Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Is the Bank of Canada fudging the numbers to keep Trudeau in power？ A special interview with Manny Montenegrino

00:00:00.000 Hello, my friends. Today on this Canada Day-Long Weekend, a special half-hour conversation with

00:00:05.660 our friend Manny Montenegrena. We're going to talk about a lot of things, including

00:00:09.260 is the Bank of Canada governor fudging interest rates to keep Justin Trudeau in power? Manny's

00:00:17.240 got some things to say about that. Hey, by the way, before we get to the podcast, let me invite

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00:00:51.680 All right, here's today's podcast.

00:00:57.540 Tonight is the Bank of Canada fudging the numbers to keep Justin Trudeau in power. It's July 3rd,

00:01:16.480 and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.

00:01:18.500 You're fighting for freedom!

00:01:21.460 Shame on you, you censorious bug! 0.86

00:01:33.620 Tiff Macklem almost sounds like a made-up name. Tiff Macklem. No, that is the name 0.92

00:01:41.060 of the head of the Bank of Canada. And what is the Bank of Canada? Well, their number one job,

00:01:47.200 I suppose, is to set interest rates low enough. It encourages people to borrow, to expand their

00:01:53.500 businesses, to buy homes. That motivates people to stop renting and start owning. But if the economy

00:02:00.760 gets too fast, too hot, then the Bank of Canada can increase interest rates, cooling off the economy.

00:02:09.240 That's another way of saying making things too expensive, making home ownership too expensive,

00:02:15.440 making business expansion too expensive, making people less employed. It's a brutal business.

00:02:24.000 Here's what Tiff Macklem said shortly after the pandemic struck. Take a look.

00:02:30.720 Interest rates are very low, and they're going to be there for a long time.

00:02:36.480 We recognize that Canadians, Canadian businesses are facing an unusual amount of uncertainty.

00:02:45.400 And so we have been unusually clear about the future path for interest rates. If you've got a

00:02:53.280 mortgage, or if you're considering to make a major purchase, or you're a business and you're

00:02:59.320 considering making an investment, you can be confident that interest rates will be low for a long time.

00:03:06.480 Well, that's what Tiff had to say. And Tiff wouldn't lie, would he? Tiff wouldn't tell

00:03:12.280 millions of Canadians to go ahead and load up on mortgages and business loans only to change his

00:03:18.960 strategy. Would he? Well, joining us now to talk about that is one of our favorite guys,

00:03:24.260 Manny Montenegrino, the CEO of ThinkSharp. Manny, if I was someone looking to rent or buy,

00:03:31.820 listening to Tiff Macklem would make me say, boy, this is the time to buy. Money's going to be cheap,

00:03:36.900 not just the time to buy, but to have what's called a variable rate mortgage, because you get a better

00:03:42.060 deal on it. What do you make of what Tiff Macklem said there? And guess what? There's a second video

00:03:46.700 we're going to show in a second to tell you how the story ends. But why don't you unpack a little

00:03:51.080 bit, Manny, what we just saw there?

00:03:52.620 Well, he couldn't be any clearer. He basically told Canadians. And by the way, the Bank of Canada

00:03:59.920 never tells us what it's doing in the future. Rarely tells us. And this time, this was about

00:04:08.380 six months after COVID struck. And this time, the Bank of Canada went forward and said, be rest assured,

00:04:16.340 low interest rates for a very long time. And that means people went out and bought homes,

00:04:23.440 people went out and took variable mortgages. And Ezra, in my law practice of 35 years, I practice

00:04:29.500 in real estate law pretty heavily as well. And a long time in real estate law means a minimum of five

00:04:36.100 years. We, at the time that Tiff Macklem said that, the governor said that, we have now had almost

00:04:43.880 0% or 1% mortgages, 2% bank rates from 2008 to 2020 when the pandemic hit. So that's 12 years of

00:04:55.420 really low rates. And when the Bank of Governor comes up and does a long time, one could reasonably

00:05:01.220 expect it's at least five years, if not another 10 years of low interest rate. So people went out

00:05:07.960 and listened to this independent Bank of Canada governor and acted accordingly. Then what happened?

00:05:15.660 Yeah. Well, let's take a look at video number two. Here's Tiff again.

00:05:19.700 Going forward, nobody should expect that interest rates are going to go back down to the very low

00:05:26.640 levels that we've seen over the last decade or so. So we're in a transition period to a world

00:05:33.860 where interest rates are going to be higher than what many people have gotten used to.

