Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Mark Carney's new cabinet to feature familiar faces

00:00:00.000 Oh, hi, everybody. Mark Carney has announced his new cabinet, pretty much similar to Trudeau's

00:00:04.240 cabinet. We'll go through it with Dr. John Robson. But I also want to tell you about

00:00:07.560 big changes overseas in the United Kingdom. The Labour Party, which has been a massive

00:00:12.140 immigration, open borders party, had the daylight scared out of it by Nigel Farage's victory for

00:00:18.560 the Reform UK in recent elections. So Keir Starmer, that's the British Prime Minister,

00:00:22.920 the Labour Prime Minister, has basically said we're ending mass immigration. I don't believe

00:00:27.300 him. I don't think anyone believes him. But his change of rhetoric is so shocking and so telling.

00:00:33.960 I want to take you through it and maybe tell you if I think there's any lessons in there for Canada.

00:00:39.120 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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00:00:50.120 but you get the satisfaction of keeping Rebel News strong because we take no money from the government

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00:02:07.080 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.

00:02:22.200 Shame on you, you censorious bug.

00:02:33.640 Hi, everybody. Last night, we had close to 500 people out in Edmonton for our town hall meeting

00:02:39.460 about Alberta independence. On a night where the Edmonton Oilers were in the Stanley Cup final

00:02:44.540 rounds, we could have sold more tickets, but the room couldn't hold anymore. We're doing it again

00:02:49.400 in Calgary tomorrow night, and I apologize that we only booked a room that could hold 350. I think

00:02:55.580 we're going to have to do it again. A longer event, a much larger venue. I'll share my ideas for that with

00:03:02.300 you another day. But in short, I outlined our plans as Rebel News, that is to respectfully cover the

00:03:07.320 referendum and all of its participants, and to try to defend the democratic process against

00:03:12.340 absolutely certain interference from meddlers, whether it's Mark Carney's liberals or anti-oil

00:03:17.820 extremists or even the leader of the Bloc Québécois who said this.

00:03:21.520 For the people in Alberta who want to separate, do you have any tips for them on how to actually get the

00:03:24.880 change? Our success so far, it does not place me in a position to give them tips about what to do,

00:03:33.560 but I could give them tips about what not to do. Not now. The first idea is to define oneself as a nation.

00:03:45.340 Therefore, it requires a culture of their own. And I am not certain that oil and gas qualify to define

00:03:54.880 a culture. But it's theirs to decide if they want to, uh, revindicate the right to self-determination.

00:04:05.240 I would never interfere in that. It belongs to them. I would like us to be the first.

00:04:10.800 There's a lot in that short clip. First, he knows so little about Alberta. I wonder if he's actually

00:04:15.460 even been to Alberta. Second, I think he means that as an insult. It would be like an Albertan 1.00

00:04:21.640 saying you need more to a culture than just poutine. Uh, it's an insult, which actually shows

00:04:27.480 the lack of depth of the person saying it. And it sort of marks working people. I would be like

00:04:32.700 saying, oh, there's more a culture than fish, Newfoundland. Well, actually fish is part of the

00:04:37.900 culture out there. It's how people live for centuries. Oil and gas is how many people in Alberta

00:04:42.740 live. It's not all their culture, but it is part of it. Alberta's culture goes back to our beginning

00:04:48.180 as a province. And before that, the pioneer spirit. My own great-grandfather was a homesteader.

00:04:53.780 I'm talking about people breaking and clearing the land, building sod huts and building a place from

00:04:58.380 the ground up. Look at Alberta's motto, Fortis et liber. That's Latin for strong and free. The culture

00:05:04.300 of freedom and individuality and adventures and risk-taking. The geography of it, that is part of it.

