like islamists0.95
00:17:34marching in the street and yelling hateful slogans it's not islamophobic that's islamist0.99
00:17:40phobic right and i'm not scared of them i want to see them destroyed i want to see the muslim1.00
00:17:45brotherhood named shamed and booted out of this country they have no business being in this1.00
00:17:49country the the muslim brotherhood sect that runs gaza is hamas these are the these are the insane0.98
00:17:57stone age sadistic lunatics that that ran october uh october 7th under under the the mandate and0.94
00:18:04command of the rgc sponsoring them and they are operating with impunity inside canada how have we
00:18:10lost 800 IRGC members in Canada. Unless we start to shift the narrative that we have to have around
00:18:16our border and deal with things like terrorism in an adult way and stop being scared by labels
00:18:23that the left wants to deploy because they're bean counting people in these categories, then I think
00:18:28we're losing a chance to do the right thing for the very immigrant communities that we most want
00:18:33to have come here and build great businesses. You and I have a mutual friend, Bob Dylan, has built
00:18:38one of the greatest businesses in Canada, one of the top stock performing firms in the country,
00:18:43Main Street Equities, he and I talk a lot about the Sikh situation. And you know what? This country
00:18:47is great. Sikhs built the British Empire. Sikhs are a great community. The last thing the Sikh1.00
00:18:52community wants is a bunch of reckless thugs that are wearing that Sikh badge as a way of crying1.00
00:19:00racism every time they get caught out doing criminal activities, right? It's nothing to do0.94
00:19:05with the sea community it's everything to do with criminals and thugs that deserve to be you know0.99
00:19:10arrested deported um you know and i'd love to see them deported back to the places where they would0.99
00:19:15be dealt with in a criminal justice system that's very very different from the lenient one that we
00:19:20have here you know i fly a fair bit in and out of canada's largest airport toronto pearson and when
00:19:27you think about you you mentioned earlier some of the staggering numbers what that means is that
00:19:32pearson airport on any given day a thousand sometimes more new migrants touch down like
00:19:41that's just like it's every single day it just doesn't stop that's that's pearson alone and
00:19:46there's also vancouver and montreal i think and you can see the economy of it because in when you
00:19:54come in from the international terminals what are the ads you see internet and phone companies
00:20:00yeah banking company yeah banks bank cards and i don't see ads for them but you know that a major
00:20:07part of this economy is housing and and so there are big industries that love unlimited immigration
00:20:17if you are rogers or bell you every person who comes off the plane you know they're getting a
00:20:24cell phone every person comes off the plane you know in fact they probably have a lot of banking
00:20:27needs. There may be remitting funds back to home. So my worry is that Mark Carney, he's
00:20:34ideologically a globalist. I mean, he was on the board of the World Economic Forum. He worked for
00:20:40the UN. He's a guy with three passports. So he doesn't really think of Canada as a tight border
00:20:47place. In fact, he's always traveling, looking for love in other places, including the European
00:20:52Union. But if there's a part of his brain that's engaged by immigration, it's the Brookfield asset0.59
00:20:57management mindset, which is pump the numbers no matter what. Even if the indigenous, I'm going to0.99
00:21:04call, you know, European Canadians, indigenous for a minute, even if the, let's just say the0.92
00:21:10old stock Canadians, even if their GDP shrinks per capita, even if youth unemployment shrinks,
00:21:17even if life is harder for existing Canadians, adding on half a million, a million new Canadians
00:21:22a year the pie is just growing sure everyone's a little bit poorer but let's just get those
00:21:27banking numbers up let's get those cable subscriptions up i think he's thinking like
00:21:32a brookfield man as opposed to a canadian prime minister is that unfair well i think i think that
00:21:38the the distinction i would make ezra is less about who's here now and who's coming you know
00:21:44it's more about um it's more about just saying look if if you've already got a phd and you want
00:21:52to build a business in Canada is the most extraordinary place for you to build that
00:21:57business. We want you to come here. You know, like to me, it's, it's like, there's, there's,
00:22:02you know, we're only, well, we're rounding our global population, 8 billion people outside the
