What should Torontonians and Montrealers think of what's going on in Alberta right now? And how do they feel about what's happening in the rest of the country? Ezra Levenrant tries to explain it through the lens of Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal.
00:06:26.400been around. But watch for the opposite response to Alberta separatism. There is a genuine hatred
00:06:33.480against Alberta in parts of Ontario and Quebec. Towards Alberta and what I call Alberta-ness,
00:06:41.960being Alberta-ish. The only Albertans respected by the CBC or Mark Carney are the underminers,
00:06:48.320like Naheed Nenshi and Rachel Notley, people who promised to destroy the Alberta oil and gas
00:06:54.520industry and the Alberta freedom spirit from the inside. Albertans who are Alberta-ish,
00:07:00.940they're shunned, they're demonized, they're mocked, they're attacked. Look at how the CBC has tried to
00:07:04.980destroy Danielle Smith, the premier of Alberta. She was the only female premier in the entire country
00:07:10.060for years, actually. Normally, that would make her a CBC favorite on DEI grounds alone, but
00:07:16.980she's the wrong kind of woman. She's too Albertan, so they hate her and they lie about her daily. But
00:07:23.580buckle up now. Every national media company, every national corporation, every bank, every NGO,
00:07:30.800every community activist will now be deployed to denigrate and smear Albertans who are just tired
00:07:36.320of Ottawa's war on the West. Again, if you're from Toronto or Montreal and need help imagining things,
00:07:41.260picture Trump-style taxes, tariffs, and other economic warfare. But for 40 years, I mean,
00:07:48.380going back before the national energy program in the 1980s even, all from your own country,
00:07:54.340not a foreign leader. Albertans aren't even angry anymore, I don't think. I think they're just sort
00:08:00.000of done. A friendly tip to my friends in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, if you're a politician or a pundit
00:08:06.480using the same language you used with the trucker convoy, you're racist. You're a fringe minority
00:08:12.520with unacceptable views. You're a crackpot. You're MAGA. You're January 6th. If you're saying things
00:08:19.740like that, think about it. You're not actually trying to persuade anyone, are you? You're
00:08:26.560demonstrating that you hate Alberta, or at least the Albertaness of it. It's an interesting Venn diagram,
00:08:32.360I think. The people who called for a Team Canada approach and who promised to end internal trade
00:08:38.320barriers as a response to Trump, they're the same ones denigrating Albertans who were asking for an
00:08:44.160end to Ottawa's sanctions. And what is a pipeline ban other than a non-tariff barrier? The Canadian
00:08:50.960establishment demonized Donald Trump as a bully, an economic illiterate, and an unreliable friend and
00:08:58.120ally. But they, the Ontario-Quebec establishment, the Ottawa establishment, they are all of those
00:09:04.580things and worse towards Albertans. At least Trump kept telling Canada he cherished us as he shook us
00:09:12.160down. Carney, Trudeau, Guilbeau, they genuinely hate Alberta. And it shows. We're going to have a
00:09:21.140town hall meetings next week, one in Edmonton on Monday, one in Calgary on Wednesday. I think
00:09:28.000they're pretty much sold out. You can find details on our website, rebelnews.com. If you're asking me
00:09:34.100how we're going to cover this journalistically, the answer is respectfully. We're not going to call
00:09:39.380anyone crackpots. We're not going to call anyone MAGA North. And if anyone does, ask them, are you really
00:09:46.260trying to keep Canada together or are you just showing how much you hate Albertans? Because that's
00:09:52.260not persuasiveness. Stay with us. More ahead.
00:09:58.000You know, something completely astonishing happened during the election. It was truly shocking. It
00:10:12.200was like it was out of a Hollywood movie. And then everyone just sort of forgot about it. I'm
00:10:17.040talking about the astonishing case of a liberal candidate who was actually an incumbent MP, Paul
00:10:22.440Chiang, who said multiple times to journalists, that there was a million dollar Hong Kong dollar
00:10:29.020bounty on one of his political rivals, a bounty offered by the Chinese government. And he encouraged
00:10:38.140any people, Chinese Canadians or others, to physically kidnap this political rival of his,
00:10:46.440Joe Tay is his name, and deliver him to the Chinese consulate to collect the reward. I know it sounds
00:10:53.180too crazy to believe, but it was all captured on video. Take a look at this.
00:10:57.020The other person that's running, most probably is, you know, the Chinese community, Joe Tay.
00:11:02.260He's looking for the nomination. The Chinese media knows him. He was in the media business in Hong Kong.
00:11:14.760And here in Canada, he's a radio host or, I don't know, for Sinktown media or, so their child, he was a media person. So that's all he did, all he's like. But also right now, he is wanted by the Chinese government. And there's a $1 million reward on his head.