00:05:40.320 Well, there you have it. So everyone who got a variable rate mortgage, everyone who invested,

00:05:44.680 borrowed to build their business or build their home. Well, sorry, Tiff has new instructions now.

00:05:51.560 What's been the impact of this high interest rate? And combine that with inflation. First of all,

00:05:58.840 what has it done? And second of all, how did it happen, Manny? Well, I think it's important to know

00:06:04.420 how it happened. I looked into very carefully, and I have graphs that I can present. But basically,

00:06:14.100 the Bank of Canada's job is to keep inflation around 2%. That's its primary job. And the biggest tool

00:06:21.760 that it can do that is with interest rates. So it starts with inflation. Now, when the Bank of Canada

00:06:29.820 made that pronouncement after COVID struck, that interest rates are going to be there for a very

00:06:35.840 long time, he knew that the drivers of inflation were in place. And let me list them for you.

00:06:43.000 The biggest driver of inflation is government spending. Now, at the beginning of COVID,

00:06:48.440 we spent the government of Canada spent about $500 billion in CERB and other payments to keep people

00:06:55.700 at home. $500 billion, Ezra. The budget of Canada is only about $300 and some billion. So we basically

00:07:02.000 spent the whole budget, if not twice as much, in a few months. That is inflationary. The governor knew

00:07:10.680 that happened when he made that statement that interest rates would be for a long time very low.

00:07:16.700 The second driver of inflation is supply chain disruptions. COVID, when everyone shut down

00:07:23.480 around the world, and we know this, and he knew at the time he made that statement that the supply

00:07:28.940 chain was disrupted. The third driver of inflation is pent-up demand. Ezra, when you have people staying

00:07:37.380 at home for a year, and because of COVID, you know everyone knew. You didn't have to have

00:07:43.400 an economist's degree that demand will start ramping up because we shut everything down. 0.95

00:07:51.100 And the fourth is low interest rates. It's very important to know, Ezra, that the interest rates,

00:07:57.100 the bank rate was around 2%. And they dropped, this is remarkable, they dropped it to almost zero

00:08:03.900 at the beginning of COVID. Now, think of that logical step. You actually shut down the economy on purpose,

00:08:12.500 yet you lower interest rates to stimulate the economy. It doesn't make sense. They shouldn't

00:08:17.460 have done the lowering in the first place, because we weren't facing, we faced a lowered economy because

00:08:25.440 we chose to shut down everything. Everything was temporary. And my point, Ezra, is if your goal is to

00:08:32.200 keep inflation at 2%, you knew that inflation was going to breach the 2% very quickly because of those

00:08:40.880 four factors. Interest rates would slightly go back up. That's inflationary. The pent-up demand people

00:08:46.620 start buying whatever they didn't buy for a whole year. And the government spending of $500 billion

00:08:52.080 flowing through everywhere. That's going to... So he knew. So I don't understand how the Bank of Canada's

00:09:00.320 job is to keep it at 2%. And he knew that inflation was going to breach 2% within months after the first

00:09:10.000 year of COVID. Yet he made that statement that he's going to keep interest rates low for a very long

00:09:15.720 time. Well, you sent over a graph, and we'll put it up on the screen here. It's a pretty simple graph,

00:09:20.160 but I think there's a powerful message to it. When the last election was afoot in late 2021,

00:09:27.420 interest rates were still manageable. TIF did his job to help get Justin Trudeau re-elected. But as

00:09:33.860 soon as Trudeau was re-elected, TIF let go. And that's when interest rates and inflation truly went

00:09:41.020 nuts, didn't they? Well, that's a very important point. In fact, Ezra, once again, the Bank of Canada's

00:09:47.840 job is to keep inflation at 2%. We've seen four factors that were going to just pop inflation

00:09:54.400 past 2%. And it actually happened. Ezra, it happened around February 2021. That was the first

00:10:02.260 breach. The Bank of Canada could have easily at least brought interest rates back up to before

00:10:10.060 where they were COVID because we breached the 2%. He didn't. And he left them at the almost 0%.

00:10:16.420 Right up to the following year, which is after the election. So Ezra, for 10 months,

00:10:25.800 inflation kept going up to almost 6% before, a year after it breached the 2% before he started

00:10:34.420 implementing the very sharp increases in interest rates. So it is just, there is no explanation.

