EZRA LEVANT ｜ Mark Carney's new cabinet to feature familiar faces
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Summary
Mark Carney s new cabinet is a lot like Justin Trudeau s old cabinet. Plus, the UK Labour Party now says they re against mass immigration. And Ezra Leven talks about Alberta's independence from Canada and why he thinks it s a good thing.
Transcript
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Oh, hi, everybody. Mark Carney has announced his new cabinet, pretty much similar to Trudeau's
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cabinet. We'll go through it with Dr. John Robson. But I also want to tell you about
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big changes overseas in the United Kingdom. The Labour Party, which has been a massive
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immigration, open borders party, had the daylight scared out of it by Nigel Farage's victory for
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the Reform UK in recent elections. So Keir Starmer, that's the British Prime Minister,
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the Labour Prime Minister, has basically said we're ending mass immigration. I don't believe
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him. I don't think anyone believes him. But his change of rhetoric is so shocking and so telling.
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I want to take you through it and maybe tell you if I think there's any lessons in there for Canada.
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So that's the big show for today. Let me invite you to get the video version of this podcast. Go to
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Tonight, Mark Carney's new cabinet is a lot like Justin Trudeau's old cabinet. Plus, the UK Labor Party
00:02:13.740
now says they're against mass immigration. It's May 13th, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.
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Hi, everybody. Last night, we had close to 500 people out in Edmonton for our town hall meeting
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about Alberta independence. On a night where the Edmonton Oilers were in the Stanley Cup final
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rounds, we could have sold more tickets, but the room couldn't hold anymore. We're doing it again
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in Calgary tomorrow night, and I apologize that we only booked a room that could hold 350. I think
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we're going to have to do it again. A longer event, a much larger venue. I'll share my ideas for that with
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you another day. But in short, I outlined our plans as Rebel News, that is to respectfully cover the
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referendum and all of its participants, and to try to defend the democratic process against
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absolutely certain interference from meddlers, whether it's Mark Carney's liberals or anti-oil
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extremists or even the leader of the Bloc Québécois who said this.
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For the people in Alberta who want to separate, do you have any tips for them on how to actually get the
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change? Our success so far, it does not place me in a position to give them tips about what to do,
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but I could give them tips about what not to do. Not now. The first idea is to define oneself as a nation.
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Therefore, it requires a culture of their own. And I am not certain that oil and gas qualify to define
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a culture. But it's theirs to decide if they want to, uh, revindicate the right to self-determination.
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I would never interfere in that. It belongs to them. I would like us to be the first.
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There's a lot in that short clip. First, he knows so little about Alberta. I wonder if he's actually
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even been to Alberta. Second, I think he means that as an insult. It would be like an Albertan
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saying you need more to a culture than just poutine. Uh, it's an insult, which actually shows
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the lack of depth of the person saying it. And it sort of marks working people. I would be like
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saying, oh, there's more a culture than fish, Newfoundland. Well, actually fish is part of the
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culture out there. It's how people live for centuries. Oil and gas is how many people in Alberta
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live. It's not all their culture, but it is part of it. Alberta's culture goes back to our beginning
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as a province. And before that, the pioneer spirit. My own great-grandfather was a homesteader.
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I'm talking about people breaking and clearing the land, building sod huts and building a place from
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the ground up. Look at Alberta's motto, Fortis et liber. That's Latin for strong and free. The culture
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of freedom and individuality and adventures and risk-taking. The geography of it, that is part of it.
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We don't have as long a history as Quebec. It's true, but we have our own culture. I mean,
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compare the welfare state mindset of other parts of Canada with Alberta's entrepreneurialism. Compare
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the restlessness of Alberta's voters compared to the socialist passivity and submission in other
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parts. Um, I'm not looking to insult other provinces. I live in Toronto these days, but to say
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Alberta has no distinct character means someone has obviously never been to Alberta, but it doesn't
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matter. Frankly, I think a deep part of being Albertan is being fed up with colonialism from
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Ottawa and entitlement from politicians like Yves-Francois Blanchet of the Bloc Québécois.
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Rebellion is part of Alberta's culture, frankly. I've learned a little bit about that sort of thing
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in Ireland. Um, there's something about a place that so restlessly gives birth to political movements
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like Alberta does. That's part of Alberta's culture. But at the end of the day, Alberta doesn't
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actually need to convince Blanchet. It doesn't have to have a coherent or single reason to live to
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leave. And people can vote for independence for their own reasons. All that matters is that 51% of
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people do on a clear question. It's not a philosophical debate. It's a question of who
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Alberta wants to be its boss. As one of the speakers at the panel last night put it, if Alberta were
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currently not part of Canada, would it seriously join Canada under the terms of the current deal?
