Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Police board punished Windsor cop over Convoy donation

00:00:00.000 What a huge show. We've got so much cooking today.

00:00:02.920 Sheila Gunn-Reid has a sit-down with the Premier of Alberta, year-end interview.

00:00:06.460 It's just great.

00:00:07.660 And I talked to James Manson, a lawyer for a cop,

00:00:10.920 who was disciplined and punished for making a $50 personal donation to the truckers.

00:00:16.320 We'll get caught up on those things.

00:00:18.160 But first, let me invite you to get the video version of this podcast.

00:00:22.560 Go to rebelnewsplus.com.

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00:00:28.560 but boy, it sure adds up for us.

00:00:30.740 Go to rebelnewsplus.com and click subscribe.

00:00:34.900 Hey, let me mention one more thing before I go, though.

00:00:38.360 You know, we can't always choose who we work with.

00:00:40.880 But if you had the opportunity to work with like-minded people, wouldn't you take it?

00:00:44.660 This is especially true when it comes to investing for your family's future.

00:00:49.120 Our friends at Rocklink Investment Partners understand the times we live in

00:00:54.200 and know how to help your family navigate through the current challenges.

00:00:57.260 The team at Rocklink are patriots and conservatives.

00:01:00.820 They're independently owned and dance to a different beat.

00:01:04.180 You won't get canned liberal talking points, but honest and unconventional thinking rooted

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00:01:15.680 Call Rocklink and get your investments on track.

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00:01:30.160 Info at rocklink.com.

00:01:33.060 Here's today's show.

00:01:34.020 Tonight, our year-end interview with Premier Danielle Smith.

00:01:53.300 Plus, a police officer who donated 50 bucks to the truckers is in court again.

00:01:59.160 And finally, I've got a little bit of news for you about my new book.

00:02:02.380 It's finally out.

00:02:03.820 It's December 13th, and this is The Ezra LeVant Show.

00:02:07.940 Shame on you, you censorious bug.

00:02:21.320 Hi, great to see you. 0.72

00:02:22.540 Oh, it's so busy.

00:02:23.480 I mean, today, for example, David Menzies and Lincoln Jay went to Emo, Ontario.

00:02:29.160 That's hard to get to, by the way.

00:02:30.860 They had to fly to Winnipeg and then drive four hours through Minnesota and into Ontario to this little town.

00:02:37.920 This is the little town, you might recall, where the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal punished the local council for not flying the pride flag.

00:02:47.780 By the way, they don't even have a flagpole.

00:02:49.920 It's a tiny village of 1,300.

00:02:51.420 And the lawyers who went after this town, they don't even live there.

00:02:55.980 What's so outrageous is they went right into the bank account of the mayor, part-time mayor, obviously, 77 years old, and seized five grand like he was in the trucker convoy or something.

00:03:07.020 And speaking of trucker convoys, in a moment, I'm going to talk with James Manson, a lawyer for the Justice Center, about a cop who, on his own time, privately donated $50 to the Give, Send, Go crowdfund campaign for the truckers.

00:03:22.080 He was prosecuted for misconduct by his police force, even though that trucker convoy was not illegal.

00:03:29.120 We'll talk to him.

00:03:30.480 And then, I'm very excited, Sheila Gunn-Reed did the year-end interview for Rebel News this year.

00:03:36.500 I'm here with Danielle Smith, the premier of Alberta, and she asked some great questions.

00:03:40.480 That's all ahead.

00:03:41.320 So, we've got sort of a double interview for you today.

00:03:44.200 Sheila talks to Danielle Smith of Alberta, and I talk to James Manson.

00:03:47.880 But let me tell you one more thing that I'm sort of excited about.

00:03:51.000 I've got a hodgepodge.

00:03:51.780 There's so much going on.

00:03:53.040 And David and Lincoln, I give them full credit for being so cold out there.

00:03:57.160 I'm glad they're doing okay.

00:04:00.060 I know I teased my book a few months ago, and then I sort of went silent on it.

00:04:03.880 To me, writing books and editing them and getting them out the door is the hardest thing in the world.

00:04:08.320 I mean, think about it.

00:04:09.100 It's such a long project.

00:04:10.520 Almost anything else seems more urgent in a given moment.

00:04:14.220 But pretty soon, a year goes by.

00:04:16.520 Anyhow, I am absolutely delighted to announce that today, right now, my latest book is available online on Amazon.com, on our own website.

00:04:27.220 The book is called Trudeau's Secret Plan.

00:04:32.480 What he'll do to us if he wins again.

00:04:35.620 I'm excited about the book.

00:04:37.060 You can get it on Amazon or the website, Trudeau'sSecretPlan.com.

00:04:41.540 And you're the first people I'm telling you about it.

00:04:43.400 It is live on Amazon, but we haven't done an announcement on Twitter yet.

00:04:46.740 We haven't sent an email out yet.

00:04:48.580 You're hearing about it first.

00:04:49.680 And by the way, some people donated money in the past for a signed copy of the book.

00:04:55.200 We are aware of that, and I will be sitting down and signing a ton of these over the weekend.

00:05:00.500 And hopefully, we'll be able to get some of those in the mail on Monday or Tuesday.

00:05:05.380 I checked, and if you order from Amazon, you'll actually get the book delivered in just a few days.

00:05:12.020 You'll get it absolutely in time for Christmas.

00:05:15.780 I wonder if I'll be sued for this book by Justin Trudeau.

00:05:18.620 He's still prosecuting me for the book The Libranos, which I wrote in 2019.

00:05:24.400 This is sort of the sequel to The Libranos.

00:05:27.180 Again, it's called Trudeau's Secret Plan.

00:05:30.200 And I don't know.

00:05:31.660 He'll probably find some way to try and attack the book.

00:05:34.400 I'm slightly surprised that Amazon hasn't canceled the book.

00:05:38.760 Remember, they did that to my book, China Virus, a few years back.

00:05:42.360 So that's the news.

00:05:43.780 To see the book, go to Trudeau'sSecretPlan.com or search for it on Amazon.

00:05:49.220 And without further ado, here's the rest of the show.

00:05:51.540 An interview by me and one by Sheila.