00:10:41.440 And particularly, Ezra, if you take the premise that the vaccines were all going to bring us back

00:10:48.620 to normality, the two-shot miracle drug was going to just make everything tickety-boo. And that's what

00:10:53.240 all the public officials were telling you. That means you knew by July, or at least by June of 2021,

00:11:03.080 that everything would be back to normal and interest rates should have gone up. He did not increase

00:11:07.460 interest rates knowing all these factors and knowing that the inflation rate was about 4.5%.

00:11:14.440 It was 4.5% at the time of the election, and interest rates were still at virtually zero.

00:11:21.220 You know, I think the number one cause of inflation is when governments just print money. I mean,

00:11:27.140 when you get to print as much money as you want, it's sort of like counterfeit money. The bad money,

00:11:33.060 the fake money drives out the good money. I mean, if there's, I'm just going to make up a number. If

00:11:37.920 there's a trillion dollars that people are buying and selling, and then the government prints another

00:11:43.780 trillion dollars, now there's still $2 trillion for the same amount of goods and services. So

00:11:49.700 everybody's money just got cut in half, but the government stole that half. I'm simplifying,

00:11:56.440 of course. But when you pump hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy, of course, everyone's

00:12:02.900 going to be poorer. And of course, there's going to be inflation. But here's the crazy part on top of

00:12:08.140 that. They're deliberately making energy and food more expensive. They're raising the carbon taxes.

00:12:16.220 They raise the carbon tax every April Fool's Day, even during the pandemic. So everything that needs

00:12:23.680 energy from your home to transportation to farm vehicles, all more expensive. The war on carbon

00:12:30.400 is their excuse. But now they're doing the same to food, Manny. We see it in the Netherlands. We see it

00:12:36.640 coming to Canada. The war on nitrogen to make food more expensive. I don't know why they're doing it,

00:12:46.180 but I think that's going to be a problem too. Inflation, higher costs for anything needing energy

00:12:53.200 and food. And I think it's a kind of rationing. And I think it's madness. I don't understand it.

00:12:58.160 What's your thinking about their plan to make energy and food more expensive?

00:13:02.560 Well, I mean, clearly it's a plan. If you took out the carbon taxes on gas, if you took out

00:13:12.000 the bump of interest rate, we have no inflation. Our economy is not doing well. It's all government

00:13:18.760 created. The sad thing is, Ezra, I actually did an exercise. And you know how income tax

00:13:24.680 works. It begins at a low level. If a person's making minimum wage, and let's say minimum wage

00:13:32.440 is at $15 and works 40 hours a week for 50 weeks a year, that person's making $30,000. That person

00:13:39.480 still pays $4,000 to $6,000 in income tax, depending on where they're at, plus all the other taxes,

00:13:45.400 the carbon taxes on gasoline and everything else. Now, that person's purchasing power is about 15%

00:13:53.800 less than it was two years ago. The poor are being destroyed because it is the food and the gas that

00:14:01.640 are going up. That's what's driving this inflation. And what's really ironic is that the governments are

00:14:09.800 taking taxation on it. And it makes no sense that you have someone that gets a bump in their minimum

00:14:20.600 wage, and that bump leads to more taxation, although it has no purchasing power.

00:14:25.160 Right, because they sort of get inflated into a higher tax bracket. Is that what you mean?

00:14:30.120 Right. Yes, exactly. I mean, if you look at a person, I mean, if you go to $18, $19 an hour,

00:14:37.960 well, you're purchasing power at $18 an hour is probably equivalent because of the base goods

00:14:43.640 that you're buying at $12 an hour, three or four years ago. Yet now you're at $18 an hour,

00:14:48.360 you're being taxed at $18 an hour. You're behind. And the government is making money. Now,

00:14:53.240 the government makes money, of course, on the four or five carbon taxes that Trudeau's put on,

00:14:58.440 and the carbon tax on the delivery of your food, and everything that poor people need, which is hydro,

00:15:04.760 food, and transportation, is being viciously attacked with these new taxes. It is an attack

00:15:12.840 on the poor. It is a vicious attack on the poor. I mean, you know, people that are making lots of

00:15:18.680 money are not paying attention to this, but the working poor have now become poor.

