In this week's show, Ezra Levant heads to Paris, France, with his good friend Alexa Lavoie, and Postmedia columnist Lorne Gunter joins him for a long-form interview. They talk about Ezra's recent trip to France, the recent fire at Notre-Dame Cathedral, and why Alberta Premier Daniel Smith might just be able to save her province from Trump's 25% tariffs.
00:00:46.160If you were hoping for Ezra Levant to be hosting the show today, well, he's on a very special project.
00:00:52.440We can't really tell you about it yet, but he needed to take the day to work on it.
00:00:58.560And when you find out, I think you will realize it's really been worth the wait and it will be worth putting up with me hosting the show today.
00:01:07.840And I have to quickly host the show because I have to get on a plane to go to Paris, France.
00:01:12.820Oh, but friends, it's not going to be a vacation.
00:01:15.380I'm going there with my friend Alexa Lavoie.
00:01:17.320I think we're only going to be on the ground for two days, which is actually more than my travel time there and back.
00:01:24.560I think my travel time is like a day and a half there and a day and a half back.
00:01:28.560You can see all of our reports at NotreDameRestored.com.
00:01:34.040You can donate to offset the cost of our trip.
00:01:36.200We are going there for two different reasons now.
00:01:38.020We were initially only going there for one.
00:01:40.260So first reason, Notre Dame Cathedral is reopening after nearly being destroyed by a super duper suspicious fire in 2019.
00:01:51.140And we want to talk to the pilgrims and the French people about whether or not they believe the official story, which isn't really official at all.
00:02:48.720Well, we're talking about Trudeau's latest last minute gun grab.
00:02:51.600We're talking about the fight for oil and gas by Premier Daniel Smith here in Alberta.
00:02:57.520We're also talking about her relationship building efforts into the United States, not leaving that diplomatic and economic relationship in the hands of Justin Trudeau.
00:03:08.680We're talking about Daniel Smith's recent passing of a whole slate of common sense, fairness in sports and parents' rights, pieces of legislation in the Alberta legislature.
00:03:21.820And we're also talking about Trump's threatened tariffs, why he threatened them, how he came to the number of 25 percent and how it might be might be prompting Justin Trudeau to do the right thing.
00:03:40.520So joining me now is a good friend of the show, Lorne Gunter, Post Media columnist.
00:03:50.820And Lorne, you're a careful watcher of Alberta politics, but Alberta politics seem to be taking on a global perspective these days, and I couldn't be happier to see it.
00:04:00.420I wanted to touch on, before we get into Daniel Smith's latest fight with Ottawa over the Impact Assessment Act, let's talk about Trump threatening tariffs on Canada in an effort to get Justin Trudeau to do some of the things he's supposed to do as a prime minister.
00:04:20.840And that is stop the flow of people and illegal drugs across the border.
00:04:29.080Daniel Smith has been, I think, working with federal counterparts in the United States, but also building these relationships with Republican governors on trade issues, not leaving the relationship up to Trudeau, thank God.
00:04:48.700What do you think the impact will be on Alberta?
00:04:54.900Will we escape some of these Trump tariffs because of Daniel Smith's, I think, clever work with the United States governors?
00:05:03.100I mean, first of all, the thing I always go back to when dealing with Trump or when thinking about Trump is that the title of his memoir was The Art of the Deal.
00:05:16.240And so he is, first and foremost, a negotiator.
00:05:20.820So he, I don't know whether they have 25% tariffs as an economic point from some think tank that they think that's the point at which, you know, you put enough pressure on a country that they'll, he just, I think he just throws it out.
00:05:38.440And to his very great credit, it did wake up the federal government.
00:05:44.460You know, now the federal government, which has been backing off of its crazy, crazy open-door immigration policies for the last couple of months because they've become very unpopular with voters,
00:05:56.780now realize that they could, they could be in charge of the biggest recession in Canada since the 90s if they don't do something about this loosey-goosey immigration.
00:06:10.820We have been contacted, different people at Post Media, by long-time employees inside Immigration Canada, talking about how, look, we have warned these guys for years that you can't do what you're doing.
00:06:31.320And, you know, one of the people said, well, you know, this Trump tariff threat was completely predictable because we had said, look, you're sending about 180,000 to 200,000 people a year into the United States without proper documentation because they've recognized that Canada is a very easy mark.