00:05:54.400 Well, one of the things that drove me crazy during the trucker convoy

00:06:05.500 was a statement by Justin Trudeau and everyone on the authoritarian side of the ledger

00:06:11.620 that the convoy was somehow illegal.

00:06:15.000 They used the phrase occupation, which I suppose is not a legal definition, really.

00:06:20.760 But they called it an illegal gathering, an illegal protest.

00:06:25.100 But it never was.

00:06:27.260 You don't get to just deem something illegal because you don't like it.

00:06:31.940 And even the Emergencies Act did not deem public protest illegal.

00:06:37.200 Quite the contrary.

00:06:38.540 The Emergencies Act contains provisions to protect civil liberties, believe it or not.

00:06:43.280 The trucker convoy was not, was never, and could not be illegal.

00:06:50.540 I suppose if it turned into a riot, it could be declared a riot.

00:06:54.440 But that never happened.

00:06:56.380 In fact, the opposite was the case.

00:06:59.120 The invocation of the Emergencies Act, that in itself was found by the federal court

00:07:06.140 to have been illegal and, in fact, unconstitutional.

00:07:10.480 So how is it that a police officer who quietly, discreetly online donated $50 to the Give, Send, Go campaign

00:07:22.120 to support the truckers, how is it that he could be disciplined by the police board?

00:07:28.520 How is that a thing?

00:07:30.400 Do we now discipline people for having incorrect politics?

00:07:34.200 Is a police officer not allowed to have a private donation?

00:07:39.560 And that donation, by the way, was only found out about because of a criminal act,

00:07:44.380 the hacking of the crowdfunding service called Give, Send, Go.

00:07:49.240 If you follow the case of Constable Michael Briscoe, the cop who chipped in $50,

00:07:56.520 you'll find that, in fact, he was convicted by the police investigation based on media reports.

00:08:03.460 It's an outrage, and it's a sign of the politicization of our police.

00:08:08.220 Let me say that again.

00:08:09.720 Constable Briscoe's private and quiet donation to a lawful crowdfund was not the politicization of police at all.

00:08:18.500 He didn't do so in his work.

00:08:22.240 He didn't do so with his badge or his uniform.

00:08:24.620 But rather, the police investigating him, hounding him, and punishing him.

00:08:30.660 That is the politicization of police.

00:08:34.580 Well, I can tell you that on Wednesday, two days ago, his conviction was the subject of a judicial review.

00:08:43.280 That's a fancy way of saying a sort of legal appeal where judges looked at the work of the police investigation.

00:08:52.180 I'm delighted to say that Constable Briscoe was represented by the lawyers of the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms, the JCCF.

00:09:00.460 And James Manson of the JCCF joins us now via Skype from Toronto.

00:09:06.040 James, great to see you again.

00:09:07.900 Thanks, Ezra.

00:09:08.520 Thanks for having me.

00:09:09.760 My pleasure.

00:09:10.480 Did I accurately summarize the case?

00:09:12.800 Basically, here's a cop who, in his private capacity on his personal time, chipped in $50 to a completely legal cause.

00:09:22.220 He didn't do it while wearing a badge or a uniform or a gun.

00:09:26.880 He just, in his private life, chipped in $50.

00:09:30.180 And the convoy itself was never illegal, was never declared illegal by any police under the Riot Act or by any judge.

00:09:38.880 Am I correct in that fact as well?

00:09:41.180 Ezra, as per usual, you've hit the nail on the head.

00:09:44.480 This is exactly what happened to Constable Briscoe.

00:09:47.740 The only thing that I would add to your correct, you know, statement of the facts is that he was, at the time he made the donation, he was on, you know, in kind of like a leave of absence.

00:10:00.960 Why was that?

00:10:01.660 Because he had trouble, had a problem with the mandatory vaccination policy of the Windsor Police Service.

00:10:07.660 That's another issue, of course, that we maybe don't want to get into right now today.

00:10:11.740 But that was why he was at home.

00:10:14.460 And ultimately, as you say, he decided one evening to donate $50 to the Give, Send, Go website.

00:10:22.120 And then, you know, naturally, all hell broke loose.

00:10:26.260 Well, I think that adds to his strength.

00:10:28.900 So he wasn't even working.

00:10:30.600 He was on leave then.

00:10:32.340 It was not a vacation, per se, but I think that would even add more strength to it.

00:10:37.240 So he was convicted in the first instance, and now he just had his judicial review at the Ontario Divisional Court.

00:10:46.580 Can you tell me a little bit about that?

00:10:48.460 Is there really a difference between a judicial review and an appeal?

00:10:51.500 One is just really reviewing what the expert panel of the Ontario Police Commission, basically.

00:10:58.940 What's the name of it, the sort of police, the Ontario Civilian Police Commission.

00:11:04.780 They made a decision, and then this court was reviewing their decision.

00:11:08.540 So it's sort of like an appeal, right?

00:11:11.240 That's correct, Ezra.

00:11:12.300 Just let me give the viewers just a very quick overview here.

00:11:15.140 So what happened in the very beginning?

00:11:17.400 You had the investigation.

00:11:18.780 There was an investigating officer, and she was the one who downloaded those 25 or 30 newspaper articles.

00:11:26.320 Now, in legal terms, Ezra, as you know, we call that hearsay.

00:11:31.020 We call that something that is not really something that you should rely on for the truth of what is in the newspaper report.

00:11:37.780 It could be false.

00:11:39.040 Somebody could be lying.

00:11:40.260 You don't know.

00:11:41.720 And so ultimately, on the basis of all that information, and in that information, it wasn't, by the way, videos and photographs of buildings on fire and people murdering everybody in the streets, right?

00:11:55.940 It was literally Justin Trudeau and Doug Ford and chief of police slowly, as we remember him from Ottawa, these people saying things like, this protest is becoming illegal.

00:12:08.340 This is an unlawful gathering, whatever.

00:12:10.840 They have no authority to make those types of declarations.

00:12:14.840 And you know why, Ezra?

00:12:16.280 Because we don't live in Iran.

00:12:17.960 There's no Ayatollah here that can just declare things to be illegal and then have consequences visited upon our citizens.