00:15:25.560 You know, there's a statistic that I heard about a week ago, which is that Canada passed the 40

00:15:32.760 million people mark, which sort of caught me by surprise because the last official number I heard

00:15:38.120 was 38 million. I thought, boy, we sort of skipped over 39 million. And if you look at the stats,

00:15:44.760 Canada, through all kinds of immigration, visitor status, student visas all together,

00:15:52.120 it's about a million people a year, a million, not 250,000 or 300,000, but a million. That's how

00:16:01.560 we just suddenly jumped up to 40 million people. And, you know, I know that some of that immigration

00:16:07.960 is entrepreneurial or high-skill immigration, but not all of it. My initial reflex is, oh,

00:16:14.280 now I know why housing is so expensive. Now I know why traffic is so bad. Now I know

00:16:19.160 why schools are crowded, hospital waiting rooms, there's a lineup. Now I know a lot of those things.

00:16:24.600 But it also hides a weak economy, because if you bring a million people into the country every year,

00:16:32.600 just to give them housing and food, you're going to get some GDP going up. But if you've increased the

00:16:39.160 population by 3%, but GDP goes up, I don't know, 4%, well, three of that was just these newcomers, 0.86

00:16:50.280 and you actually have a very weak economy. I think that's sort of the point you were making earlier,

00:16:54.680 wasn't it? Exactly. That's the third point or fourth point that the Bank of Canada, I mean,

00:17:02.680 I don't know, I call it gross negligence, Ezra, but the Bank of Canada is now hesitating,

00:17:08.840 dropping the interest rates, even though the inflation rate is down to 3.4%, that was a few days ago,

00:17:18.200 3.4%. You would expect, because it's now gone down for 12 consecutive months,

00:17:25.000 that there'd be an ease in the interest rates. Remember, Ezra, it went up 12 consecutive months,

00:17:31.720 inflation up to 60% before he acted, and it's now dropped 12 consecutive months, and he's not

00:17:38.280 lowering these interest rates. The answer, if you just listen to the fake news media and the Bank of

00:17:45.720 Canada, they're saying, well, we have a strong economy, and we got to temper it down.

00:17:51.560 Ezra, the strong economy that they're now saying is 3% GDP. And as you stated, just the number of

00:18:01.080 people coming into Canada is about 3% growth. If we did not have any immigration or any new people

00:18:09.000 coming into Canada, our economy is dead flat. We're in a recession. It's in trouble. And when

00:18:15.960 it's in trouble, you reduce interest rates. So he doesn't even, the Bank of Canada doesn't even net out

00:18:22.840 the extraordinary, there's no country in the world that's adding more people. I had a debate with an

00:18:28.200 American friend, and he said, well, yeah, you're adding one million, we're adding three. I said,

00:18:34.120 we're one-tenth the size. I mean, they don't get it. America thinks it's under siege by

00:18:39.320 open borders and immigration. We have three times what America brings in, 10 times what my old country 0.91

00:18:46.120 Italy is bringing in, probably 15 times more than Germany. There's no country in the world that's

00:18:51.080 admitting more people, which is fine. I mean, that's the direction that Canada wants to go.

00:18:54.920 But at least the Bank of Canada has to take that factor into account and say, look, real growth in

00:19:01.240 Canada, if you net out the new people, is not 3%. Our economy is stagnant. We need to get interest

00:19:07.960 rates down, not up. You know, you said if that's the direction you want to go as a country. I don't

00:19:13.720 think we've ever had a debate on immigration, at least not in the last decade. I think of past

00:19:19.880 conservative leaders, Andrew Scheer, Aaron O'Toole, terrified to even talk about it. Basically, whatever number

00:19:26.040 Justin Trudeau said, they said, yeah, we agree. Trudeau, whatever he would say, literally any

00:19:32.440 number, both Andrew Scheer, Aaron O'Toole, and I think Pierre Pauly, I would just say, yeah, whatever

00:19:38.440 he said, they're too afraid to be seen as racist or whatever they would be called for wanting a

00:19:45.320 manageable number of immigration that could be absorbed into the economy and the community.

00:19:50.600 And the number is so astonishingly large, a million people a year in a country of just 40

00:19:56.280 million people. I have never seen a poll where the people who say more immigration is larger than

00:20:03.720 the people who say less immigration. I mean, it's like single digits who want more. Most people say,

00:20:10.360 yeah, we're okay. A lot of people say it should be less. Angus Reid does this poll all the time.