00:06:51.460So they've decided to use Canada as a backdoor into the United States.
00:06:57.600And Horan, the new border czar for Trump, he recognized this when he was with immigration control in the United States.
00:07:12.160And, you know, sure, nothing compared to what's coming across the U.S. southern border, but it's 180,000 to 200,000 people a year that they don't need
00:07:22.680and who have only ever come to Canada because they saw us as a quick leap pad into the United States.
00:07:32.320You could get into Canada claiming to be a visitor with a $7 visa and then from there decide to walk across or fly across or drive across into the United States
00:07:43.980and then become a problem for them, an asylum seeker in the United States.
00:07:48.440So this now the liberals claim to be confronting.
00:07:53.420I'm always dubious when it comes to immigration with these guys because that is one of the – there are two, I think, two issues with the liberals that for them are markers for how open-minded they are.
00:08:08.040One is immigration and race, which to them is inseparable.
00:08:14.100If you want to prove your bona fides as a progressive, you have to be in favor of open immigration.
00:08:23.100And Candace Malcolm, who works for the Toronto Sun, has done some tremendous work over the last few years on just how many people the liberals are letting in.
00:08:31.660And two years ago, they let in 2.3 million people into a country of which at that time was about 38 million.
00:08:39.560It's just – it's insane what they've been doing.
00:08:42.940They let in 700,000 or 800,000 – the one that really bugs me is 700,000 or 800,000 foreign students.
00:08:48.320Because, you know, when you and I talk about foreign students, we think about, you know, a very earnest chemistry student who comes from a third-world country and he's studying now at the University of Toronto, the University of Alberta, wherever it is, and going to get a degree.
00:09:03.340Maybe goes back to help out his home country or her home country.
00:09:53.260I mean, they're looking at this and they're saying, you have this enormous cadre of people, five million people whose visas will run out between now and December of 2025.
00:10:03.900And where do you think they're going to go?
00:10:05.300Do you have a way of getting rid of them and making sure they leave the country?
00:10:09.740Are they just going to find a new rocksome road and walk across the other way from Canada into the United States?
00:10:17.160We've been worried in Canada since Trump was reelected last month that there's going to be this enormous exodus of people from the United States when he starts his mass expulsions from the United States.
00:10:32.640But I think what they're worried about, and quite rightly, is that there's been this massive immigration drain into the United States from Canada because that's what people who come here – lots of people who come here – that's what they were planning from the start.
00:10:51.080And the Americans know this, and Trump's people know this, and they sent us a warning.
00:10:55.220And thankfully, it kind of woke up our federal government.
00:11:02.880We can see whether they walk the walk now that they're talking the talk.
00:11:06.620But still, you know, Trump's one threat of a 25% tariff has really rattled the Laurentian elites in central Canada over our current immigration law.
00:11:20.280Yeah, and like you, I'll believe it when I see it because let's never forget that he said, oh, we've closed Roxham Road.
00:11:27.680We're really cracking down on illegal immigration and people who are making these irregular asylum claims.
00:11:33.620But then he made it easier to just fly into Pearson and do it.
00:11:37.080So he just changed the location of all of these things happening and then patting himself on the back for saying, look, look what I did.
00:11:45.040Well, and of course, the change from Roxham to Pearson was basically a sock to Quebec.
00:11:51.200Quebec was getting the bulk of the Roxham Road pedestrian crossers, and they didn't like that.
00:11:58.240So first of all, the Fed started bussing people out of Quebec to Ontario, and then finally they just decided, well, we'll let them fly into Pearson, and then Quebec won't be as unhappy anymore.
00:12:09.400So all of this for the last nine years has been, I hesitate to say carefully scripted, but it certainly has been deliberate.
00:12:20.660I don't think these people carefully script anything.
00:12:22.880I think this seriously is the most incompetent government I've ever seen, federal or provincial, in my lifetime, and I lived through the divine government in Saskatchewan.
00:12:43.260And it is slightly insulting as a Canadian that the decay of our infrastructure because of the burden of bringing in two-plus Edmonton-sized cities' worth of people every single year,
00:12:58.740the burden on our health care, the burden on our housing prices, the downward effect on our wages,
00:13:06.620none of those things were enough to get Trudeau to act on behalf of Canadians.