00:11:32.500So they want, if you guys want to pick him up and take him to the Chinese consulate, you make him a million dollars. I'm just joking. But there is a arrest warrant out for him from the government of China. And there is a reward for him. But apart from that, I can't say more than that.
00:11:48.960That reverberated, not just within the Chinese Canadian community, which is very dense in the neighborhoods of Markham, but in the general meeting, too. And Mark Carney was pressed on the subject. And he, he stood by his man, not the Canadian democracy activist, Joe Tay, who was threatened. He stood by the threatener. Take a look at this.
00:12:13.720The comments were deeply offensive. This is a terrible lapse of judgment by Mr. Chang. He has apologized for those comments. He has apologized directly now to the person that he mentioned. Apologized directly to him yesterday. I've spoken to Mr. Chang as well over the course of the weekend. I understand his position.
00:12:43.720He is a veteran policeman. He is a veteran policeman with more than a quarter century of service to his community. 28 years of defending rights in this community.
00:13:00.720And he will continue with his candidacy going forward, having made those apologies very clearly to the individual, to the community, and moving forward to serve.
00:13:13.880And he stood by him. And he stood by him. And a week went by. And only then did Paul Chang resign. But not with Mark Carney ever criticizing him. It was just absolutely shocking.
00:13:27.540And Chang's successor was the same again. Not issuing threats to kidnap anybody. But he was a Chinese-Canadian police officer, which is outstanding. I think it's important that Chinese communities have a police officer who understands them, speaks the language, as long as he's meeting the standards of being a good cop.
00:13:47.380But incredibly, he acted as if he was representing the Chinese state, not the Canadian state. Here's a video of him singing Chinese nationalist songs at a Chinese political event.
00:14:00.580Absolutely astonishing. All of this just happened. The election came. Mark Carney won, including a dominating majority in the greater Toronto area.
00:14:24.980But would you look at this? Absolutely shocking. The headlines I'm going to read now from our friend Sam Cooper at TheBureau.News. Let me read this headline and then I'll call on Sam.
00:14:35.380Breaking. Hong Kong police detain relatives of Canadian candidate targeted by Beijing election interference. Move follows aggressive People's Republic of China disinformation against Joe Tay.
00:14:50.140RCMP security security warnings and raises pressure on Prime Minister Mark Carney after a White House meeting.
00:15:00.700This feels like a five-alarm fire. Although Joe Tay's relatives, I understand, are not Canadian nationals, they are so obviously being arrested as a way to put pressure on him.
00:15:13.300Sam, you have this story. It's outstanding in TheBureau.News. Let me ask you, has there been a response from the Canadian government, if not from Mark Carney, from the Foreign Affairs Department at all, from Global Affairs Canada?
00:15:28.100It's a day after the story, and I reached out to the Prime Minister's office with the full story and asking for a response.
00:15:36.700There's been absolutely no response from Mr. Carney's office yet. CSIS, Canada's intelligence agency, also received my questions, including were they looking into complaints that Joe Tay's campaign potentially was stalked during the election campaign?
00:15:54.340That's something that I also reported, and CSIS has informed me that they're working on a response, so certainly any new information that I get on this story that I've been chasing, I will update, but deafening silence from Mr. Carney, who, as you rightly point out, has said nothing, essentially, in nothing to tell China that it's absolutely unacceptable what's happened to Mr. Tay.
00:16:23.860And as you say, and as you say, he stood by his candidate right to the end and hasn't acted.
00:16:31.320You know, I left out the worst part of the story, Sam, and that's at the RCMP, and you correct me if I'm getting this even one word wrong, that the RCMP cautioned Joe Tay against campaigning in public, that they implied there was some threat against him.
00:16:48.600And instead of rallying around him, supporting him, protecting him, helping him, they said, don't go out there.
00:16:55.480It would be like telling, and this has happened in some jurisdictions, telling Jewish people not to go out wearing a Yarmulke because you'll be attacked by Andy Simmons.
00:17:14.600Just remembering, because that sounds too crazy to be true.
00:17:17.860No, Ezra, I reported this based on certain sources close to the campaign.
00:17:23.000Remember, this is a very sensitive, ongoing story, so certain people can't be identified.
00:17:28.200But I confirmed with 100% confidence that the day that the site task force came out with that public disclosure saying that broad cyber operations against Joe Tay had been rolled out, on that same day, I was informed that Mr. Tay was advised by RCMP for safety reasons.
00:17:50.660It would be better for him not to campaign in person, on that day at least.
00:17:57.940And the New York Times followed my reporting with similar reporting within days.
00:18:06.260I mean, certainly the RCMP have a job to do to keep Mr. Tay safe.
00:18:11.220But as Canadians, we should be asking, well, with a way to do that, to give Mr. Tay officers around him so that he could campaign and run a fair campaign in person.
00:18:27.360And as the New York Times reported, supporting and corroborating my reports, he ran a quiet campaign.