00:20:16.120 I just don't think we have a national debate on immigration because everyone's terrified of being

00:20:20.600 canceled, Manny.

00:20:22.200 Well, that's true, but we don't even have an analyzation of the type of immigration. And let

00:20:29.240 me explain it to you. When I immigrated to Canada, five strapping boys came with mom and dad, and we

00:20:36.280 all added to the workforce. And not only that, but we created tons of jobs. That's the type of immigrant 1.00

00:20:41.720 that came to Canada, when we came to Canada. There's a way of measuring it, Ezra. Now, and I've

00:20:48.360 done this as well. I've measured how we're doing as an economy. I already said that our economy is at

00:20:54.360 zero percent if you net out in GDP growth. But in employment, I do not look at the unemployment rate.

00:21:03.880 That's a terrible number. It gives you no information. I look at the labor participation

00:21:11.480 rate, and people can Google what that is. Now, Ezra, I've done the math, and I've actually posted it.

00:21:17.640 But here's what the labor participation rate is. It's very simple. It is how many possible working

00:21:24.760 people are there in your country, and how many of those are working. And you express it as a

00:21:29.800 percentage. Now, we know that's an important number to look at, because we're adding so many

00:21:37.400 people to this country. And this tells us what type of people are we adding. If our labor participation

00:21:44.040 rate is going up, and we have a million new people in Canada every year, that's a great story. We're

00:21:50.840 going to have a booming economy. We're going to have probably three percent plus three percent. We're going

00:21:55.480 to have six, seven percent growth, because we should have six or seven percent growth, because we added

00:21:59.880 three percent of the population, and we've got these entrepreneurs. But Ezra, I looked at that. Back

00:22:05.560 before, in 2014, the labor participation rate was about 67 percent. It's now 65.5, 1.5 percent less. That

00:22:21.400 means if you look at to the working people, let's say there are 30 million people in Canada that are of

00:22:27.880 working ability, not the people that are looking for jobs, not just that's the problem with the

00:22:34.040 unemployment rate. If I stop looking for a job, I'm not considered a part of the workforce. No, I am,

00:22:40.360 whether you're starting to look for a job. So 1.5 percent is 450,000 people. Ezra, that means that since we

00:22:50.600 started this mass immigration, there's been less 450,000 people that are not working in the same

00:22:58.200 percentage that they were before that, before Trudeau expanded it. So the type of immigrants

00:23:02.920 that he's getting are not the entrepreneurs. Of course, there are going to be some, but it's so

00:23:08.040 disproportionate that we are now 450,000 people less working on a percentage basis than we were three

00:23:17.160 years ago. And that's not good. So when you sum it all up, Ezra, they're number one, we don't have a

00:23:24.440 three percent GDP. There are people buying milk and people buying cars and people buying food that are

00:23:29.720 immigrants. They are three percent new. So therefore, we have no real GDP growth. And if you look at the 1.00

00:23:37.480 future of the economy, we have no employment growth. In fact, it's dropped. And that's a problem.

00:23:45.000 Hmm. How do you tackle this? I mean, is Pierre Polyev able to tackle this? I think that the media

00:23:53.160 is less enthralled with Justin Trudeau now than they have been. I think he's just getting a little

00:23:58.120 tiresome in some ways. I think that China influence scandals. I'm not sure if they're resonating with

00:24:04.960 ordinary people on the ground, but the media sort of doesn't trust Trudeau as much anymore. I think they

00:24:09.720 see him as a bit of an operator. But I still think that for reasons of class and clubbiness,

00:24:16.920 I still think the media is on Justin Trudeau's side. I think they don't like Pierre Polyev. They

00:24:21.540 regard him as a barbarian and an outsider. And I think that the media are going to help carry Trudeau

00:24:28.220 against across the finish line again. And I don't think Trudeau is going to stop until he beats his

00:24:34.060 father's record of being PM for 16 years. I think he's going to run it. Sorry, go over to you. Go

00:24:40.220 ahead. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. There's nothing to stop Trudeau because there is

00:24:44.360 no news that's really attacking. I mean, there are Canadians that are suffering, but they're not

00:24:50.640 part of the landscape, the news landscape. And it seems to me that every institution

00:24:59.580 works to keep Trudeau going. And when I say that, I don't say that lightly. We know that the media does

00:25:05.960 it. We know that the RCMP, oh my God, you couldn't get more of us. There's Section 139,