00:05:11.700 We don't have as long a history as Quebec. It's true, but we have our own culture. I mean,

00:05:18.000 compare the welfare state mindset of other parts of Canada with Alberta's entrepreneurialism. Compare

00:05:23.440 the restlessness of Alberta's voters compared to the socialist passivity and submission in other

00:05:29.740 parts. Um, I'm not looking to insult other provinces. I live in Toronto these days, but to say

00:05:35.920 Alberta has no distinct character means someone has obviously never been to Alberta, but it doesn't

00:05:41.100 matter. Frankly, I think a deep part of being Albertan is being fed up with colonialism from

00:05:46.440 Ottawa and entitlement from politicians like Yves-Francois Blanchet of the Bloc Québécois.

00:05:52.720 Rebellion is part of Alberta's culture, frankly. I've learned a little bit about that sort of thing

00:05:57.080 in Ireland. Um, there's something about a place that so restlessly gives birth to political movements

00:06:01.860 like Alberta does. That's part of Alberta's culture. But at the end of the day, Alberta doesn't

00:06:05.500 actually need to convince Blanchet. It doesn't have to have a coherent or single reason to live to

00:06:12.680 leave. And people can vote for independence for their own reasons. All that matters is that 51% of

00:06:18.840 people do on a clear question. It's not a philosophical debate. It's a question of who

00:06:23.920 Alberta wants to be its boss. As one of the speakers at the panel last night put it, if Alberta were 1.00

00:06:30.240 currently not part of Canada, would it seriously join Canada under the terms of the current deal?

00:06:36.980 The war on oil, the tanker and pipeline ban, the lack of representation in political institutions,

00:06:42.400 including the Parliament and Supreme Court, the general war against the West,

00:06:45.920 massive equalization payments to the East. But look at that clip from Blanchet again. Just take a quick

00:06:51.900 look. Our success so far, it does not place me in a position to give them tips about what to do. But I

00:06:59.700 could give them tips about what not to do. Not now. Uh, the first idea is to define oneself as a nation.

00:07:11.340 Therefore, it requires a culture of their own. And I am not certain that oil and gas qualify to define a

00:07:20.840 culture. But it's theirs to decide if they want to, uh, revindicate the right to self-determination.

00:07:31.000 I would never interfere in that. It belongs to them. I would like us to be the first.

00:07:36.120 Yeah, I sense a bit of envy in a way. The Bloc and the Parti Québécois have been fighting for

00:07:40.840 independence for 50 years. They've had two referendums. They actually elected a Parti

00:07:45.640 Québécois government provincially, but they've never succeeded. But the Bloc MPs, those fiery

00:07:52.520 separatists, are enjoying living high off the hog at the expense of Canadian taxpayers. I mean, it's

00:07:57.080 like that phrase, the permanent revolution. They've been fighting for separatism for so long.

00:08:03.000 They're part of the institution. They're part of the establishment. There are dozens of Bloc MPs

00:08:07.480 who are retired but collecting their pensions from the government of Canada. It's very,

00:08:11.880 very separatist to them, isn't it? So yeah, either Yves-François Blanchet is really, really bad

00:08:17.400 at his job of leaving Canada, or just as likely he doesn't actually want to leave Canada.

00:08:22.760 He loves the game, being the bad cop in Quebec, working with the good cop in Ottawa. So he says,

00:08:28.760 hey, Ottawa, if you don't give Quebec these special privileges and powers and payments,

00:08:33.080 we're going to leave. And so Ottawa says, oh, you heard him, Ontario and Alberta and BC.

00:08:37.400 He says, we're going to save this country. I mean, it's a sham. It's an inside job. It's a stitch

00:08:43.080 up. I don't think he actually wants to leave. That would mean actual responsibility of running

00:08:48.280 a place. And he prefers basically being a paid heckler in parliament. He'll never actually run

00:08:53.720 or rule anything. And he knows it. Just look at his face. I think that Albertans are more resigned

00:08:59.240 and resolved than angry. If you look at Mark Carney's new cabinet picks today, you'll see there's a reason

00:09:04.200 for that. The cabinet still has Alberta haters like Stephen Gilboa in it. He's not in the

00:09:08.920 environment ministry, but he's the new minister of identity and culture. Sorry. That basically means

00:09:15.320 he's going to revive the C63 censorship laws that he originally introduced a few years ago.