00:13:11.220He needed basically a death threat to our economy from Trump to actually even consider doing anything, which is, I think, a terrible way to govern.
00:14:36.620Our economy is faltering for two particular reasons.
00:14:40.440The economic policies of the liberal government, which comes as no surprise to anyone, drive away investment,
00:14:46.100particularly in the energy sector, but in all the manufacturing and mining and everything else that we're good at.
00:14:52.840So our economy has slowed way, way down.
00:14:56.540Our growth this year might be 0.8 or 9%, but that's not enough to really call it growth.
00:15:05.260But at the same time, too, we're adding 100,000 newcomers every month.
00:15:12.020And they're looking for housing and they need health care and they want jobs.
00:15:15.120And they are eating up GDP, as everyone is.
00:15:20.280I'm not saying this is just an awful thing immigrants are doing.
00:15:23.540But when you add 100,000 people a month, sometimes 120,000 people a month, you're just, unless you're really roaring your economy along, you're going to reduce your per capita GDP.
00:15:35.460It's just there are more people looking for a slice of the pie.
00:15:51.600You know, when you get into a 12-step program, the first one is recognizing you have a problem and what that problem is.
00:15:58.820But these guys can't get into a 12-step program because they refuse to recognize what the problems are, much less that they created them.
00:16:06.200Yeah, I think one of the other steps is making amends.
00:16:09.460I don't think we'll ever see that either.
00:16:13.560Now, let's sort of drill down a little bit to Daniel Smith, who is in the mix of all of this.
00:16:20.620Because it seemed as though, right after Trump got elected, and now before he's even taken office, she's quickly building relationships with her counterparts in the United States.
00:16:32.720In a way, I don't think we've ever really seen a Canadian premier do.
00:16:40.160In fact, I think Rachel Notley did the opposite.
00:16:43.480She recalled our envoy to Washington, Rob Merrifield, as one of her first acts of business.
00:16:53.100Do you think if we see tariffs on some sectors of the economy, will Daniel Smith's work with her American counterparts insulate Albertans from some of that?
00:17:05.380And as soon as gasoline in the Midwest goes up by $0.35, $0.50, $0.70 a gallon, Trump will back away from the tariffs on oil and gas because they rely on our oil and gas for about 4 million barrels a day.
00:17:26.440And there is no economic barometer that I can think of in the United States, inflation maybe, but the price of gasoline is the one that people see every day when they drive up and down the roads because prices are always posted.
00:17:40.720And they know what the economic trends are based on what they see.
00:17:46.080And if suddenly gasoline in the Midwest, which is where most of our oil and gas goes, if suddenly gasoline goes up, as I said, $0.35, $0.50, $0.75 a gallon, Trump will probably back off.
00:18:02.080The other thing is that the Americans, of course, think of us as the attic where they put the stuff they're not going to use all that much.
00:18:11.820And then every once in a while, like at Christmas time, they have to go up and get the tree from there.
00:18:21.600But you notice the Mexican president, she came out and she said, before Trudeau even did, oh, yeah, we'll stop all of the transshipment of people through Mexico.
00:18:51.380You know, you got to do what you got to do.
00:18:54.760If you have 40 million people and they have 330 million people and their economy is our one, like more than 70% of our exports go to the United States, you got to schmooze with people.
00:19:07.220So, you know, you have probably been in jobs where there were customers or clients that the business had to host at a golf tournament or take to a hockey game or take out for dinner and you didn't really care for them.
00:19:22.700But you did it anyway because that's how you do business.
00:19:25.080And that's what Trudeau has to learn with Trump.
00:19:29.920Yeah, it's all about building relationships, as Trudeau actually once said.
00:19:35.400One of your earlier points when you're talking about Danielle Smith, she has made really good inroads with the Western governors.
00:19:44.100So much so that they've invited her to their next meeting to sit in as an observer and a participant.
00:19:51.000Apparently she's going to make some remarks there.
00:19:53.100Very few premiers have worked that angle that well.
00:19:58.780And she is also filling a very important void until Pierre Polyev, fingers crossed, gets to be prime minister.
00:20:07.380He cannot, as the leader of the opposition, be making bold foreign forays on behalf of the country.
00:20:45.620Like, I'm sure you have seen the annoying commercials that Ontario runs nationally about, you know, Ontario's this great place where we're matching up northern mining with southern manufacturing might, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
00:20:58.820And where there's already been $44 billion of investment in EV manufacturing and batteries.