00:12:27.620 In this case, it was two weeks of penalty for Constable Briscoe.

00:12:31.940 Some other person may suffer a different consequence in a similar vein.

00:12:36.300 It's very dangerous.

00:12:37.840 Anyway, Ezra, the investigator did her thing. 0.81

00:12:41.240 She, you know what, here's the thing, the scandalous thing as well. 0.99

00:12:44.180 The data that came from the breach, the hacking incident, the police recognized in the beginning that there were holes in the data.

00:12:54.000 One of the investigators said to another, it's possible that the hacker, the illegal hacker that we never investigated, it's possible that they manipulated the data, added information, deleted information to the donor database.

00:13:09.360 We don't know.

00:13:10.360 We don't know.

00:13:11.260 And anyway, so then the investigating sergeant, she recognized that maybe she couldn't rely on this information if it was just that was all there was.

00:13:20.500 But what she did was she used her powers under the investigative sections of the act, of the legislation, and she compelled Constable Briscoe to go to an interview.

00:13:32.700 And then she could ask him questions on the record.

00:13:35.900 And because this was a disciplinary proceeding, right, not a criminal matter.

00:13:41.320 Right.

00:13:41.620 So the viewers have to understand he wasn't going to go to jail for this.

00:13:45.220 Right.

00:13:45.460 So you don't have the same charter of rights protections.

00:13:49.500 You don't have the right to remain silent.

00:13:51.820 You have to answer the questions in a disciplinary proceeding.

00:13:55.420 So he had to say, yes, I did make a donation.

00:13:58.380 I mean, you know, the walls came tumbling down.

00:14:01.640 I made a $50 donation.

00:14:03.480 So ultimately, that's what got him.

00:14:06.400 And so then we went before a hearing officer.

00:14:09.280 Our organization, Ezra, was not involved at the original hearing.

00:14:14.420 And so one of the things that I was a little bit disappointed was that nobody at the hearing originally decided to argue that this whole thing stunk from the beginning.

00:14:26.240 That it was what we call in the legal business an abusive process.

00:14:31.940 Right.

00:14:32.240 When you've got an investigator getting this information, recognizing it's not good, it's got holes in it, using it, though, to springboard a compelled hearing interview to ask this guy questions that he can't refuse.

00:14:48.300 That stinks.

00:14:49.440 And, you know, what it also does, Ezra, it incentivizes this type of behavior, doesn't it?

00:14:55.980 I mean, you've got hackers now looking at what happened, and they're saying, hey, if I want to challenge my enemies, personal, political, who knows what, I can hack in here.

00:15:09.140 Clearly, they're not going to care because they didn't investigate.

00:15:11.820 But maybe what they're going to do is they're going to investigate my enemy and penalize him.

00:15:16.720 What kind of a message does that send to us?

00:15:19.300 Yeah.

00:15:19.520 I mean, the fact that that hacker has not been prosecuted, that hacker was boasting online that he hacked the give, send, go.

00:15:26.820 Like, he was bragging about it.

00:15:28.420 Yeah.

00:15:28.720 And the timing of it was so clearly choreographed to suit the government's needs.

00:15:34.860 It was published immediately by the CBC State Broadcaster.

00:15:38.540 Clearly, an illegal act, and we need to do a lot more investigating, and I hope that one day, perhaps it'll need there to be a new government in place, that there should be an investigation, perhaps even a hearing, into the illegal conduct by the government during the convoy, including this hacking.

00:16:00.180 You know what I would respond to that, Ezra?

00:16:02.420 I would say, I hear you.

00:16:04.640 I would say it shouldn't matter what the government is in power.

00:16:09.020 It shouldn't matter if it's a liberal government, a conservative government.

00:16:11.360 Right.

00:16:11.640 I'm just saying there's no way they would investigate themselves.

00:16:14.080 We see that they just simply won't do that.

00:16:16.820 What I'm saying is that the Charter of Rights and the rule of law should be there, no matter what government is going on.

00:16:23.380 But anyway, Ezra, just to get back to your initial question, so the hearing officer found him guilty and docked him two weeks' pay.

00:16:31.800 Boom.

00:16:32.360 Then we took an appeal.

00:16:33.720 There's an appeal into an appeal tribunal.

00:16:36.880 This is not a court, just so the viewers understand.

00:16:39.440 It kind of looks like a court.

00:16:40.940 It acts a bit like a court.

00:16:42.760 It's not entirely a court, but they take appeals of these types of decisions.

00:16:47.380 And so we did the appeal.

00:16:48.620 And we argued before the appeal body that it's called the Ontario Civilian Police Commission, the OCPC.

00:16:56.480 Got it.

00:16:56.900 And because we've got civilian oversight of the police services, that's the idea, which I think is generally good in theory, right?

00:17:04.000 Right, right. 0.78

00:17:04.580 But anyway, what happened was we said, hey, the evidence that you guys trotted out to convict this guy was ridiculous.

00:17:12.520 You can't convict a guy on 25 newspaper articles where nobody who has the authority to make a declaration that a protest is illegal, you know, that's all they said.

00:17:27.220 My point as well, we've got the Charter of Rights here.

00:17:30.300 This guy's got every right to make a donation.

00:17:32.800 Right.

00:17:33.140 And, you know, that's a problem.

00:17:36.480 Now, there were a couple more technical arguments.

00:17:38.540 We also trotted out, Ezra, the abusive process argument.

00:17:42.620 And I suggested in the appeal that this whole thing stunk to high heaven and it should have been tossed out.

00:17:49.740 Now, the problem with that was, unfortunately, Ezra, the guy, the lawyer, the counsel who assisted Constable Briscoe below in the initial hearing, he didn't raise it.

00:18:01.020 I don't know why he didn't raise it, but he didn't raise it.

00:18:03.240 So that brings up for the viewers a difficult situation because normally, Ezra, as you know, you're not really supposed to bring in these new arguments at the appeal level.

00:18:15.980 You're supposed to argue everything first and then argue that there were mistakes made.

00:18:20.860 You're not supposed to bring in new, have new kicks at the can, if you will, on appeal.

00:18:26.380 And that's kind of what we were trying to do.

00:18:28.260 Now, you can do it.