00:09:20.520 Lots of kooks in the cabinet. The new environment minister, Julie DeBruson, is deeply against the

00:09:25.160 oil and gas industry and pipelines. Sheila Gunn-Rita has been doing some journalism on that.

00:09:29.160 So yeah, Rebel News will help host an honest conversation about Alberta's place in Canada.

00:09:35.480 And I suspect we'll be more fair and open-minded than the regime media. We're going to destroy

00:09:40.520 everything and everyone that would take Alberta out of confederation. I mean, the rest of Canada says

00:09:44.760 they hate oil. I think it's partly true, though they like to drive and fly and heat their homes,

00:09:50.120 but mainly they love the money that comes from oil. So they don't actually, if pressed, want Alberta to

00:09:58.600 leave with all that oil. They want the equalization payments to last forever. And they know separatism

00:10:04.200 would kill their golden goose. The federal conservatives wouldn't want Alberta to go 0.87

00:10:09.080 either, of course. They would never form a government in Canada again. They need those Alberta seats

00:10:14.280 so much. Saskatchewan would probably follow Alberta out the door pretty soon. The remaining 0.98

00:10:19.160 rump would have to be rebooted. So yeah, lots of inertia. Imagine you're a big bank or a cell phone

00:10:26.040 company, cable company. You don't want separatism. You want the country to remain together. And you

00:10:30.200 want mass immigration, by the way, because it just gives you more customers. Everyone to this country

00:10:35.000 has a cell phone. Everyone has a bank account. You don't want disruption. Well, we will play a role

00:10:39.640 in fairly reporting what happens. So that's Canada. Let me take a moment to tell you what just happened

00:10:45.560 in the United Kingdom, because it's huge. As you know, a couple of weeks ago, one of the safest

00:10:50.520 labor seats in the UK flipped from labor to Reform UK. That's Nigel Farage's party. I was there to

00:10:59.560 cover the breakthrough. I had a sense it would happen. And it wasn't just that one new member

00:11:04.280 of parliament that was elected. There were literally hundreds of local council seats that

00:11:09.480 were up for election two. That's lower local political offices. I'm talking about hundreds and

00:11:14.760 hundreds of reform politicians being swept into office on a huge wave. That's proof that that one

00:11:21.380 by-election was not an anomaly. It is a tidal wave. And I remember the Reform UK campaign motto off by

00:11:28.080 heart. It was so simple. Freeze immigration. Stop the boats. They're talking about those little boats 1.00

00:11:33.640 coming across from France, across English Channel with fake asylum seekers. And now Nigel Farage is

00:11:38.760 calling for the mass deportation of those who arrive illegally every day by boat. He had briefly

00:11:45.080 backpedaled on that, but he's found his courage again. We will appoint, we will demand, this government

00:11:49.920 does the same, that there is a minister for deportations. It will be part of the Home Office,

00:11:56.980 but it'll be a separate department within it. We will need to recruit new people, as much of the

00:12:02.920 evidence is that those that currently work in the Home Office would willfully obstruct policy

00:12:08.260 if we won the next general election. But somebody somewhere in government needs to be held

00:12:13.960 accountable. And you know, you've only got to go back 20 years to a last Labour government,

00:12:19.240 and they were deporting tens of thousands of people a year who were here illegally. When Blunkett

00:12:24.700 was Home Secretary, if you came illegally, you know, you didn't touch the sides. You were sent back.