00:21:26.880And I have to say I'm so impressed by the Impact Assessment Act that, you know, the No More Pipelines bill, her dealing with that on the legal side, her dealings on the emissions cap for the oil and gas industry, the ads that they've run saying, hey, look, this affects every Canadian.
00:21:45.720Your prices are going to go up because we don't have the oil and gas industry anymore.
00:21:49.720And she's been equally good on a number of other confrontations with Ottawa.
00:21:57.000You know, Ralph Klein got to be really, really well-liked in Alberta, partly because he said, you know, the eastern SOBs could freeze in the dark and he was tough rhetorically.
00:22:08.240But he was not as tough even as Smith has been legally and in an intergovernmental affairs way.
00:22:16.760So I've been very impressed with the way she's handled.
00:22:20.520It feels as though she's the government-in-waiting envoy to the United States.
00:22:25.780But also, I mean, because she is the elected premier of Alberta, she's really leading the opposition to many of Justin Trudeau's outrageous bad policies.
00:22:40.080Like, it's not Jason Kenney's strongly worded letters to the prime minister anymore.
00:22:44.320This is real efforts to preserve the Canadian economy.
00:22:48.400I mean, I never thought I'd see the day when an Alberta premier would say, we can put sheriffs on the border to try and stem the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States from Alberta.
00:23:35.600Yeah, she's thinking of creative ways of dealing with Justin Trudeau's bad policies, including expanding the roles of sheriffs to include, you know, watching people who are out on bail.
00:23:46.100If Justin Trudeau is going to keep releasing them on bail, at least we can better monitor them in Alberta.
00:23:50.240She's thinking outside the bun, as they say.
00:23:57.100I was going to segue into Justin Trudeau's latest bad idea, which is the gun grab.
00:24:02.180But we'll talk about that in a second.
00:24:03.480I'm still on Danielle Smith taking on these contentious issues, which I actually don't think this one is all that contentious if you talk to normal people and not activists.
00:24:16.400And that is her latest swath of what they're calling transgender, anti-transgender legislation.
00:24:27.520And it's about preserving the integrity of a child's body until they're old enough to make those decisions, like tattoos and piercings.
00:24:36.200And I think that latter point is the real key to this, is that, you know, the Canadian Pediatric Association has said, no, no, no, we must have affirmation therapy treatment for any child about 11 or older who claims to be transgender.
00:24:58.180Now, pediatricians are supposed to rush to help them get puberty blockers and reassignment surgery.
00:25:09.280I mean, the Brits and the Europeans have looked at this extensively and said, no, people at 12 years old do not have the mental capacity to make these decisions.
00:25:20.960And unfortunately, you know, I would be prepared in some cases to say, okay, well, let their parents and doctors decide.
00:25:29.800But there are now so many activist doctors and progressive parents who would just rush to get this affirmation treatment done that I think they had to step in and do what they did.
00:25:46.940And on the sports side, I mean, of all the talking I've done on this subject, the one that gets the most positive response is this idea that transgender women and girls should not compete in female sports.
00:26:04.420And the people on the transgender rights side say, it's unfair, it's unfair.
00:26:09.080Yes, it's unfair that I wasn't big enough to play in the NFL, but life is like that.
00:26:14.640Life throws us certain unfair things that we cannot, the government simply cannot overcome.
00:26:22.560There's no way that, okay, it's unfortunate.
00:26:26.620If you were trapped in the wrong body and you need to transition, that has got to be a huge mental burden.
00:26:36.080It's got to be enormously painful physically and mentally to have to go through that.
00:26:40.940We can be there for you as an adult to make that transition possible, but we cannot, as individuals, as governments, as taxpayers, overcome those things.
00:26:56.160We can't compensate you for the fact that that's unfair.
00:26:59.220And is it unfair that I'd love to play soccer, but because I was born in the wrong body, I'm now prevented from playing at the highest level as a woman?
00:27:10.440I guess it is, but life has unfairness in it.
00:27:14.800And it's not the government's job to make everybody else suffer so that you feel you're being dealt with fairly.
00:27:23.540And that, to me, I think, has the most popularity of any of the three things that the UCP did.
00:27:31.760And that was to say, transitioning girls and women cannot play in female sport.