00:22:07country. We're 40, 40 million. But I think our ability as a nation to attract the brightest
00:22:14and best people from around the planet to come here and create great businesses and build and
00:22:18employ people that is what creates an ever-expanding pie so it's not the the raw numbers that are the
00:22:25problem the problem is what are the criteria by which we're recruiting the smartest people on the
00:22:31planet try and go into singapore right now and just say i've arrived you can't do it you you have
00:22:37to have a purpose for being there they vet you and then they decide if they're going to give you a
00:22:41visa once they give you a visa you've got an opportunity to go and build but after about two
00:22:45years, they're going to ascertain, have you actually built it? Have you done it? Have you
00:22:49scaled up? Have you hired local Singaporeans into this business that you said you'd build,
00:22:54right? Same thing with Hong Kong, same thing. And these, these are the highest per capita,
00:22:59most prosperous places in the world. And fight in spite of the fact that they don't have any
00:23:03natural resources, they've only got rule of law, tax laws, and an opportunity society,
00:23:09and they protect that opportunity society. And if you look at those two communities,
00:23:13Let's take the city states of Singapore and Hong Kong. Those are deeply multi-ethnic states. Han Chinese is an important minority. The Indian community is an important minority. All kinds of Southeast Asians, people from all over the planet that live in these city states, they are the most prosperous places, the safest places, the highest educational attainment places.
00:23:33And if you look at it, what does Singapore got in terms of natural resources? It's a swamp off the coast of Malaysia that everybody mocked as being just a place for mosquitoes for years until Lee Kuan Yew built it into a sparkling, one of the most modern cities in the planet and the highest income, net income city in the world now from nothing.
00:23:54And the nothing is a set of rules that created opportunity society that is built around people
00:24:01saying, I'm going to come and give this my best shot. And they let people in on that basis. And
00:24:05after you've been there for seven years, they may grant you permanent residency, right? So we have
00:24:11examples of societies that have not only made it work, but have just proven for decades that there's
00:24:15ways to do immigration in a manner that's responsible, that's multicultural, that's
00:24:20pluralistic, that adapts itself to multiple different perspectives in terms of faith,
00:24:25ethnicity, and they build and they continue to build, but they're extremely careful about their
00:24:32borders and they're extremely careful about their budgets. Those two things. And those are really,
00:24:36when you look at what the federal government has to do, there's not much they have to do.
00:24:40Our founders built Canada on the idea that the provinces should hold the power of education and
00:24:46health care, because that's the government that's more close to the people that will allow for real
00:24:51differences between the different regions of the country. So they want Quebec to deal with
00:24:55health care and things like education in a culture like Quebec. Alberta owns those mandates now.
00:25:01And you've got a federal government that has continued to try and expand its mandate and use
00:25:05borrowed money as a way of tempting the premiers to give up powers that actually belong to the
00:25:12provinces and should be under control of the provinces. And the good news is for Alberta on
00:25:17immigration in 1991, the Canada-Quebec Accord on Immigration was signed. And that permits a province
00:25:24that gives us a complete blueprint for a province to have its own criteria for who it accepts into
00:25:29the province and grants provincial identity to. Now, anybody can move between the borders within
00:25:35Canada. That's a federal right, of course, mobility. But when you get to Alberta, unless you have an
00:25:41alberta card you can't just walk into and say i want my kids to sit in that classroom you can't
00:25:46simply walk in and demand uh health care at an emergency or right away you can't get in front
00:25:52of people that have been paid into the system paying into the system contributing to the system
00:25:56because it's not right it's not just and it's got nothing to do with ethnicity it's got nothing to
00:26:00do with racism it's got everything to do with the exact same principles that create a just good
00:26:05growing prosperous society in places like hong kong and singapore so here's the interesting thing
00:26:10Ezra in Hong Kong and Singapore, the idea that it's racist to tell a white guy that he has to
00:26:16wait in line and prove himself for seven years doesn't occur to anybody. You know, it's not