00:12:29.820 So what I'm calling for isn't actually anything particularly radical. It's actually just common

00:12:35.400 sense. It's what most countries in the world do. You want to go and live there? You want to go and

00:12:41.380 settle there? You have to meet a set of criteria. And that country chooses, are you the right person

00:12:47.860 or are you not? Well, the Labour Prime Minister of the UK, Keir Starmer is his name. He may be dumb,

00:12:53.720 but he's not stupid. And so yesterday, he just simply changed his policy. And just as important,

00:12:59.300 he changed his language. Just astonishing. As dramatic as Mark Carney, the lifelong supporter

00:13:04.820 of carbon taxes, suddenly coming out against carbon taxes. In Canada, about a million people,

00:13:10.680 I think, were naive enough to believe that and switch back to the Liberals. I just don't think

00:13:15.420 anyone in the UK, though, believes this flip-flop from Starmer, especially since more boats come

00:13:21.000 across from the English Channel every day. By the way, compare those illegal migrants, 0.99

00:13:27.920 all military-aged single men coming from France, which is a safe and free country,

00:13:34.500 tearing up their passports, throwing them in the sea. Compare those fraudulent asylum seekers with the 1.00

00:13:40.280 50 or so boar white farmers who landed in the US yesterday as actual refugees from South Africa,

00:13:49.120 where the government racially harasses the Boers. Maybe you've seen those massive rallies where

00:13:54.100 they chant, kill the Boer. This isn't a government party leading the rally, it's the opposition, 0.98

00:13:59.500 but the sentiment is the same.

00:14:01.020 So yeah, real refugees to the US, including women and children, and look, they're actually waving

00:14:20.900 the US flag, and I'm pretty sure there'll be good farmers in the US, not on welfare or drug dealers

00:14:25.780 or murderers. Just a guess. Anyways, the UK, look at some of the language now used by Starmer.

00:14:30.920 I'm doing this because it is right, because it is fair, and because it is what I believe in.

00:14:41.300 Let me put it this way. Nations depend on rules, fair rules. Sometimes they're written down,

00:14:49.060 often they're not. But either way, they give shape to our values, guide us towards our rights,

00:14:57.800 of course, but also our responsibilities, the obligations we owe to each other.

00:15:06.620 Now, in a diverse nation like ours, and I celebrate that, these rules become even more important.

00:15:13.820 Without them, we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together.

00:15:22.620 So when you have an immigration system that seems almost designed to permit abuse,

00:15:29.300 that encourages some businesses to bring in lower paid workers rather than invest in our young people,

00:15:36.680 or simply one that is sold by politicians to the British people on an entirely false premise,

00:15:42.500 then you're not championing growth. You're not championing justice, or however else people defend

00:15:50.680 the status quo. You're actually contributing to the forces that are slowly pulling our country apart.

00:15:57.660 Island of strangers. That's literally what the word xenophobia means, fear or opposition to strangers.

00:16:04.960 Mere months ago, Brits were jailed for saying things like that on Twitter.

00:16:08.900 He said what would have been called a conspiracy theory, that the immigration system was designed

00:16:14.100 to permit abuse. He says mass immigration is pulling the UK apart.

00:16:19.780 Let me read to you some tweets. It's just astonishing.

00:16:23.960 The Tories lost control of our borders and let net migration soar to record levels,

00:16:27.820 undercutting hardworking Brits. I won't stand for it. 1.00

00:16:30.800 I promise to restore control and cut immigration, 1.00

00:16:33.040 and I'm delivering with tough new measures. British workers, I've got your back.

00:16:35.800 I know you don't, you liar. Here's another one.

00:16:39.280 The Tories ran an immigration system that relied on cheap foreign labor instead of investing in

00:16:43.580 British workers. That betrayal ends now. Watch my announcement live from 8.30 a.m. as I set out

00:16:48.620 how labor is delivering on our manifesto promise. Holy moly. Cheap foreign labor. Wow. I didn't know 1.00

00:16:56.180 you were allowed to say such things. I mean, basically driving up housing prices, driving down wages.