00:18:29.940 There's a way to do it.

00:18:31.500 There's a test you have to meet.

00:18:33.360 You have to explain to the court why it's important, that it's not going to cause anybody any trouble, that the prosecution is not going to be taken by surprise.

00:18:41.340 You can argue all these things.

00:18:43.060 And we did.

00:18:44.440 You know, Ezra, we said, look, there's going to be a miscarriage of justice.

00:18:48.620 If you don't hear this appeal, if you don't hear my argument about abusive process, how can it be, how can it be that in the way this investigation started, that this is fair to this man?

00:19:01.860 They didn't hear it, though, Ezra.

00:19:04.460 The commission declined to hear the appeal or rather the argument at all.

00:19:09.300 They said, we don't want to do it.

00:19:11.300 It didn't happen.

00:19:12.880 We're not going to do it.

00:19:13.940 And anyway, basically what they did, Ezra, was they decided to dismiss all of our grounds of appeal.

00:19:19.820 They had no time for it.

00:19:21.340 They said, the evidence here, the newspaper articles, oh, no problem.

00:19:25.980 Newspaper articles are fine.

00:19:27.720 The problem, Ezra, there, right, as you know, again, in a tribunal setting, when you're not in court, yes, you can use hearsay evidence.

00:19:38.180 You don't have to be so strict about it.

00:19:40.080 That's okay.

00:19:40.640 But you can't just use 40 of these articles and assume that they're actually true.

00:19:47.740 I mean, you can get it in the record, but that's a different animal that the viewers, I'm sure, understand.

00:19:53.680 It's different to get it in the record than for it actually to be true.

00:19:58.340 Yeah.

00:19:58.820 So that's what happened.

00:20:00.700 Huh.

00:20:01.320 Yeah.

00:20:01.580 Imagine having CBC journalism as sufficient evidence to convict you.

00:20:07.180 So you had the hearing two days ago in front of a real court with a real judge.

00:20:12.380 How long was the hearing?

00:20:13.800 How did it go?

00:20:14.820 And when do you expect to hear the ruling on that?

00:20:17.700 Right.

00:20:18.200 So what happened, Ezra, was this is now taking it into court, as you just said.

00:20:22.820 The proceeding is called a judicial review.

00:20:25.500 As you mentioned at the beginning, it's a fancy way of kind of being an appeal.

00:20:29.080 What happens is the reviewing court, this is actually what they call the divisional court in Ontario.

00:20:36.840 It doesn't matter really what the details are, but it's a panel of three judges.

00:20:40.640 Oh, three judges.

00:20:41.360 Okay.

00:20:41.900 That's right.

00:20:42.600 There were three judges, and they heard my arguments.

00:20:46.580 And so I had to suggest why the commission's decision was, in our parlance, unreasonable.

00:20:54.960 That's the way that we say these things.

00:20:57.660 We don't talk about appeals.

00:20:58.920 We talk about review.

00:21:00.380 And we talk about an unreasonable decision.

00:21:02.660 But basically, Ezra, as you know, it's kind of the same.

00:21:05.340 What happens is the court takes a look at what happened and asks itself, is this right?

00:21:10.500 Is this okay?

00:21:11.280 Does this pass muster?

00:21:13.020 And my argument, of course, was that it did not.

00:21:16.620 I argued the same thing.

00:21:18.940 Essentially, what I argued before the commission, I argued much of the same argument before the court.

00:21:24.460 Now, here's the thing.

00:21:26.340 The proceeding was about two hours long, two and a half, maybe, around there.

00:21:31.460 We had me making my pitch.

00:21:33.900 We had the Windsor Police Services Council, the prosecution, making their pitch.

00:21:38.020 We also had the actual commission itself.

00:21:41.600 In these types of things, sometimes the actual commission will get one of its staff lawyers,

00:21:47.320 and they will show up and they will make some neutral statements about, you know, the proper procedures and the proper ways that they do things.

00:21:56.240 They don't take a position formally in this, but they want to be helpful to the reviewing court.

00:22:01.540 So, that happened on Wednesday.

00:22:04.520 I can report that we had a fair hearing, as far as I'm concerned.

00:22:08.320 The judges, you know how it goes, Ezra.

00:22:12.220 As a counsel, you lay awake at night before and you wonder, who are the judges going to be on your panel?

00:22:18.340 Are they going to be with you?

00:22:19.780 Are they going to be, you know, upping your face the entire time?

00:22:23.900 Or are they going to be quiet church mice just listening and not giving you any indication of where they go, where they're going?

00:22:31.280 I like a good debate, frankly.

00:22:34.220 I think that's nice because you can actually understand where the judges' concerns are and you can try to, you know, address them, right?

00:22:40.840 In any event, I was expecting a very hostile panel because this has to do with COVID, as you know, and the freedom protest.

00:22:49.880 And I can tell you that we in the civil rights organization space, we've had a rough ride with these cases, with the courts in the last few years.

00:23:00.760 The judges have not been on our side for one reason or other.

00:23:05.480 So, anyway, I was expecting a rough ride.

00:23:08.660 I didn't get a rough ride.

00:23:10.040 I got a reasonable ride.

00:23:12.160 I got some good questions from the bench.

00:23:15.540 One judge in particular, she had some very good questions to ask.

00:23:19.020 And, you know, what happens is, of course, you answer the questions.

00:23:23.180 You know the file.

00:23:24.260 You know what to say in response to these questions.

00:23:27.400 And they seemed satisfied with the answers.

00:23:30.880 I didn't get any indication, really, about where they're going to land.

00:23:36.000 You know, naturally, Ezra, they did not tell me, you know, when they were going to rule.

00:23:41.120 What happens is they take it under reserve.

00:23:43.340 They take it under advisement.

00:23:44.500 And normally, a case like this would be a few months at least for a decision to come out.

00:23:51.160 I would expect the springtime, maybe late winter before we get a decision.

00:23:57.120 But here's the other thing, though, Ezra, right?

00:23:59.780 The viewers may be interested to know what happens if we win, right?

00:24:03.440 What are the options?

00:24:04.560 Well, usually a case like this, when you're talking about a judicial review, you're almost always talking about sending it back.