00:26:21white-a-phobic, you know? So, so they're, they're like, you're one of a thousand people, prove0.91
00:26:26yourself. We don't, we don't care what your skin color is or what your background is. We care that
00:26:31you prove yourself as a contributor. And I think we have to move to that sooner than later, or we're
00:26:37going to find ourselves in a position very similar to what we see happening in you know countries
00:26:41that used to have a lot of social stability like the uk and france they now have extraordinary
00:26:46problems and you know the next thing that happens after the budgets fail and the borders fail is
00:26:51they start with the speech code stuff right right because then you've got people saying
00:26:56what is happening around me is horrible these crimes are being committed by this group that
00:27:02is hiding behind the banner of you'll be racist if you arrest me and and you know this is what
00:27:09you see happening in the uk in an extraordinary way right now the home of free speech uh and it's
00:27:14happening in france i don't know if you saw this but they've charged uh belloc for his for his book
00:27:20which is his interviews is incredible yesterday in france so so i don't know i i i just fear that
00:27:27we not become like the eu in any way and this latest budget seems to me to be headed in that
00:27:31direction broken borders and broken budgets you're so right that that's the two big problems
00:27:37when i referred to european canadians i suppose i was just using that as shorthand for folks
00:27:41already here who had paid in but you're right yeah i know what you mean it obviously includes
00:27:47you and i you and i don't need to i i'm not ezra i love you like a brother and you're not
00:27:51you there's not a racist bone in your body it was just a shorthand for all of our friends
00:27:56yeah but i think the reason that i i wanted to clarify is that i think that if somebody looks
00:28:01at a clip of a conversation that you and i have they will clip out something like and i know the
00:28:06language you're trying to use right but they'll clip that out and say see these guys are being
00:28:10racist as they discuss this issue i hear i i often refer to the uae which for example has
00:28:17banned the muslim brotherhood there's no that's it there's no pro hamas protests in the streets of
00:28:22dubai they don't surround you don't you don't pray on the street exactly and be arrested there's a0.94
00:28:27lot of mosques there just there's a hundred mosques in montreal but they deliberately pray0.58
00:28:32outside the catholic basilica as a political move that's not a religious it's it's it's a very0.92
00:28:38specific religious show of force meant to target the catholics they do the same thing in jewish0.95
00:28:44neighborhoods it's meant to target the jewish community these guys are bad bad guys they do0.97
00:28:50this very intentionally and the muslim brotherhood is a playbook and they do it only in the west0.90
00:28:55because they know the west will let them get away with it because there's a category racism islam0.98
00:29:00phobia that they can play on in order to do what they want to do it's the same thing they're doing0.97
00:29:05with their immigration system they're lying to get into the country then they're lying to stay in the
00:29:09country look at the look at the terrorists that the fbi have helped us arrest all of them have
00:29:14this identical pattern of having lied to be in Canada. More than 80% of all the border arrests
00:29:20in 2024, 2025 originated from the Northern border in the United States. 80%. That has never happened
00:29:28in history. But the reason it's happening is because our borders are broken and soon
00:29:34the U.S. is going to fix that broken border problem if we don't fix it. Because if there's
00:29:39an incident, like the almost mass casualty event that was meant to happen in New York by someone
00:29:44that came from Canada that they arrested in time,
00:31:57those are both things that have demographic
00:31:59and financial shifts are very hard for people to mark.
00:32:02But we need to change language so we can have honest conversations about both things, or else we're really ripping off the next generation in a way that's complete. It's just a form of intergenerational theft in terms of opportunity and also in terms of the bill we intend to pass them with interest that's now already over $60 billion a year.
00:32:21Yeah. I want to ask one more thing because I'm out here in Ontario and the auto sector and steel are fairly important industries, although they've both been in decline for the last decade.
00:32:35They've lost a double digit percentage of jobs, even though they've received massive, staggering subsidies, especially the electric vehicle battery idea.