00:25:12.940 one of the Criminal Code, obstruction of justice, every subsection has been met and Trudeau should

00:25:19.460 have been charged and the file wasn't even opened up. The whole Nova Scotia thing to make Trudeau look

00:25:25.880 good. So we have the RCP and now we have the Bank of Canada. In my opinion, the Bank of Canada should

00:25:34.020 have increased its interest rates knowing all those factors at the beginning of 2021 when it knew that

00:25:41.200 inflation broke 2% and slowly get Canadians back on track. He waited a whole year, a whole election

00:25:49.000 cycle. I tell you, if interest rates got up 2-3% before the election, you would have seen

00:25:55.780 people think twice about their government. They didn't. We went on. And I do believe that you'll

00:26:03.520 see interest rates go down, not this year, which it should, but it will go down before the other

00:26:09.080 election cycle, which is in 2025. I want to ask you a question about Toronto. In the last few days,

00:26:15.860 there was an election in Toronto and the socialist candidate won, and won fairly strongly. Olivia Chow,

00:26:23.680 the widow of Jack Layton. Is that just Toronto for you? I mean, that's just big cities in Canada,

00:26:29.420 their vote left. Is there anything we should extrapolate from that? Is there any lesson

00:26:34.720 federally or is that just a quirky city hall, 102 candidates, things fractured many ways? Is there

00:26:41.560 anything that we should, does this tell us any lessons about Trudeau or the national political scene,

00:26:48.560 or is this just something more local? Well, I hope it's local. I hope it's Olivia Chow. I mean,

00:26:55.100 she was married to an incredible individual, Jack Layton. I had the honor of meeting him and talking to

00:27:03.900 him. A really impressive guy. He understood the socialist side, not the rabid socialist side,

00:27:11.180 not the crazy destroy families and destroy everything social side, but he understood,

00:27:16.260 you know, what I would, you know, the socialist stuff that I heard in the seventies, that was Jack

00:27:21.660 Layton. And he was loved by all. Olivia Chow, I think, was helped substantially behind that. And I also,

00:27:29.720 so I'm, I'm hoping, I mean, if Canadians feel that, and she campaigned on increased taxes,

00:27:37.480 uh, I hope that it was all about personality and nothing about policy.

00:27:44.300 Yeah. You might be right on that. Um, you mentioned that Jack Layton was a different breed

00:27:48.640 of socialist. I wasn't that familiar with him, but I come from the prairies originally,

00:27:54.220 and there was a prairie socialist that was a little bit different. In fact, I remember Roy Romano,

00:27:58.380 the last socialist premier of Saskatchewan, he actually balanced the budget and brought in private

00:28:05.940 sector healthcare, which, you know, you might say, how on earth did an NDP or do that? Well,

00:28:10.180 they're a little bit different, or at least they were a generation ago in the prairies. Now I think

00:28:15.080 the left is about being woke, which can be described as cultural Marxism, critical race theory, critical

00:28:23.020 gender theory. And I think if you ask a young socialist today, a young progressive, half of the

00:28:30.960 kids in universities, what do you stand for? They wouldn't even talk about economics other than,

00:28:36.900 of course, they're for big government. They would say, you know, the climate crisis. They wouldn't

00:28:43.240 really know what that means, but they would say it. They think we're all going to burn up. And they

00:28:47.520 would talk about gender and microaggressions and how we're all racist and sexist. And they would

00:28:53.620 really focus on, on those identity politics. I think that's the heart of the NDP today.

00:29:00.560 That's a new NDP. Like Ezra, you forget 2019 election, every political leader said they were

00:29:10.560 going to balance the budget. That included the NDP. Jack Layton, a perfect example. He's like a prairie

00:29:17.720 socialist with a little bit of downtown in them, which is, which is fine. We've now gone to,

00:29:24.160 you know, a socialism, a communism, an abstraction of reality. And that's where the new party is at.

00:29:31.960 So, so yeah, I mean, it's not the same socialism that you and I understood it to be, or we,

00:29:38.160 that we understood Canada. There was a great prairie socialism that was responsible, strong family

00:29:44.620 oriented, strong church oriented, and, but, but more of, you know, fairness for the individual person.