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The war on oil, the tanker and pipeline ban, the lack of representation in political institutions,
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including the Parliament and Supreme Court, the general war against the West,
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massive equalization payments to the East. But look at that clip from Blanchet again. Just take a quick
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look. Our success so far, it does not place me in a position to give them tips about what to do. But I
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could give them tips about what not to do. Not now. Uh, the first idea is to define oneself as a nation.
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Therefore, it requires a culture of their own. And I am not certain that oil and gas qualify to define a
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culture. But it's theirs to decide if they want to, uh, revindicate the right to self-determination.
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I would never interfere in that. It belongs to them. I would like us to be the first.
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Yeah, I sense a bit of envy in a way. The Bloc and the Parti Québécois have been fighting for
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independence for 50 years. They've had two referendums. They actually elected a Parti
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Québécois government provincially, but they've never succeeded. But the Bloc MPs, those fiery
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separatists, are enjoying living high off the hog at the expense of Canadian taxpayers. I mean, it's
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like that phrase, the permanent revolution. They've been fighting for separatism for so long.
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They're part of the institution. They're part of the establishment. There are dozens of Bloc MPs
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who are retired but collecting their pensions from the government of Canada. It's very,
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very separatist to them, isn't it? So yeah, either Yves-François Blanchet is really, really bad
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at his job of leaving Canada, or just as likely he doesn't actually want to leave Canada.
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He loves the game, being the bad cop in Quebec, working with the good cop in Ottawa. So he says,
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hey, Ottawa, if you don't give Quebec these special privileges and powers and payments,
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we're going to leave. And so Ottawa says, oh, you heard him, Ontario and Alberta and BC.
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He says, we're going to save this country. I mean, it's a sham. It's an inside job. It's a stitch
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up. I don't think he actually wants to leave. That would mean actual responsibility of running
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a place. And he prefers basically being a paid heckler in parliament. He'll never actually run
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or rule anything. And he knows it. Just look at his face. I think that Albertans are more resigned
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and resolved than angry. If you look at Mark Carney's new cabinet picks today, you'll see there's a reason
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for that. The cabinet still has Alberta haters like Stephen Gilboa in it. He's not in the
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environment ministry, but he's the new minister of identity and culture. Sorry. That basically means
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he's going to revive the C63 censorship laws that he originally introduced a few years ago.
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Lots of kooks in the cabinet. The new environment minister, Julie DeBruson, is deeply against the
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oil and gas industry and pipelines. Sheila Gunn-Rita has been doing some journalism on that.
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So yeah, Rebel News will help host an honest conversation about Alberta's place in Canada.
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And I suspect we'll be more fair and open-minded than the regime media. We're going to destroy
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everything and everyone that would take Alberta out of confederation. I mean, the rest of Canada says
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they hate oil. I think it's partly true, though they like to drive and fly and heat their homes,
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but mainly they love the money that comes from oil. So they don't actually, if pressed, want Alberta to
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leave with all that oil. They want the equalization payments to last forever. And they know separatism
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would kill their golden goose. The federal conservatives wouldn't want Alberta to go
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either, of course. They would never form a government in Canada again. They need those Alberta seats
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so much. Saskatchewan would probably follow Alberta out the door pretty soon. The remaining
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rump would have to be rebooted. So yeah, lots of inertia. Imagine you're a big bank or a cell phone
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company, cable company. You don't want separatism. You want the country to remain together. And you
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want mass immigration, by the way, because it just gives you more customers. Everyone to this country
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has a cell phone. Everyone has a bank account. You don't want disruption. Well, we will play a role
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in fairly reporting what happens. So that's Canada. Let me take a moment to tell you what just happened
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in the United Kingdom, because it's huge. As you know, a couple of weeks ago, one of the safest
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labor seats in the UK flipped from labor to Reform UK. That's Nigel Farage's party. I was there to
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cover the breakthrough. I had a sense it would happen. And it wasn't just that one new member
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of parliament that was elected. There were literally hundreds of local council seats that
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were up for election two. That's lower local political offices. I'm talking about hundreds and
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hundreds of reform politicians being swept into office on a huge wave. That's proof that that one
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by-election was not an anomaly. It is a tidal wave. And I remember the Reform UK campaign motto off by
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heart. It was so simple. Freeze immigration. Stop the boats. They're talking about those little boats
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coming across from France, across English Channel with fake asylum seekers. And now Nigel Farage is
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calling for the mass deportation of those who arrive illegally every day by boat. He had briefly
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backpedaled on that, but he's found his courage again. We will appoint, we will demand, this government
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does the same, that there is a minister for deportations. It will be part of the Home Office,
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but it'll be a separate department within it. We will need to recruit new people, as much of the
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evidence is that those that currently work in the Home Office would willfully obstruct policy
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if we won the next general election. But somebody somewhere in government needs to be held
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accountable. And you know, you've only got to go back 20 years to a last Labour government,
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and they were deporting tens of thousands of people a year who were here illegally. When Blunkett
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was Home Secretary, if you came illegally, you know, you didn't touch the sides. You were sent back.