00:32:45I think that was over 50 billion that was, and the steel companies keep getting more money,
00:32:52but it's not enough for whatever reason. But now I, I feel like things are really
00:32:57precipitating suddenly, um, with, you know, the, the Stellantis plant, you know, but basically,
00:33:04I don't know the names of all the different auto plants, but many of them are in extremists. Like
00:33:10there's warnings they'll be shut down if things don't change quickly steel um and i keep thinking
00:33:17i don't know if that would be solvable in a canada u.s trade rapprochement but surely
00:33:24not negotiating is exacerbating things if you're an owner or an investor in these steel or car
00:33:30companies and you don't see any prospect for reform i think you're going to walk away from
00:33:35that hundred year industry like it's almost a hundred the auto pact itself is almost a hundred
00:33:40years this is 76 years old if my math is right um alberta is always going to be able to sell its
00:33:46oil and gas to the states and you know maybe put a few points of tariff on there but it's a global
00:33:51commodity the price is what it is how i what i don't understand is how ontario which is in love
00:33:58with mark carney's liberals can square that with what i see as the neglect of its core auto and
00:34:06steel industries that i think are failing right in front of our eyes in slow motion i don't know
00:34:11if i'm i don't i don't have a deep knowledge of those industries but i i read the papers
00:34:15what do you think's going on look the the every industry has its own economic dynamics i think
00:34:26that the critical thing that's hard for Canadians to understand because the communications around
00:34:32sovereignty have been so powerful as a juxtaposition or contrast to President Trump,
00:34:39you know, trolling on things like 51st state, et cetera. And that's been sort of a dominant
00:34:45narrative now for a year and a half. But the problem for the Canadian economy is we are entirely
00:34:53a supply chain integrated economy with the United States entirely. There is no Canadian auto
00:34:59industry without the United States. There's no oil and gas industry without the United States.
00:35:05There's almost no industry in Canada without the United States. The state of Texas has a larger
00:35:10economy than Canada right now. And I think that when you look at the EU, we do more business
00:35:17with illinois than we do with all 26 member states of the of the eu combined one state we do far more
00:35:24business with them than everyone in the eu uh the idea that we're not talking with illinois is
00:35:29insane right michigan and ontario are are integrated marketplaces one of the hardest
00:35:36things on the tariff discussions is it's very hard to tariff anything in the auto industry because
00:35:41almost everything tends to cross the border six or seven times before it becomes a completed product
00:35:46right you ship raw materials there they ship things back they get tooled and put into components
00:35:51which ship back in which go into larger component pieces which ship back up and go in so by the time
00:35:56you you sort of try and integrate a tariff structure you've basically crossed the border
00:36:00so many times people are dizzy and they've forgotten that we are a fully integrated
00:36:04supply chain economy that's closely attached and connected to the united states the same
00:36:10by the way, is true, Ezra, if we were talking about defense. Telesat, for instance, will go
00:36:16bankrupt. It has no options. It is a totally bankrupt company. It has zero plans for putting
00:36:23LEO satellites in the air without using SpaceX, who they're purportedly competing with. But
00:36:30they have no rockets. We have no launch pads. They have no unique technology. They're a company that
00:36:36is under siege from their American hedge funds that own their debt. And yet the prime minister
00:36:43who's close to the CEO continues to provide him with taxpayer dollars to subsidize something that
00:36:49doesn't work and will not work and doesn't have any plans to be workable until sometime in the
00:36:542030s. Meanwhile, Canadians are quietly just applying for and deploying Starlink because it
00:36:58works instantly and every day and very effectively. And we need to integrate our military protection
00:37:06completely through NORAD, where we've been a freeloader for 20 years, into a full military
00:37:12protection of the kind that any other nation in the world would dream of. And we've earned it
00:37:16because we've gone shoulder to shoulder with the Americans around the world all the time,
00:37:21defending Western values wherever they needed defending. And today's a great day to acknowledge
00:37:26the sacrifice of everybody that's done that. Before, my grandfather was a great Canadian.