00:24:14.100 Usually what happens when there's an unreasonable decision that the court finds, they will instruct the commission to take it back, take the case back.

00:24:24.820 To have a second, to have a do-over.

00:24:27.460 Wouldn't that be crazy?

00:24:28.560 All over a $50 crowdfund donation.

00:24:32.060 Just madness.

00:24:32.760 This is one of the things that I said to the court.

00:24:35.560 I said, look, you know, in a couple of my arguments, you know, justices, what would be the point of sending this back?

00:24:43.560 This is a really minor situation.

00:24:46.080 You know, we've already spent six days in the original hearing.

00:24:49.820 Six days, Ezra, of time.

00:24:52.420 Six days is madness.

00:24:54.200 You know what, it feels a little bit like the persecution of Tamara Leach, who has the longest running mischief trial in Canadian history, indeed the history of the entire Commonwealth, over, you know, even if you look at the worst case, inciting mischief, which I don't even think happened.

00:25:12.540 I think that this is an abuse.

00:25:16.960 They're trying to send a message.

00:25:18.480 They're trying to bully him.

00:25:19.500 They're trying to deter.

00:25:21.160 And it'll be interesting to see what the court does.

00:25:23.720 Well, when the result comes out in the new year, please let us know, because I am interested in how things work out for Constable Michael Briscoe.

00:25:31.420 Is he working as a cop now?

00:25:33.520 Is he back on active duty?

00:25:36.140 Yes.

00:25:36.560 As far as I'm aware, he came back to active duty reasonably quickly.

00:25:41.520 And now he's, I think the vaccine stuff, you know, sorted itself out.

00:25:46.060 And now he's back on the job.

00:25:47.380 Yeah.

00:25:47.660 Well, that's great.

00:25:48.340 Well, listen, thanks for fighting for him.

00:25:49.820 Thanks for the update.

00:25:51.020 Sounds like, I mean, the most astonishing thing I've heard from you today is that the hearing over this $50 donation was six full days.

00:25:58.460 That's madness. And it shows, I think, that the police have become injected with woke politics.

00:26:04.720 Hopefully this court case will help return things to balance.

00:26:08.040 James Manson of the Justice Center. Great to see you again.

00:26:11.380 Thank you, Ezra. Cheers.

00:26:12.600 Right on. There you have it.

00:26:14.100 The JCCF, one of the good guys fighting for civil liberties.

00:26:18.100 Stay with us. More ahead.

00:26:19.640 Sheila Gunn-Reed for Rebel News.

00:26:28.600 And I'm here in beautiful downtown Calgary.

00:26:30.640 I'm at the McDougal Center and I'm sitting opposite someone who I think is the greatest opposition Justin Trudeau has ever faced in his nearly 10 years in office.

00:26:40.320 That is to say, I'm sitting across from Alberta's Premier Daniel Smith.

00:26:44.660 Premier, thank you so much for agreeing to sit down to this interview with me.

00:26:48.780 Let's get right down to it, shall we?

00:26:52.240 Today, you announced the new interdiction patrol team in southern Alberta to patrol for illegal guns, drug smuggling, human trafficking.

00:27:02.100 Now, critics say that this is just pandering to Donald Trump.

00:27:06.920 How do you address those concerns?

00:27:08.060 A couple of things I'd say is that we've known for some time these were problems.

00:27:11.440 So if you look at when I came in, one of the first announcements we made was a collaboration with Paul Brandt on human trafficking, which is a serious issue internationally.

00:27:21.500 And he's got his Not In My City campaign that we wanted to make sure that we partnered with him on.

00:27:25.940 We have also faced a very serious overdose crisis with opioids and illegal fentanyl to the point where we've created an entirely new model for delivering a recovery-oriented system of care.

00:27:37.140 But the flip side of that is that we've got to stop the people who are victimizing those who are drug addicts.

00:27:42.000 So I had asked Mike Ellis, my public safety and emergency services minister, to create new specialty sheriff teams.

00:27:49.800 And we've created a specialty sheriff team already that is our scan team that shuts down drug houses.

00:27:55.680 They're shutting down one almost every week in communities all over Alberta, as well as the surveillance team that works in collaboration with their other police counterparts,

00:28:05.460 as well as our fugitive apprehension team, which has been very successful.

00:28:08.520 And he was in the process of training up for two other new teams that I asked him to do, which is a specialized fentanyl sheriff team and a specialized border team.

00:28:16.980 I asked him to do that last July.

00:28:19.200 So we knew that this was a serious issue for Canada, for Alberta in particular.

00:28:23.760 And it just so happens that because it's a priority for the U.S. administration, we accelerated our plans.

00:28:28.900 We were going to announce it in March, so we were able to get it through Treasury Board and announce it early.

00:28:32.720 And I think that people should realize that it may well be that it's a U.S. priority, but it should be a Canadian priority, too.

00:28:40.320 I'm glad you said that because cracking down on illegal human trafficking and drug trafficking is, of course, in Canada's best interest.

00:28:48.480 Why do you think the prime minister is so reluctant to fix that problem and is instead talking about a trade war?

00:28:54.400 Well, I think that, sadly, two of the things that have created the problems that we have today are federal decisions to allow for safe supply experiments in British Columbia in particular,

00:29:08.420 which has added hundreds of millions of dollars of illegal high-powered opioids into the market and turned out to be a total failure to the point where we're now seeing British Columbia taking more of a recovery model approach.

00:29:20.600 And they want to do compassionate intervention as well.

00:29:22.960 So I think that that is a validation of the approach that we've taken, plus the revolving door on bad guys going in and out of jail.

00:29:30.200 It's been incredible frustration for our chiefs of police to go out, apprehend somebody, and then they're back out on the street before they've even processed the paperwork.

00:29:38.880 And so we managed to get some tightening up of what was Bill C-75, but it's not working.

00:29:44.640 Clearly, we're continuing to see some of the worst offenders getting back out and re-offending.

00:29:49.480 And so I would say that, unfortunately, it's been some of the federal decisions that have created the crisis that we have today.

00:29:56.540 And now it falls on to the provinces to do something with our power over policing to address it.