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So what I'm calling for isn't actually anything particularly radical. It's actually just common
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sense. It's what most countries in the world do. You want to go and live there? You want to go and
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settle there? You have to meet a set of criteria. And that country chooses, are you the right person
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or are you not? Well, the Labour Prime Minister of the UK, Keir Starmer is his name. He may be dumb,
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but he's not stupid. And so yesterday, he just simply changed his policy. And just as important,
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he changed his language. Just astonishing. As dramatic as Mark Carney, the lifelong supporter
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of carbon taxes, suddenly coming out against carbon taxes. In Canada, about a million people,
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I think, were naive enough to believe that and switch back to the Liberals. I just don't think
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anyone in the UK, though, believes this flip-flop from Starmer, especially since more boats come
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across from the English Channel every day. By the way, compare those illegal migrants,
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all military-aged single men coming from France, which is a safe and free country,
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tearing up their passports, throwing them in the sea. Compare those fraudulent asylum seekers with the
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50 or so boar white farmers who landed in the US yesterday as actual refugees from South Africa,
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where the government racially harasses the Boers. Maybe you've seen those massive rallies where
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they chant, kill the Boer. This isn't a government party leading the rally, it's the opposition,
00:14:01.020
So yeah, real refugees to the US, including women and children, and look, they're actually waving
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the US flag, and I'm pretty sure there'll be good farmers in the US, not on welfare or drug dealers
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or murderers. Just a guess. Anyways, the UK, look at some of the language now used by Starmer.
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I'm doing this because it is right, because it is fair, and because it is what I believe in.
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Let me put it this way. Nations depend on rules, fair rules. Sometimes they're written down,
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often they're not. But either way, they give shape to our values, guide us towards our rights,
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of course, but also our responsibilities, the obligations we owe to each other.
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Now, in a diverse nation like ours, and I celebrate that, these rules become even more important.
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Without them, we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together.
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So when you have an immigration system that seems almost designed to permit abuse,
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that encourages some businesses to bring in lower paid workers rather than invest in our young people,
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or simply one that is sold by politicians to the British people on an entirely false premise,
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then you're not championing growth. You're not championing justice, or however else people defend
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the status quo. You're actually contributing to the forces that are slowly pulling our country apart.
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Island of strangers. That's literally what the word xenophobia means, fear or opposition to strangers.
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Mere months ago, Brits were jailed for saying things like that on Twitter.
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He said what would have been called a conspiracy theory, that the immigration system was designed
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to permit abuse. He says mass immigration is pulling the UK apart.
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Let me read to you some tweets. It's just astonishing.
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The Tories lost control of our borders and let net migration soar to record levels,
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undercutting hardworking Brits. I won't stand for it.
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I promise to restore control and cut immigration,
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and I'm delivering with tough new measures. British workers, I've got your back.
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I know you don't, you liar. Here's another one.
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The Tories ran an immigration system that relied on cheap foreign labor instead of investing in
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British workers. That betrayal ends now. Watch my announcement live from 8.30 a.m. as I set out
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how labor is delivering on our manifesto promise. Holy moly. Cheap foreign labor. Wow. I didn't know
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you were allowed to say such things. I mean, basically driving up housing prices, driving down wages.
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That's the central economic impact of mass immigration. But you weren't allowed to say
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that until about five minutes ago. Here's another one. If you want to live in the UK,
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you should speak English. That's common sense. So we're raising English language requirements
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across every main immigration room. Oh, how dare you? I'll read some more. I'm backing Britain's
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young people. We're charging employers more to recruit from overseas. And if they do,
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they must prove they're investing in British workers and increasing British skills. That's a fair
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and right thing to do. Why are you still allowing it then? I'll read just two more. Settlement in
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the UK is a privilege that is earned, not a right. Now, like I say, literally, as his staff were
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tweeting those things, more boats with fake asylum seekers were crossing over from France as he was
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saying that. So he's a total liar, but he's saying these words. Just a few months ago, he called anyone
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else who said them racist. Here's the official 10 Downing Street Twitter account. It says,
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we're ending Britain's open borders experiment. Two long businesses were actively encouraged to bring
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in lower paid workers rather than invest in our own people. We're fixing the system and restoring
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control to our borders. An open borders experiment? A betrayal of indigenous British citizens?