00:37:33He fought in Burma under the British flag. He set up medical missions. He, you know, and you've got these people that have done this, but where did he train in his medical mission? Palo Alto, California, right? And he's acknowledged by the Americans for what he did.
00:37:47Like, we have an integrated society that shares the same values, that are both pluralistic, that are both very welcoming to the immigrant communities that have always built these nations up.
00:37:58We need to pursue free trade with the United States as the number one economic priority for the security of the country economically, prosperity of the country for the next generation.
00:38:06we need to immediately integrate that with full border security that we share with the americans0.98
00:38:12because any break in our border that allows the muslim brotherhood the irgc and hamas and hezbollah0.97
00:38:17which we all know are present canada to cross the border and commit atrocities in the united states0.96
00:38:22you know is going to come back to haunt us and it doesn't need to be this way we don't need to be a
00:38:27culturally insecure society we don't need to pretend the americans are enemies when we know
00:38:31that they're not. And we don't need to cozy up in some fake way to a failed bureaucrat like Ursula
00:38:37von der Leyen, who can't point to a single policy that's worked for the people of Europe.
00:38:41Except for the Erasmus program, some student visas, what has the EU done for anyone lately?
00:38:46Except mismanage the markets and use its funding to force countries like Ireland to look as much
00:38:54as they can like a Davos experiment instead of like Irish people. You spend a lot of time in0.83
00:39:01You see what the EU does to these places, right?
00:39:28on on the supply side of one of the largest cost components which is low cost energy you know i've
00:39:34been making an argument for why we should have um an additional uh national petroleum strategic
00:39:40national petroleum reserve aside from the natural one that is the oil sands but you know in sarnia
00:39:45right next to where we create advanced materials and we can start to scale up the industries that
00:39:50will replace the auto industry which is failing because of economies of scale that's why it was
00:39:55never going to work with batteries because governments can't fund the things that markets
00:40:00won't. You can't fight the markets. You can't fight, you know, I've talked about this before,
00:40:07but this government has an ideological fixation on Elon Musk. They wanted to compete with them
00:40:13and they talked about it all the time with their $50 billion into EV batteries and failed while
00:40:18Tesla tripled in market value, right? They're now doing it with Telesat, pretending that that's
00:40:23sovereign there's nothing sovereign about it failure is not a sovereign question right and
00:40:28these are failures an ai company at least you're giving one over a billion dollars i think it's
00:40:34called cohere and i have nothing against them but there is more money in data centers and ai than
00:40:39any other industry in history like we're talking trillions and if they can't get it in the market
00:40:44what is evan solomon you know former reporter know about this ai company that the geniuses
00:40:52like if you have a good ai idea money is not going to be your limiting factor money's not
00:40:58the problem it's just crazy and you're so right it's a it's an attempt to get at elon musk
00:41:04holy smokes it's guys it's it's people that would last 10 seconds in an actual market environment
00:41:10pretending to be players using taxpayer money it's so embarrassing it's it's like giving it's
00:41:16like giving these people money to go into a casino with they're gonna get taken and they have been
00:41:21taken and it's costing taxpayers every time they do this but worse it's costing Canadians their
00:41:26jobs and their security because it's not just that they burned 50 billion dollars they burned 50
00:41:31billion dollars totally mispricing Canadian assets in a way that scared away everybody normal in the
00:41:36market that might have bought distressed assets and rebuilt companies around them right the federal
00:41:41government ruined that by destroying taxpayer dollars in the process they're in the middle
00:41:46of doing a bunch of things look at the difference Evan Solomon decides to give a billion dollars to
00:41:49something because it makes him feel like he's doing something which he's not doing right now
00:41:53meanwhile meta turns around and says to alberto we're going to give you uh 13 billion phase one
00:41:59yeah that's going to double in the next few years right and and what's happening now so so if you
00:42:04create a society that is an opportunity society that's a contribution society it's a responsibility