00:17:01.040 That's the central economic impact of mass immigration. But you weren't allowed to say

00:17:04.760 that until about five minutes ago. Here's another one. If you want to live in the UK,

00:17:09.040 you should speak English. That's common sense. So we're raising English language requirements

00:17:13.240 across every main immigration room. Oh, how dare you? I'll read some more. I'm backing Britain's

00:17:18.960 young people. We're charging employers more to recruit from overseas. And if they do, 0.98

00:17:22.920 they must prove they're investing in British workers and increasing British skills. That's a fair

00:17:27.220 and right thing to do. Why are you still allowing it then? I'll read just two more. Settlement in

00:17:32.640 the UK is a privilege that is earned, not a right. Now, like I say, literally, as his staff were

00:17:38.620 tweeting those things, more boats with fake asylum seekers were crossing over from France as he was

00:17:44.480 saying that. So he's a total liar, but he's saying these words. Just a few months ago, he called anyone

00:17:49.840 else who said them racist. Here's the official 10 Downing Street Twitter account. It says,

00:17:55.120 we're ending Britain's open borders experiment. Two long businesses were actively encouraged to bring

00:18:02.060 in lower paid workers rather than invest in our own people. We're fixing the system and restoring

00:18:06.460 control to our borders. An open borders experiment? A betrayal of indigenous British citizens?

00:18:13.700 English is non-negotiable? I think it's really possible. I think that Nigel Farage could,

00:18:19.840 possibly, become the next prime minister. That's what the polls say. If he wins on the

00:18:24.360 immigration freeze platform, of course, he needs to make sure that Keir Starmer can't catch up with

00:18:29.060 him. Nigel Farage needs to go harder, talk more about deportations, point out the boat's coming

00:18:34.400 daily. Starmer could only go so far before people know he doesn't mean it. The Conservative Party in the

00:18:40.300 UK is led by a woman named Kemi Badenoch, and I'm afraid she's just not relevant. Every time she says

00:18:45.420 something, even some good things, the obvious answer that rings true is you had 14 years to do

00:18:51.780 this, and you were thrown out just last year because you didn't do any of this. You made things worse.

00:18:57.340 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

00:19:08.260 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.

00:19:18.900 Call for the deportation of those who aren't legally here. Put out the fraud in the temporary 1.00

00:19:22.760 workers program and the international students program. Go hard. You'll notice one last thing

00:19:28.100 about both Keir Starmer and Nigel Farage. They haven't talked about the disproportionate crimes of

00:19:33.280 migrants, and they're terrified to even mention the cultural aspects, including mass support for Gaza

00:19:38.940 and Hamas and anti-Semitism on the streets of the UK. And it's the same here in Canada.

00:19:45.060 But everyone knows it. I don't know a lot about Mark Carney's new immigration minister. I think

00:19:49.760 it's Lina Diab, if I'm not mistaken. She's born in Canada from Lebanese descendants. I'm guessing

00:19:55.020 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

00:20:12.400 saying what the media has tried to scare everyone away from saying, freeze immigration and stop the

00:20:17.100 votes. If Pierre Polyev were to say something similar, freeze immigration, stop the fraud, I think 0.97

00:20:24.300 he'd get a lot more support than his timid, tepid steps in that direction. If Keir Starmer, a labor

00:20:31.440 prime minister of all people, can say that, you know that people are getting sick of mass

00:20:35.700 immigration. I think in some ways, it's even worse here in Canada. Very interesting lessons 0.98

00:20:41.060 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? 0.99

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, 0.97

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 0.96

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 0.97

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,

00:26:18.480 so they make him finance minister. What?

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.

00:37:05.520 It's appallingly unintellectual.

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.

00:38:46.720 Thank you.

00:39:16.720 Well, it's hard to think about what's going on. I mean, Alberta obviously will not move 0.75

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 1.00

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,

00:41:27.640 and keep fighting for freedom.

00:41:31.400 Bye.

Rebel News Podcast - May 14, 2025

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Mark Carney's new cabinet to feature familiar faces

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