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English is non-negotiable? I think it's really possible. I think that Nigel Farage could,
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possibly, become the next prime minister. That's what the polls say. If he wins on the
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immigration freeze platform, of course, he needs to make sure that Keir Starmer can't catch up with
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him. Nigel Farage needs to go harder, talk more about deportations, point out the boat's coming
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daily. Starmer could only go so far before people know he doesn't mean it. The Conservative Party in the
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UK is led by a woman named Kemi Badenoch, and I'm afraid she's just not relevant. Every time she says
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something, even some good things, the obvious answer that rings true is you had 14 years to do
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this, and you were thrown out just last year because you didn't do any of this. You made things worse.
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Why would anyone trust you? It's hard to dispute that. And it's so obviously that the choice is now
00:19:02.300
between labor and reform. Don't be surprised if a few Conservative MPs defect to reform. I bet it'll
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happen. So what's the message for Canada? What's the lesson for Canada from the UK?
00:19:12.420
I think it's pretty simple. Go really hard on immigration. Call for an immigration freeze.
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Call for the deportation of those who aren't legally here. Put out the fraud in the temporary
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workers program and the international students program. Go hard. You'll notice one last thing
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about both Keir Starmer and Nigel Farage. They haven't talked about the disproportionate crimes of
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migrants, and they're terrified to even mention the cultural aspects, including mass support for Gaza
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and Hamas and anti-Semitism on the streets of the UK. And it's the same here in Canada.
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But everyone knows it. I don't know a lot about Mark Carney's new immigration minister. I think
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it's Lina Diab, if I'm not mistaken. She's born in Canada from Lebanese descendants. I'm guessing
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she's Christian from a family that fled what the PLO did to Lebanon. But in this tweet, the radical
00:20:00.280
Muslim Public Affairs Council endorses her, saying she supported the NDP's radical genocide resolution
00:20:07.040
in Parliament. So yeah, political power may well be coming to Nigel Farage, because he has been
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saying what the media has tried to scare everyone away from saying, freeze immigration and stop the
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votes. If Pierre Polyev were to say something similar, freeze immigration, stop the fraud, I think
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he'd get a lot more support than his timid, tepid steps in that direction. If Keir Starmer, a labor
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prime minister of all people, can say that, you know that people are getting sick of mass
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immigration. I think in some ways, it's even worse here in Canada. Very interesting lessons
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to be learned from the UK. Stay with us. Our interview with John Robson is next.
00:20:57.360
Welcome back. I love the Globe and Mail headline that Mark Carney has so many fresh faces. I can't
00:21:03.760
say that without laughing. Of course, so many of his candidates were from Justin Trudeau's regime.
00:21:10.860
It's hard to understand how the old cabinet can implement new policies. But then again, I honestly
00:21:19.020
don't even know what Mark Carney's policies are. I know for his entire adult life, he's believed in net
00:21:25.700
zero and transitioning off oil and gas. The carbon tax was part of that. He abandoned that for votes. I
00:21:32.840
don't even know what his campaign promises were serious or not. We're now told that when he first
00:21:37.940
met with Donald Trump, or sorry, when he first spoke with Donald Trump, he basically winked at Trump and
00:21:43.140
said, hey, I'm going to talk really tough about you in the campaign. But once I'm elected, we can have a
00:21:48.240
more grown up conversation. So many things he does are sell games. He's a straw man. I'm using,
00:21:55.440
of course, the language of Brookfield Asset Management when they have fake addresses in places like
00:22:00.700
Bermuda and the Isle of Man. I honestly do not think that any of us truly know who Mark Carney is. And so
00:22:08.780
talking about his cabinet, it's somewhat interesting to do the Kremlinology of who's up and who's down. But
00:22:14.740
we honestly don't know what they're going to believe in, what they're going to propose. I don't know if we have
00:22:21.080
seen the revealed liberal platform in its authentic form. Anyhow, that's my skeptical side coming out. But let's talk to
00:22:28.940
someone else who may have a more sober-minded point of view. I'm talking about our old friend,
00:22:32.640
Dr. John Robson, who is an author, a historian, a journalist, and the convener of the Climate
00:22:38.700
Discussion Nexus, if I've got that right. Joining us now from Ottawa is Dr. John. John, great to see
00:22:44.680
you again. Thanks for taking the time to join us. A pleasure to be here, even on this topic.