00:29:52.200 Now, I know you've been a critic of Maxime Bernier and the People's Party of Canada before. We've had

00:29:57.620 you on and you've been very blunt about that. A few weeks ago, there was a by-election in Portage

00:30:02.520 Lisger, which oddly enough, or maybe it's not odd at all, had the highest vote count for the People's

00:30:10.100 Party in the whole country. So it made sense that Bernier ran there in a by-election. The conservative

00:30:16.440 incumbent wasn't running again. There was a lot of things that could have made it the perfect storm

00:30:22.580 for a PPC breakthrough. Alas, it didn't happen. In fact, Bernier's vote declined a little bit

00:30:30.540 from the last election. I admire Maxime Bernier. I know that you and I have a bit of a difference of

00:30:36.860 opinion on him, but I would concede that that's two general elections and two by-elections in a row.

00:30:44.800 That's four opportunities to break through that he couldn't do. I like the guy, but I see him more as

00:30:51.060 a pundit and an activist than a political alternative now. I really think it's uniting the right, so to

00:30:59.740 speak. It's like a signal that, all right, conservatives like Pierre Polyev more than they

00:31:06.020 liked Aaron O'Toole or Andrew Scheer. In the most PPC-friendly riding in the country, that was sort

00:31:12.180 of proved again. I think that that's good news for Pierre Polyev. It says that he's sort of reuniting

00:31:17.600 the right at least a fair bit. That's my analysis of it. What do you think?

00:31:21.500 You're absolutely right, Ezra. I want to say this. There's nobody better skilled to talk about this

00:31:30.940 topic than me. I think I was mentioned in one of the PPC conventions in ridicule because I was

00:31:38.600 not a supporter. Ezra, not only did Maxime do worse, he, remember, the very clear aspect is that

00:31:48.440 riding that he went in Manitoba was a riding with a PPC member that did very well, nowhere near winning,

00:31:57.140 but did very well. Maxime took that riding because he knew it was the strongest riding with PPC.

00:32:03.080 He brought the power of his leadership, the power of his money, the power of his personality,

00:32:09.380 and dropped the vote by 25%. That's a big sign. And then I looked, as I do always,

00:32:17.480 I looked at the other ridings. They all went down. PPC went down. Now, Ezra, the first time that we

00:32:24.440 met, we were a lot younger. And I was, you might remember, I was a lawyer for the Reform Party in

00:32:31.880 Preston Manning. I think it was 1991. So I'm not one of these guys that doesn't do change. I'm one of

00:32:39.000 these guys that does change. I was part of the Reform Party. I put my legal career at risk. I put

00:32:45.320 everything at risk because I wanted to see this Western movement. And it was a great movement.

00:32:51.440 Now, let me just do an analogy, a comparison. Preston Manning's, the Reform Party, first election

00:32:58.900 was 1988, one seat. Then 93, I think 46 seats. And then 97, leader of the opposition. And Preston knew

00:33:10.960 by that time, we could never form government as a Conservative Party when the Conservative vote was

00:33:16.660 spit. It took us that long, but with great success. Now, you look at Maxime Bernier, he's going

00:33:23.520 backwards, absolutely backwards, had a seat, lost a seat that he and his father had in Boast since 1984.

00:33:32.720 I mean, that seat was a Bernier seat for almost my adult lifetime. He lost that seat. He goes to

00:33:42.720 Manitoba and takes the best seat that there is and knocks it down by 25%. It's going nowhere. It's been

00:33:50.220 two by-election, I'm sorry, two federal elections and two by-elections, and everything's regressed.

00:33:57.200 And I think you're right. I think the Conservative family obviously has a large spectrum. And there's

00:34:04.120 no question that O'Toole said one thing when he ran for the party and campaigned in a different way

00:34:11.060 that was more to the centre. And that certainly helped the PPC. But I don't get that feeling

00:34:19.600 from Pierre Polivare. Pierre Polivare, in my opinion, is the truest Conservative. And I've had,

00:34:27.360 you know, I've served under, as you know, Preston Manning, Stockwell Day, and Stephen Harper.

00:34:35.700 I would put Pierre pretty close to the top of that list, if he gets the chance. The only thing I fear

00:34:43.940 is the weight of the institutions, the weight of the media, just literally crushing him if he takes

00:34:51.380 him on. But I do think that he could. Well, it'll be very interesting. And I think we might have that

00:34:57.540 chance sooner rather than later. Last question for you, Manny, and it's great to catch up.

00:35:01.640 When do you think we will have that next federal election? Do you think it'll be sometime in 2023?