00:42:10society and you create clear rules and you say we are going to have the most efficient tax
00:42:17structures to allow you to come into this country and build things and employ people and bring in
00:42:23the smartest engineers in the planet from whichever country they trained in, then that will create the
00:42:28superstructure and infrastructure of the data economy of the future. And every single Canadian
00:42:33will benefit from it. And the good news is the government needs to cut the taxes, cut the red
00:42:38tape and get completely out of the way and quit trying to fake it to make it as former journalists
00:42:43using other people's money to make bets on things they don't understand and and that's the most
00:42:48exciting thing for Canada for the future that's why I was so hopeful for you know a pause in
00:42:53immigration to get the get things fixed and move it back to the structure that Jason had implemented
00:42:59that had worked so well for us to 2015 and been the envy of the world and then move back to a
00:43:06responsible fiscal environment which the you know the prime minister should know well and he's
00:43:12refusing to do and then fix fix the border deposit and and create very clear criteria like singapore
00:43:20hong kong do saying come here dream a dream build a business raise a family show us what you can do
00:43:27come with health insurance come ready to give come ready to show us that you really are who you said
00:43:33you were when you applied and we'll give you a visa to prove yourself and if you really prove
00:43:36yourself in seven years you can earn the right to carry a canadian passport anywhere you want
00:43:41You will become part of this country and contribute to this country. If we do that, you know, for every billion dollars that this liberal government will waste on bad ideas connected to donor CEOs, we will create another 15 billion in opportunity to decide. If they won't do it in Ottawa, we got to start doing it in Edmonton and Calgary.
00:44:00so so that's the thing if ottawa can't figure it out and they want to play games and become eu light
00:44:06then you know what this is and ezra you you sponsored this debate uh uh this is what keith
00:44:12and i were fighting about we can build this in in alberta now is the opportunity so do it
00:44:17so circling back to where we started let's work on these things the ottawa has just proven this
00:44:23last week they can't handle it they can't handle immigration they can't handle the economy they
00:44:29don't want to do deals they're culturally and politically insecure they want to play the elbows
00:44:33up theme song for another who knows how long and at the same time they're doing this canada's
00:44:39economy continues to be last place out of the 40 most advanced economies in the world in gdp growth
00:44:44last place uh and and that's that's that's in spite of alberta's rocket ship economy so alberta
00:44:52is actually carrying an economy that's failing even worse than the net numbers look when people
00:44:57look at canada in the last place on that on that oecd gdp to 2030 slide right so let's start
00:45:05building it that's why that's why my that's what my grandfather fought for you know well i hope it's
00:45:13possible because alberta i mean that that phrase in french maître chenu master in our own house
00:45:20alberta can be the master of many decisions under our constitution but many others it just simply
00:45:26doesn't have the legal constitutional power immigration being a big one of them
00:45:32items of a national or international nature like pipelines and ports so i hope you're right and
00:45:39it's very inspiring to hear you talk about alberta that way and there is the results on the ground
00:45:44that albertans should be proud of but if quebec can if quebec can get the canada quebec accord
00:45:49signed in 91 and that's constitutionally viable i'll take the alberta version of that would solve
00:45:5580% of what we're talking about right now, 80% of it.
00:45:59And it would reflect what a majority of Albertans said they wanted
00:46:02in spite of the fact they voted no on the exit strategy referendum.
00:46:08They voted yes on, like, let's control this.
00:46:10And it's because Albertans can't be scared off having good conversations.
00:46:14And I can guarantee you there were a lot of Sikh moms voting,0.99
00:46:16let's control this immigration situation.1.00
00:46:18I guarantee you that because they're more tired of it than you and I are, Ezra.1.00
00:46:22we don't have to live with the predators that are being allowed into the country right now in the
00:46:27way that some other communities do and so there's nothing racist about it it's the right thing to do
00:46:32for people david leg great to catch up thanks for being so generous with your time and very
00:46:37interesting ideas appreciate you joining us great to be with you again right on there he is david