00:22:49.760
Now, did I get it right, the Climate Discussion Nexus? It is the Climate Discussion Nexus, yes. And it's,
00:22:54.580
I am, in fact, a successful YouTuber, to the bafflement of all who know me. But there you
00:22:59.560
are. Great. Well, we'll have to check that out. And I'll look forward to looking at that, because
00:23:04.380
that is quite relevant. We were told by the regime, both the political and the journalistic side of it,
00:23:11.780
that carbon taxes were essential. And if you didn't have a carbon tax, it was a proof you didn't care
00:23:16.240
about the planet. And then suddenly, when Mark Carney said he was against it, the media said, oh, okay,
00:23:21.200
we'll go along with that. Everything we've ever said about this being the key defining issue,
00:23:26.680
we'll simply forget. All right. Let's start with that. Let's start with the Environment Minister,
00:23:32.520
Julie DeBruyssen. I don't know that much about her. Then she's from Toronto, Danforth, which is
00:23:37.380
sociologically probably the opposite, as opposite as you can get from Alberta's oil sands. She said
00:23:44.480
she's against the oil sands expansion. She's used a lot of the anti-oil language. But who
00:23:51.180
knows what it means to be a cabinet minister for Mark Carney? Maybe it's opposite day. And I just
00:23:57.900
really have no idea. What do you think of Julie DeBruyssen as Environment Minister?
00:24:03.060
It's certainly revealing of the kind of the puzzle of the cabinet. It doesn't matter at all what she
00:24:08.320
thinks. Canadian cabinet ministers are ciphers. But it's interesting. I looked up her biography,
00:24:13.440
and she has a degree in near and Middle Eastern studies, and then a law degree. And whereas I'm all
00:24:18.920
for informed laypeople having opinions on subjects, you know, climate alarmists have this thing where
00:24:23.360
they go, oh, you're not a climate scientist. And I'm sure if any of them are going to say, well,
00:24:27.740
hang on a second. It's not conspicuous what credentials she brings to this file. But the
00:24:33.120
far bigger question is, is Mark Carney still the Mark Carney of G-fans and of his, you know, 20-year
00:24:38.800
quest for net zero? Or did he just suddenly change all his opinions in about three months? Because as
00:24:43.920
Jordan Peterson said, either he's dropped everything he believed for two decades, or he's a wolf in
00:24:48.760
sheep's clothing. And so I look at him and I think, my, what big teeth you have. And therefore, I assume
00:24:54.460
that he's going to make his Environment Minister pursue net zero. And, you know, again, I was looking
00:25:02.720
through the list of the cabinet members and trying to figure out what credentials almost any of them have
00:25:06.620
for the jobs that they get. I'm thinking of the new foreign minister. I think she's had six different
00:25:11.880
jobs, six different cabinet posts, none of which she seems to have done very well, and none of which
00:25:16.600
she brought any particular demonstrated talent to. But again, it's also tightly centralized in the PMO.
00:25:23.480
And the other problem is, you know, as Andrew Coyne, who I increasingly infrequently agree with,
00:25:28.080
but I did on this one, Canada has a very large cabinet, and by international standards. And one of the
00:25:33.840
reasons why is that the executive is basically consuming the legislature. Almost a quarter of the
00:25:40.360
Liberal Caucus are cabinet members. And therefore, instead of being legislators holding the ministry
00:25:46.200
to account, they are part of the executive branch. And they're ciphers, you know, they're NPCs. They think
00:25:54.500
of themselves as being important and influential individuals. But how many of them are going to get
00:25:58.840
into the cabinet room and tell Carney on some issue? No, you're wrong. We need to change this
00:26:04.000
policy. I'm not going along with that. It's just almost impossible to imagine it happening.
00:26:08.880
And then I was looking at, was it, Francois-Philippe Champagne, right, who was the industry minister,
00:26:14.060
dumping all this money into EVs, and these ventures are folding up like cheap lawn furniture,
00:26:21.980
It really is strange. I think the obvious reason why the foreign minister and the resource minister
00:26:31.320
or environment minister are the ones that he, is because Mark Carney has restated his belief
00:26:36.680
in a quota system for women. And so we know that those are who he thinks are the best women,
00:26:43.000
not the best MPs of all. But again, as you point out, it doesn't really matter when all the instructions
00:26:49.200
are coming out of the prime minister's office, or perhaps, I know it sounds crazy, the Eurasia
00:26:55.300
Group. That's a sort of a lobby group, think tank, privately owned in New York City, run by Ian
00:27:01.380
Bremmer, who goes to the World Economic Forum every year. That's where Mark Carney's wife worked,
00:27:08.400
worked, or may still work. That's where Evan Solomon had a soft landing when he was sacked from the CBC.