00:30:02.580 And this is the best thing that we know how to do.

00:30:05.460 Now, since the election of President Trump, you've taken a real active role in building stronger relationships with your American counterparts and the incoming administration.

00:30:17.520 At the same time, these are my words, not yours.

00:30:20.340 I would suggest that Justin Trudeau is making active steps to undermine a lot of the work that you're doing by running off at the mouth about Trump.

00:30:29.600 Now, over the past year, opinion polls have put Trudeau at least 20 points behind Polyev.

00:30:37.320 Do you think that Trudeau is talking about a trade war because he'd rather campaign against Trump than Polyev so that he has somebody else to blame for the carnage that exists in the Canadian economy right now? 0.94

00:30:49.420 I sure hope that what we're seeing is just a lack of discipline in messaging.

00:30:54.880 And I hope it's not deliberate to try to antagonize the American president because we can't win that game.

00:31:00.460 I mean, we're a $27 trillion economy.

00:31:02.960 We're about a $2.7 trillion economy.

00:31:05.660 Any kind of tariff war will be crippling to us.

00:31:09.580 It might hurt them in certain key areas, but it will be crippling to us.

00:31:12.680 So that's why I've taken the approach of let's accept what the American people decided.

00:31:16.940 They put the U.S. president in the White House, and they also gave him the Congress as well.

00:31:22.220 And so he has a mandate to move forward, and that's what he's doing.

00:31:26.060 And if his mandate includes making sure that we're taking serious efforts to address our border, then we should take that seriously and address that as well.

00:31:35.780 I think that I would like to see a whole lot more conversation around our joint interests rather than saber-rattling around tariffs.

00:31:43.020 I told my counterparts when we had the call, and I'm happy to say so publicly, tariffs only hurt consumers.

00:31:50.660 25% tariff on all goods coming into Canada just makes all of those products more expensive.

00:31:57.380 Even using the examples that Justin Trudeau talked about, 25% more expensive for bourbon or ketchup or playing cards or cherries.

00:32:05.340 It hits Canadian consumers.

00:32:07.940 And same in reverse, but that's where I think we have our strongest arguments to make.

00:32:12.020 A 25% tariff on oil will end up increasing the cost of gasoline by a dollar a gallon.

00:32:18.420 That is going to have an influence on American consumers at a time when the U.S. president has also promised to bring consumer prices down.

00:32:25.700 So I say that we lead with strength.

00:32:27.000 We lead with talking about how Americans benefit from our energy, how they benefit from electricity, how they benefit from critical minerals, how they benefit from the cross-border trade in food and the cross-border trade in manufactured products, especially for our auto industry.

00:32:42.260 I think we've got a great story to tell, and we should lead in telling that story as opposed to talking about tariffs, which really don't benefit anyone.

00:32:50.800 Moving on to the next topic, this fall you introduced a slate of what I think the mainstream media is calling anti-trans legislation.

00:32:59.500 In reality, it protects children's futures, parents' rights, and fairness in sport.

00:33:05.860 As was the case with Saskatchewan, Justin Trudeau's well-funded activists in EGAL immediately announced legal action.

00:33:14.260 Saskatchewan did something different, though.

00:33:15.860 They shrouded their parents' bill of rights in the notwithstanding clause.

00:33:21.440 I've asked you this before.

00:33:22.580 I wasn't entirely satisfied with your answer.

00:33:24.820 I'll ask you again.

00:33:26.260 Why didn't you do the same?

00:33:27.960 Because I think it hands the activists a huge win, gives you a bit of a political black eye if pieces of this legislation are undone.

00:33:36.380 I would say that there's two ways that you can defend legislation.

00:33:40.480 One is the notwithstanding clause, which is kind of the really heavy hammer.

00:33:43.800 But the other is Section 1.

00:33:45.680 As long as you can demonstrate that something is reasonable, that it's proportionate, that it's evidence-based, that's the Oaks test, then the courts should side with us.

00:33:54.580 Because as we have demonstrated, it is entirely reasonable to put restrictions on the decisions that young children make.

00:34:01.380 We do it all the time.

00:34:02.260 And when you're talking about a child making a decision that will have a permanent impact on their fertility, that is a decision that has to be made as an adult.

00:34:11.240 When it comes to evidence-based, we have already seen the CAS report that came out of the UK that was the most comprehensive review of the literature.

00:34:19.640 And it found it lacking, the long-term effects and studies on the impact that this has on kids, the long-term information on what happens when these kids become adults.

00:34:30.360 It's just simply not there.

00:34:31.920 And I think it is proportionate.

00:34:33.380 I think the very idea that the state would interfere in the relationship between a parent and their child when it comes to something this foundationally important, I just don't think that that's a reasonable thing.

00:34:44.360 So we're prepared to argue it on the basis that what we were doing was well-considered and that it was reasonable, and we'll see what the court decides.

00:34:53.840 I hope we don't have to use the notwithstanding clause, because I think that this is exactly the kind of careful lawmaking that we have the Charter of Rights and Freedoms for.

00:35:04.000 We have been careful, and we're prepared to argue it to the fullest extent in the courts.

00:35:08.480 Now, what happens if portions of these laws are overturned?

00:35:11.660 Do you go back to the drawing board, fix the law, or do you just drop it?

00:35:17.260 Or do we use the notwithstanding clause at that point?

00:35:19.620 I mean, I'm not completely averse to using the notwithstanding clause.

00:35:23.560 I thought that the place we might have to use it is on our Compassionate Care Intervention Act.

00:35:28.680 Even then, we are trying to write the law in a way that is also very reasonable and proportionate and evidence-based.

00:35:36.180 And so we're going to try to section one argument there as well.

00:35:39.440 But I'm just watching this case in California that's going on right now of a 20-year-old girl who got puberty blockers, I think, on the first visit to a doctor, was on cross-sex hormones the next year at age 13, had a double mastectomy at age 14.

00:35:55.380 And then at 20, just realized that she had severe issues, mental health issues that went unaddressed, and she's now suing.

00:36:02.280 So I think when we see those kinds of cases coming forward all over the world, that makes the case that we've just had about why it is that we need to make sure that these decisions are made by kids when they're old enough to understand the consequences of it.