00:18:36.300You know, this story reminds me, I had the pleasure of meeting a man named Joe Wong, who is with Falun Gong, which is a religious sect that the Chinese Communist Party wants to destroy.
00:18:51.800And he said that his family member, I forget if it was his brother, was back in China in the hospital.
00:18:58.360And his brother called on the phone and said that there was secret police there and handed the phone to the secret police who threatened him to stop criticizing China.
00:19:21.260Well, let me, I'm going to quote from your story again, Sam.
00:19:24.720The move to detain and question Tay's cousin and the man's wife in Hong Kong, reported by multiple sources, including the Hong Kong Free Press, appears aimed at ramping up pressure on Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney.
00:19:40.840It's going to terrify the Chinese-Canadian community.
00:19:43.640And I think that's what a lot of this is.
00:19:45.340When you have these Chinese-Canadian police officers and it's revealed that they're taking orders as much from China as they are from the police boss, that's terrifying because all these people who have come to Canada hoping to be free, they've still got to look over their shoulder.
00:20:00.860My heart goes out to these folks, Sam.
00:20:06.840As Joe Tay himself said, when Paul Chien issued an apology saying that he was just joking when he suggested Mr. Tay could be turned over to Chinese officials in Toronto, Joe Tay rightly said, apology not accepted.
00:20:21.760That message was CCP statecraft from the Liberal MP, and it was not only aimed at Joe Tay, it was aimed broadly at the Chinese-Canadian community saying, do not support democracy.
00:20:39.720Now his relatives, under questioning in Hong Kong, again, that message being sent out to the Chinese-Canadian community, do not vote for conservatives because they're harder on China than the Liberals.
00:20:56.000And look, who benefited from those very same cyber operations as site disclosed and the Bureau reported?
00:21:02.600Prime Minister Mark Carney, who remains silent on this issue.
00:21:09.220There's this committee called SITE, S-I-T-E.
00:21:13.320This is a SITE task force, and I forget exactly who's on it.
00:21:16.740It's a combination of political and national security and foreign affairs.
00:21:21.740It's sort of a different multidisciplinary committee, and their job during the election is to sort of warn the public if there is some evidence of foreign interference.
00:21:32.200And I remember when they announced the formation of this committee, I thought, oh, brother, here we go.
00:21:36.400Because politically, people say, oh, Donald Trump is interfering.
00:21:41.660Or I remember when the CBC had a reporter who said that Vladimir Putin was organizing the truckers.
00:21:47.280And I thought, oh, brother, this SITE task force is just going to call conservatives bad names.
00:22:28.400China knows in the private closed-door meeting, Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and Mark Carney were having some very serious discussions about how China fits into that tariff battle.
00:22:39.340And we don't know what we're discussed, but surely we can assess that China is watching Mark Carney very closely.
00:23:10.200I think Canada did not rise to the occasion when the two Michaels were, I think, kidnapped is the right term and held for years.
00:23:17.980Well, Sam, it's great to catch up with you, and I'm grateful for your generous time.
00:23:21.880You're so busy, and I see you being interviewed as a subject matter expert on other media, so we're really grateful to you to make time for us.
00:23:29.620The best way to follow you, if I'm not mistaken, is at thebureau.news.
00:23:36.660You got it right, Ezra, and it's almost two years.
00:23:39.320I've been up and running 30,000 subscribers, so it's growing, and it's getting traction globally.
00:23:45.740Yeah, so if you're a viewer who likes getting things faster than the mainstream media, Sam is often the guy breaking these stories.
00:23:53.480So you may get your news one, two, three days faster, sometimes weeks faster, by going to Sam's thebureau.news than waiting to hear from it from other sources.
00:24:03.320So once again, Sam, thanks for giving the inside scoop to our people.
00:24:06.920Good luck out there, and we'll keep following what you're doing.
00:30:43.020Even Indigenous protests won't hold back the separatist tide.
00:30:46.600Among the definitely-leave group, a full majority said that major Indigenous resistance would actually make them more likely to support separation.
00:30:56.240Here's one number that you won't hear on the CBC.
00:30:59.04071% of Alberta separatists and 74% of Saskatchewan separatists would vote to stay if the federal Conservatives formed government.
00:31:09.080First translation, this isn't so much a separatist revolution as it is a desperate cry for fairness.
00:31:18.240But if Ottawa keeps treating Alberta and Saskatchewan-like provinces to be punished, taxed, and controlled,
00:31:23.340then maybe we've got no choice but to take our future into our own hands, whatever that may look like.
00:31:28.580Because how long can you stay in a relationship where you're the one always paying, always blamed, and then never heard?
00:31:35.120So here's one question no one in the Laurentian bubble is asking.
00:31:39.780Why are Westerners being asked to save a country that won't take its foot off our heads while we drown?
00:31:47.660If Ottawa won't change, maybe it's time we did.