00:27:13.580
That's where Gerald Butts had a soft landing when he was sacked from the CBC. So this little,
00:27:19.180
not so little, for-profit think tank in New York is really directing half, I think a lot of the
00:27:27.880
thinking, if there's any thinking in Canada's government, will be done outsourced to New York
00:27:33.760
City. I think that's really weird. I think that looking at it through an Alberta lens, I'm in Alberta
00:27:40.840
today. We're having some town halls about independence. I don't think they give a hoot
00:27:46.960
about Alberta. I don't think they're even thinking about it. And some of the choices they've made
00:27:51.640
almost seem like they're trying to antagonize Alberta. There's one more choice, if I'm not
00:27:55.260
mistaken, Stephen Gilboa, the crazed plastics registry guy. If I'm not mistaken, he's been put
00:28:02.480
back in heritage. I want to double-check that. I may have that wrong. You tell me if I'm wrong.
00:28:06.280
Which tells me that he's now the Minister of Canadian Heritage. And one has to ask, again,
00:28:13.040
has Stephen Gilboa throughout his career, whatever else he may have been doing, has he shown that he's
00:28:17.700
passionate about Canada's heritage? Does he tear up thinking about Vimy Ridge and Juneau Beach? Is he
00:28:24.420
proud of the explorers who traveled the mighty rivers of the West only to find that they went out to the
00:28:30.780
Arctic or something else you wish they didn't do? You know, is he proud of the founding cultures of
00:28:36.780
Canada? Or does he regard the whole thing as a disgraceful colonialist settler project?
00:28:42.760
And again, and does it matter? Because, you know, to some extent, if policy is coming out of the
00:28:47.500
Eurasia group, it's doing so because these people are like-minded. But, you know, ministers these days,
00:28:53.960
they even get talking points from the PMO. They're not just told what to do. They're told what to say.
00:29:00.140
And you'd think one or two of them would say, you know what? That offends my sense of self-worth.
00:29:05.900
I'm here because I've got a working brain, because I know how to express myself, because I'm an
00:29:09.500
individual with something to say, and I'm going to say it. But they don't. Again, it was somebody
00:29:17.060
talking about British MPs, but he said, you know, 95% of them are NPCs. And this has haunted me because
00:29:22.780
most of them, they don't know it. What they think they are, who they think they are, and what they
00:29:27.600
really are diverges extremely sharply. And then, oh, I'm in cabinet. You know, this is marvelous. I'm
00:29:33.640
a cabinet minister. Yeah, but notice the strings that are attaching you. That ought to be of some
00:29:39.660
concern. And again, concern to Canadians, because one of the things that I wrote about recently about
00:29:45.800
Canada's government, you think of all the things Mark Carney says he's going to do, and you don't know
00:29:49.180
if he means it or not. But Canada's government is broken. Almost nothing they try to do will
00:29:54.260
actually happen. There was even this tax on vacant properties that they just didn't collect,
00:29:58.600
and nobody knew why. So it matters a lot more that we make the government capable of functioning
00:30:04.540
again than that we utter grandiose pronouncements about things that we couldn't do, even if we knew
00:30:09.740
how to try. And I don't think there's any attention to that. And if you went and polled the cabinet,
00:30:14.340
and I was also thinking, preparing for the show, would you invest in a company if this was its
00:30:18.940
board of directors? But if you polled the cabinet and said, how critical a problem is it that nothing
00:30:24.000
in the government works anymore? I think most of them would look at you quite blankly. Even more
00:30:28.680
blankly, they'd look at you on most issues. Yeah. You know, I just want to tell our viewers,
00:30:33.080
NPC stands for non-player character. It's an idea that in a video game, there's other sort of
00:30:39.420
cameo appearances by people who really just go through a routine and don't have their own
00:30:45.380
thinking mind. It's like an automaton. Yeah, they're not actual players in the game. They're
00:30:49.700
just programmed to have a few simple automated responses, which they won't do no matter what
00:30:54.900
happens. So I guess, yeah, if you don't have teenage children, you may not know NPCs. But it's a
00:30:59.760
frightening thought that most of our cabinet ministers and most of our MPs think they're playing an active
00:31:06.520
role in the governance of this country, when in fact, they're completely passive automatons.
00:31:12.100
And they're happy with that, because as long as they, you know, when you say a quarter of all
00:31:16.760
liberal MPs are in the cabinet, that's part of the reason why, is to keep them loyal, keep them happy,
00:31:21.760
especially in a narrow minority government. Every single person in cabinet gets a pay upgrade.