00:36:16.760 So I feel like we've done our work, and I'm prepared to make the case in court.

00:36:21.380 Now, a lot of conservative premiers, I'll say Doug Ford as an example, he's not even talking about this stuff.

00:36:28.340 Why was this an important one for you to tackle?

00:36:30.920 Well, I think part of it was that I have been, I mean, I was in the media before I got into politics.

00:36:38.720 And so I was watching as this was unfolding in the United Kingdom.

00:36:43.560 I saw some of the concerns that were being raised there, why it is that they launched into this review in the first place.

00:36:53.220 We've been seeing the international evidence as well.

00:36:55.700 There's been other European countries that have gone in this direction.

00:36:58.180 And so we just don't want to be in a position where 20 years from now, someone looks back on this era and says, why didn't somebody do something?

00:37:09.420 I think that when you're making decisions that could sterilize people, especially children, I just don't want that weighing on my conscience.

00:37:16.400 I want to make sure that if anyone makes that choice, that they're supported in doing so as an adult.

00:37:21.700 But these are definitely adult decisions.

00:37:23.800 I want to talk to you about Bill C-59.

00:37:26.460 That's the anti-greenwashing legislation.

00:37:29.580 It was floated as a thought bubble by radical green and DP MP Charlie Angus.

00:37:35.440 People laughed it off.

00:37:36.340 I laughed it off at the time because it was so crazy.

00:37:40.520 But then the liberals adopted a version of it, which ended up changing the Competition Act.

00:37:46.520 And it's bizarre to call it greenwashing to talk about the technologies that are advancing efficiencies in the oil patch, and especially when a government that is telling you that if you give them carbon taxes, they'll give you more back in return.

00:38:01.820 And then the National Park won't burn down.

00:38:05.020 I know the province has responded to the censorship of the Competition Bureau, but will the province be considering joining in or intervening on court cases against it?

00:38:18.500 I think we're considering that right now.

00:38:19.980 I think there are a couple of organizations that have stepped forward saying that they are going to challenge it.

00:38:24.260 I want to say it's the Business Council of Alberta and Alberta Enterprise Group.

00:38:27.940 And so I've raised that with my Justice Minister to see if there's an opportunity to intervene.

00:38:31.920 And we've done that before when Dow Chemical and the other plastics manufacturers took forward a case against the declaration of plastics as pollutant and toxic.

00:38:42.300 We intervened in that case on the constitutional grounds, so we were prepared to do things like that.

00:38:47.160 I'm not sure of the status of that in particular.

00:38:49.580 But the other thing that we've done is we've indicated that we are passing more legislation under the auspices of our sovereignty within a United Canada Act to address this very issue.

00:39:01.860 So they gave a carve-out to provincial governments to be able to talk about emissions.

00:39:06.040 So what we're going to do is have all of the energy companies who develop our resources on our behalf as a condition of their license, they have to report their emissions to us.

00:39:16.400 And then we'll report it.

00:39:17.760 And we will be able to herald the incredible reductions that our industry is making and the progress that they're making.

00:39:24.140 And we'll make sure that they're not able to divide and conquer and pick on any individual producers.

00:39:28.760 So they've pushed us into that position, where if they're going to make it illegal for companies to talk about their true environmental record, well, we'll do it on their behalf, and happily so.

00:39:39.400 Now, earlier you touched on the Alberta recovery model.

00:39:44.240 And I think that's one thing that really sets Alberta apart in their approach to this across the province.

00:39:50.700 Now, just like with your moves to protect the southern border, you are building treatment centers on reserve, even though both of those things are under the federal government's purview.

00:40:04.860 I've seen academics and activists alike say that even though opioid poisonings in Alberta are decreasing, we should not consider that a success of the Alberta model.

00:40:17.160 Why do you think there's such resistance to admitting that what is happening in Alberta is changing things?

00:40:28.080 It's saving lives.

00:40:29.500 There's this reluctance to admit the success of what's happening here.

00:40:33.700 I think a lot of people fall in love with their solutions, even if they're the wrong ones.

00:40:38.640 I have one of my colleagues in the legislature said, as I said, the NDP, they identify a problem.

00:40:44.120 They come up with a solution that will make it worse, and then they demonize conservatives when they come up with alternative solutions.

00:40:50.000 And I've seen that formula play out over and over.

00:40:52.180 And I think that's what happened, is that 20 or 30 years ago, the left embarked on this strategy, saying that this would be a way to be able to reduce deaths.

00:41:00.500 And it's been a failure, whether it was initially the safe consumption sites that have morphed into safe supply, that have morphed into a permissive approach on criminals.

00:41:11.280 It's led to more criminality, more danger, and more deaths.

00:41:16.600 And I think that declaring failure is something they're unprepared to do.

00:41:21.320 We were prepared to do that five years ago.

00:41:23.260 We looked at what was happening and said, we don't want that to happen here.

00:41:26.680 It was happening all up and down the West Coast.

00:41:29.240 We said, we've got to try something different, especially after COVID, when we started seeing these massive encampments emerging in our large centers,

00:41:36.740 and even in our mid-sized communities, which we hadn't seen before.

00:41:39.960 So I would say that we had somebody who was, I think, pretty inspirational in the new approach, Marshall Smith, who was my chief of staff.

00:41:49.160 And we're about five years in to an eight-year plan, and it's multifaceted.

00:41:54.440 So we still have consumption sites, although we have shut down one in Lethbridge, and we'll be in the process of shutting down one in Red Deer at the request of their counsel.

00:42:06.780 But we have the Virtual Opioid Dependency Program that gets people on suboxone or sublocate with an immediate prescription.

00:42:14.820 We have the same-day counseling services.

00:42:18.780 We have detox beds.

00:42:20.680 We've taken off the fees on treatment beds.

00:42:24.800 We've built out two recovery communities, one in Red Deer, one in Lethbridge, one in O3 Gun.

00:42:30.460 We've got eight more coming, including four on reserve.

00:42:33.560 And we've also built therapeutic living units in four of our corrections facilities.

00:42:40.240 And I can tell you some of the things that we've seen.