00:35:07.460 Do you think it'll be in 2024? I mean, theoretically, Trudeau could hang on with Jagmeet Singh's support

00:35:14.620 as long as 2026, if he stretched it. When do you think we're going to go to the polls?

00:35:20.700 Well, that's a great question. And you know that there's this unholy alliance between the NDP

00:35:25.960 and the Liberals. Now, I'm going to go back a bit with respect to what the PPC have done.

00:35:32.220 I analyzed every riding in Canada after the last election and weighted the PPC vote as half

00:35:40.860 conservative and half other. And in 17 ridings, they went to either the NDP or to the Liberals.

00:35:51.060 And my point is very simple. Although the PPC vote was less than 5%, in many ridings, about 17

00:35:58.720 switched to the NDP and the Liberals. Without the PPC in 2021, Jagmeet Singh and Trudeau could not make

00:36:11.780 the unholy alliance deal. They would have needed another party. And we would have been at an election

00:36:17.040 a lot sooner. And we would have not seen this devastation that Canada is seeing. So there is

00:36:23.640 something to that. Now, to answer your question, they're going to wait until the economy is back

00:36:29.740 down. Like I say, this inflation is going to slow down, mainly because we are in, I think we're in a

00:36:38.480 recession, although our growth of immigration has stopped it. But the inflation is going to slow down.

00:36:45.280 It's dropped down to 3.4%. We're pretty close to the 2% target. Interest rates will come down.

00:36:51.220 It'll be rosy in a year or two. And that's when I think Trudeau and Jagmeet will stretch the tape as

00:37:00.780 long as they can. It'll be 2025. There'll be no incentive to do it earlier. So I think we're in

00:37:08.800 it for at least a year and a half or if not more. That's very interesting. I just want to say, I know

00:37:14.140 that if there was a PPC-er in the room right now, they would say, you cannot simply put the PPC vote

00:37:20.760 behind the Conservatives. Many of them would never do.

00:37:23.700 No, I didn't.

00:37:24.480 Yeah, no, I know you did. I just...

00:37:26.100 No, no, but I took half of it. You see, what I did, I understand that. So I said,

00:37:30.720 you know, I mean, listen, I'm as close as you can get to a PPC and ideology. The only difference is

00:37:36.620 I don't suffer cognitive dissonance. I do know that the way that our parliament works,

00:37:43.620 we need to be in the House to make change. And so, you know, you got to put a lid of water in

00:37:50.760 your wine. Because, I mean, look what's happened. We literally gave Jagmeet and Trudeau a kind of

00:37:58.000 marriage license to do whatever they want. So... 0.56

00:38:00.620 Oh, believe me, I know what you mean, Manny. I mean, I remember during the height of lockdowns

00:38:05.700 in Ontario, where you had a number of MPPs in Ontario, Roman Baber, Randy Hilliard,

00:38:11.700 Belinda Karajalios, you had a number of dissident MPPs who wanted to talk more about freedom,

00:38:19.420 but because they couldn't get it together pragmatically, because they couldn't join forces,

00:38:23.920 each one of them wanted to be the boss, they were not effective. And Maxime Bernier,

00:38:28.840 if he's not in the House of Commons, he's like those other names I just mentioned,

00:38:32.740 just like Derek Sloan. These are good guys, ideologically solid activists. But if you're

00:38:38.600 not in a legislature, you're just a pundit. Manny, go ahead. Last word to you, my friend.

00:38:45.940 No, that's... Absolutely, absolutely. I think we have to be more pragmatic. I don't know how we

00:38:51.980 could get any worse. But when you have, you know, the NDP aligning with Trudeau, and they're both

00:38:58.780 trying to see who can spend the country's money faster and sooner, and not care about our

00:39:06.520 traditional values institutions. If there's a race there, can we at least throw something into

00:39:12.660 the spokes so we slow them down? Yeah. Manny Montenegrino, what a pleasure to catch up with

00:39:18.060 you. Happy Canada Day-long weekend. Look forward to talking to you again soon, my friend.

00:39:22.840 Thank you very much, Ezra. Take care. Right on, you too. Well, there you have it. That's our show

00:39:27.200 for today. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rubber World Headquarters, to you at home,

00:39:32.200 good night, and keep fighting for freedom.

Rebel News Podcast - July 03, 2023

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Is the Bank of Canada fudging the numbers to keep Trudeau in power？ A special interview with Manny Montenegrino

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