00:31:27.260
Many of them get a car and a driver. They get more staff and other perks. So it's a way of saying,
00:31:32.480
I need you to be loyal. I just want to come back for one second to Stephen Gilboa. He was heritage
00:31:38.100
minister before. And to him and to Trudeau, and we'll see if it's the case with Carney,
00:31:44.900
heritage minister is about two things. One, it's about shoveling money out the door
00:31:49.940
to cultural industries, which they now include journalism as. So it's about hundreds of millions
00:31:57.140
of dollars, if not billions of dollars, going to colonize the media. That's what it has been for
00:32:03.660
the last 10 years. And second of all, that's where the so-called Online Harms Act originated.
00:32:11.120
I think it later came out under the Justice Department, but it was Stephen Gilboa who cooked
00:32:15.400
up the idea. So obviously, he believed in it. We assume he believed in what his own office did.
00:32:23.860
It makes me a little bit worried that Mark Carney might reintroduce T63, the Online Harms Act,
00:32:30.620
which is a terrible censorship law. Let me throw to a clip here. Here's Stephen Gilboa. Actually,
00:32:39.080
there was a funny moment where Stephen Gilboa and his now cabinet colleague, Evan Solomon,
00:32:44.220
when Evan Solomon was still on TV, asking him if this isn't tantamount to a journalism license.
00:32:51.980
Take a look at this exchange. How will this work? How are you going to regulate websites? How are
00:32:56.940
you going to register all that? Do you buy these recommendations?
00:33:02.340
Well, I mean, one of the recommendations, so you're talking about a couple of different things
00:33:07.380
here, but as far as the licensing is concerned, is if you're a distributor of content in Canada,
00:33:13.040
and obviously, you know, if you're a very small media organization, the requirement probably
00:33:19.720
wouldn't be the same as if you're Facebook or Google. So there would have to be some proportionality
00:33:27.660
embedded into this. But we would ask that they have a license. Yes.
00:33:32.840
And there's one more moment where Gilboa, speaking on a panel, I think it was at Canada 2020 or something,
00:33:39.000
said that they will reserve the right to use the nuclear option, if they have to, to literally
00:33:47.840
ban an entire website from Canada, Great Wall of China style, North Korea style, Cuba style,
00:33:55.480
literally ban websites so you cannot get to them. He called that the nuclear option. Take a look at this.
00:34:01.840
envision having blocking orders. I mean, that's that. Maybe. It's not, you know, it's a, it would be,
00:34:12.580
it would likely be a last result, last result, nuclear bomb in a toolbox of mechanism.
00:34:23.060
So maybe he was just saying whatever he needed to say. But that guy is a communist authoritarian who
00:34:31.300
is a convicted criminal. He scaled the CN Tower and in a Greenpeace stunt costing $50,000 in damages.
00:34:40.940
He literally went on the roof of Ralph Klein's personal home when Klein wasn't there, terrified Klein's
00:34:47.940
wife, did this stunt of installing a solar panel. Like, like just, this guy is a creepy weirdo,
00:34:57.900
authoritarian lawbreaker. He'll do anything. And the fact that he's still in cabinet tells you a lot,
00:35:04.280
I think. Yeah. And I'll tell you, you know, again, things nobody ever said that Stephen Gilboa,
00:35:09.960
he knows how to listen. Or, you know what? Steve Gilboa sees the other person's point of view.
00:35:15.960
Oh yeah. And again, I was thinking too about this, this whole cabinet that the problem in part is
00:35:21.360
that, you know, when you're inside the fishbowl, the outside world looks distorted. They don't think
00:35:25.960
they're radical because everybody they know and associate with thinks the way they do. And they
00:35:30.860
hold alternative views and contempt. And this means that they'll, they'll think they're steering a
00:35:35.500
moderate course when they were actually being very, very crazy left wing. And it's one thing to be
00:35:40.260
radically left and know it. And it's quite another to be out there clueless. And again, I remember
00:35:45.820
somebody, a British commentator warning us about Carney and saying that he's a man of demonstrated
00:35:50.460
to have high intelligence, but poor judgment. And that even comes back to your concerns about Western
00:35:55.260
alienation. If Carney wanted to accommodate the West and soften feelings of alienation, he might find it
00:36:04.020
hard to do. But if he thinks that only absolute rubes and idiots and deplorables even regard that
00:36:09.980
as a problem, he's liable to do all the things you'd put on a list. Like if you were in Alberta
00:36:14.780
separatist, he said, here's what I wish the prime minister would do so we can, we can get out of
00:36:18.880
Canada. He'll probably do them all and not know he's doing them. And that in a way is the scariest
00:36:24.720
part. The fact that it is, it's so unreflective that it's so, what they say is so trite.
00:36:31.340
Carney's saying this new cabinet about the change that they promised Canada or something.