00:42:43.400 Mike Ellis just shared with me some of the stats around those therapeutic living units in particular.

00:42:47.780 We followed people for a year after they left them.

00:42:51.060 The inmates asked to be in treatment, and then when they get discharged, they go to one of our recovery communities.

00:42:56.420 And we followed them for a year, and we saw a 51% decrease in overdose deaths compared to what the status quo was.

00:43:04.860 I don't know how you call that anything but success.

00:43:07.660 And so it's a combination of all of those factors.

00:43:10.140 So we're going to keep on doing all of them.

00:43:12.120 And it may be the case that it doesn't work the first time.

00:43:16.420 Maybe that's part of the reason for the detractors.

00:43:19.720 But you know what Marshall Smith said to me is, you know what?

00:43:22.520 Sometimes cancer treatment doesn't work the first time.

00:43:24.520 And we don't say, oh, well, we tried.

00:43:26.420 We say, let's do it again, and let's do it again.

00:43:28.760 Let's try something different.

00:43:30.320 And so that's what we're taking to the approach of this really deadly disease.

00:43:34.540 It is those who have a predisposition for addiction.

00:43:37.820 It's very hard to get them onto a pathway towards abstinence and recovery with life.

00:43:42.680 And sometimes it takes a little extra effort in doing things a different way.

00:43:45.880 We're going to do that because we want to give people their lives back.

00:43:48.160 And I think we were very gratified to see.

00:43:51.720 I mean, it's now been a few months that it's been going in the right direction.

00:43:55.240 But we look at what we're seeing in British Columbia, with the numbers continuing to go up, our numbers continuing to come down pretty dramatically.

00:44:02.520 And that seems to be a validation of everything that we're doing.

00:44:05.980 And no time is short.

00:44:08.120 Premier, what do you think is the biggest issue facing Albertans in 2025?

00:44:13.800 I think it is the issue of tariffs.

00:44:15.640 I think it will be really painful to the Canadian economy if 25% of cross-the-board tariffs come in, if there is a trade war that happens.

00:44:24.380 And I hope it doesn't.

00:44:25.720 And if it goes on for very long, which I hope it doesn't as well.

00:44:29.440 So that's why we're doing our part to address the border issues as well as trying to do what we can to avoid tariffs altogether or avoid them on energy in particular.

00:44:39.620 I mean, I think that we've got to be prepared to do what we can to meet the Americans halfway on some of the things that they've raised with us.

00:44:48.120 But if we don't have that, I mean, to me, everything is looking up.

00:44:52.760 I just saw a press release before I came in.

00:44:55.020 Three oil science companies are talking about increasing their production.

00:44:58.760 It's been a long time since we've had that level of enthusiasm in the energy sector.

00:45:03.540 Same thing with the Canadian Association of Energy Contractors.

00:45:08.620 They said that we've seen an increase in drilling rigs from previous years.

00:45:13.720 We've got major investments in AI data centers being developed, major investments in alternative energies, whether it's geothermal or hydrogen.

00:45:22.100 We've got a vibrant and robust film industry.

00:45:24.540 We've got more investment happening in venture capital, in AI.

00:45:27.880 We've got $3 billion that have been announced in investment in agri-food industry.

00:45:32.400 I've been told by the forestry industry that we've got one of the best markets for investing in forestry.

00:45:37.240 It seemed like everything is ticking on all cylinders.

00:45:39.220 And so with that big threat hanging over us, that's a real problem.

00:45:44.800 But if we can have that go away, I think Alberta is just going to continue to boom.

00:45:48.900 Premier, thank you so much for taking the time.

00:45:50.820 Yeah, my pleasure.

00:45:51.260 Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

00:45:53.260 And Happy New Year as well.

00:45:54.280 Good to see you.

00:46:02.000 Hey, welcome back.

00:46:02.960 Your letters to me.

00:46:04.420 Jay Prej says,

00:46:05.540 It is essential that we have free and fair trade with the U.S.

00:46:09.360 Now is the time for negotiation and not confrontation.

00:46:13.040 The border must be made secure in the interests of both countries.

00:46:16.800 Absolutely.

00:46:17.580 It's so weird to me how Doug Ford is talking about tariffs and punishing the Americans.

00:46:24.300 He's sounding like Justin Trudeau.

00:46:25.580 It's sounding like he's running an errand for Trudeau.

00:46:27.800 It's really weird.

00:46:28.320 Whereas Francois Legault of Quebec and Daniel Smith of Alberta are saying, yeah, let's fix the border.

00:46:33.280 Pleasant Valley Picker CA says,

00:46:38.280 Trump plays chess.

00:46:40.020 Trudeau plays checkers.

00:46:42.180 Yeah, or he plays other more childish games than that.

00:46:45.980 I just think that Justin Trudeau is essentially an unserious man.

00:46:50.980 And Trump, for all his entertaining and all his joking style, is deadly serious.

00:46:56.160 It's a mismatch.

00:46:57.620 Boom Boom Billy says he wants to make a mess so big for Pierre that will be irreparable. 0.76

00:47:04.660 So in four years they can say, see, Pierre's a liar.

00:47:07.280 He can't fix anything.

00:47:08.520 Bring us back so we can fix it.

00:47:10.100 And the NDP will allow this.

00:47:11.460 I agree that Trudeau would torch the place on his way out if he could.

00:47:17.000 But I think in his mind, he sees that there may be a path to victory if he can demonize Trump as his opponent,

00:47:25.020 hang that around the neck of Pierre Polyev, and claim that the economic damage was not his fault, but Trump's.

00:47:30.700 So I think, yeah, leaving a disaster for Polyev for sure. 0.94

00:47:34.620 But I think that Trudeau may actually think if he's just perfect enough, he can win.

00:47:40.000 We'll find out soon enough.

00:47:41.980 I think Canadians are sick and tired of Trudeau.

00:47:44.780 That's what all the polling says.

00:47:46.020 I just feel it walking around the country.

00:47:48.520 That's our show for today.

00:47:50.420 Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home,

00:47:54.440 good night and keep fighting for freedom.

00:47:56.560 We'll see you next time.

Rebel News Podcast - December 14, 2024

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Police board punished Windsor cop over Convoy donation

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