00:36:36.420
Oh, it just reads like one of those word generators from the seventies. Canada's new ministry is built
00:36:41.900
to deliver the change Canadians want and deserve. And they say about deserve. Why do we deserve this
00:36:47.760
change? What did we do to deserve it? I mean, what terrible thing did I do to deserve the change that
00:36:51.980
Mark Carney will bring? But, but they always talk like that. And it's like there's, you know,
00:36:56.600
the tongue is disconnected from the brain. Heaven knows where their thoughts are wandering
00:37:00.400
while they just churn this out. John Wither and C.S. Lewis is that hideous strength.
00:37:09.080
Well, we're going to find out. I mean, right now, I honestly could not tell you what Mark Carney is
00:37:13.700
going to do. He says weird things, as you point out, he says, we're in the crisis,
00:37:18.200
the worst crisis in Canadian history. Oh, I thought that was COVID. Oh, I thought that was the truckers.
00:37:22.760
Oh, I thought that was the climate crisis. Like, you know, they literally invent,
00:37:26.680
I don't even know what he's talking about. I honestly don't know what he's talking about.
00:37:30.280
I don't think he does either. Maybe he's referring to Trump. I don't know. I couldn't tell you if he's
00:37:34.200
going to be close to Trump or an enemy of Trump, because he said both, both things. I could, and
00:37:40.660
some of them he says on the low down. I, I don't know where he's going to be on the economy and
00:37:47.160
immigration. He's hinted he's going to be more moderate. I don't know. I don't, I don't think we know a
00:37:52.920
bloody thing about him. And we don't even know basic biographical information. Has he renounced
00:37:57.480
his other passports? Where did he file his taxes for the last decade? When was the last time he
00:38:01.820
actually lived in Canada? Does he even have an Ontario healthcare card? Or is it still the NHS
00:38:06.220
in the UK? Does his family still live in other countries? His wife, for example, I'm not so much
00:38:11.740
interested in his grown children, but like, who is Mark Carney? I don't think we know.
00:38:16.720
That name actually on the climate discussion nexus. Yeah. It's a real puzzler. Yeah. Well,
00:38:23.940
we'll find out soon enough, but I'm afraid it'll be at high cost. But John, it's great to have you
00:38:27.900
catch up with us. And I'm going to check out the climate discussion nexus. That's a great name.
00:38:32.540
And thank you for telling it to me. And thanks for spending the last 15 minutes with us too. It's
00:38:36.360
good to see you. Always a pleasure. All right. There he is. Dr. John Robson. Stay with us. More ahead.
00:39:16.720
Well, it's hard to think about what's going on. I mean, Alberta obviously will not move
00:39:21.660
the cities and towns and land and people will still be there. It'll just replace one government
00:39:28.320
with a closer government that's more attentive to it, not distant and partisan and hostile.
00:39:34.860
So I think that things would very quickly return to a new normal. I mean, the Czech Republic and
00:39:40.640
Slovakia, they are still where they were. They're just two political entities, not one.
00:39:46.080
It's morally dramatic, but it's allowed under Canadian law. It'll be interesting to see what
00:39:55.000
happens. Jerry Purvis says, I know our President Trump likes to troll our northern neighbors about
00:39:59.160
a 51st state, but it's not going to happen. Our Constitution requires yes votes from two-thirds
00:40:03.480
of Congress and then three-quarters of all 50 states before a new state can be added. Funny that
00:40:08.260
Carney never mentioned that during the campaign and when he was trying to scare you into voting
00:40:11.880
forms. Still, I wish you the best as you try to figure out what to do next. Remember, you have
00:40:15.780
friends here in the States. I know we do. And I think Donald Trump, well, he very quickly, very
00:40:21.860
clearly after the first mention of the 51st state, he meant it morally. He wouldn't use force to make
00:40:28.020
it happen. It was just banter. But that was enough for Mark Carney to make it his number one campaign
00:40:33.660
talking point to scare people. Bruce Atchison says, good point about suspecting dirty tricks
00:40:39.200
from the establishment. Grifters all want us to stay and power the gravy tree. Well, that's the
00:40:43.540
thing. When I looked at that Yves Blanchet from the Bloc Québécois, I couldn't really tell.
00:40:48.800
Does he want Canada to remain united? Does he want Alberta to stay or go? I think he actually would
00:40:56.220
be terrified if Alberta left because, first of all, it would show that he failed in his mission of
00:41:01.400
separatism. But second of all, that's where all the equalization money comes from. So I think that
00:41:06.400
there's going to be people who say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Don't you dare leave. That's our
00:41:11.020
oil money. Suddenly they'll love the oil. Those are my thoughts for today. It's our show for tonight.
00:41:17.220
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World, I'm not in the world headquarters,
00:41:21.040
am I? In half of me here at my parents' house where I'm staying. To you at home, good night,