00:27:38.480Yeah, I mean, this is an issue that hits home for me because I have a varsity athlete in my family, my daughter, who is playing on a scholarship.
00:27:49.940And she would have lost her scholarship if a boy or a biological male identifying as a girl stepped into her position.
00:27:58.680And it's just a danger, especially in the contact sports.
00:28:03.260My wife and I have a very good friend who is the head of Swim Canada.
00:28:09.540And as a member of FINA, which is the International Aquatic Sports Federation, they decided two years ago that as soon as you hit puberty, the unfairness becomes so obvious that once you've hit puberty, you cannot then compete if you transition.
00:28:30.940You can't compete as a female if you transition.
00:28:33.260And so, of course, the activists have said, well, that's why we need puberty blockers.
00:28:37.400We need it to make it fair so that when these kids finally get to transition, they will be able.
00:28:43.060Nothing says you get to play at a high level of sports.
00:28:46.600Our daughter was a professional soccer player.
00:28:48.780She played at high levels all the way through school.
00:28:52.180She went to university on scholarships, much as your child has, and then went to Europe for two years and played professional soccer.
00:29:00.020And as open and accepting as she was of transgendered individuals, she said it just wouldn't be fair.
00:29:09.040If these people who have male physiques are suddenly able to play with their level of testosterone and their level of musculature, it just would not be fair.
00:29:21.160And, okay, so there's your problem with fairness versus the transgender problem with fairness.
00:29:40.300It's not that I think that the legislation is bad.
00:29:43.420I think it actually is fair and it balances rights as best as they could on a difficult issue.
00:29:50.860My problem is they didn't shroud it in the notwithstanding clause when they invoked it because we saw it nearly immediately in Saskatchewan on their parents' rights legislation.
00:30:00.780And the vultures of the activists descended to challenge that legislation, even though it was protected using the notwithstanding clause, because I think that it's an end run around professional punishments for teachers who don't follow the law is if they can get a declaration of the law being unconstitutional yet operational, which is what they're seeking in court.
00:30:25.580And there's another sort of side story happening in all of this.
00:30:31.560A lot of the lawyers that are involved in these legal challenges are funded by EGAL.
00:30:37.140EGAL is funded nearly exclusively by the federal government.
00:30:40.860So in another end run, it looks like Justin Trudeau is meddling in provincial politics by funding the activists groups.
00:30:46.260And you can be absolutely certain that that's what's happening, is that at Justice Canada, they have looked at this and said, we have to stop this.
00:30:55.580And they decided that their flunkies over at EGAL are the best way to handle that, rather than the federal justice department taking on Alberta directly.
00:31:05.380They just give more money to EGAL to go and do it.
00:31:08.380And so, yeah, you can certainly be assured that that's what's going on.
00:31:13.240I go back to a story that I covered in the 90s.
00:31:19.460I start to sound like my walker is just off camera.
00:31:22.700The, but, and that was the eugenics case, 4,000 cases in Alberta of people who had suffered eugenics back in the, in the forties and fifties.
00:31:37.380Um, uh, they'd been sterilized and by the government and they were seeking some sort of redress.
00:31:45.000And when the initial legislation was determined, when it looked like it was going to go to court and be declared unconstitutional, the provincial government brought it back in and added the notwithstanding clause to it and then sent it back.
00:32:01.060So it says it's as simple as that from a legal standpoint, from a political standpoint, it may be more contentious.
00:32:08.500It might create more, uh, headaches for the government, but they could add the notwithstanding clause with an amendment in an afternoon session in the legislature.
00:32:45.340Yeah, I mean, I, I just would hate for them to have gone through the media and activist hellstorm that they have had to get this piece of legislation done, to just hand the activists a win, um, by getting the court to strike down portions of the legislation.
00:33:04.220Well, as you said, you can get a court that says, you can get a court that says, okay, this is unconstitutional, but because they've invoked the notwithstanding clause, it is operational.
00:33:12.780Um, that's, that's rubbish from a court, frankly, because the notwithstanding clause is a constitutional clause.
00:33:22.620So therefore it must be constitutional to use it.
00:33:38.600Quebec used it on, uh, Bill 20, which was the, uh, no religious symbols in, in, in public, uh, for public servants, including teachers, nurses, uh, they, they used that.
00:33:54.840There were a few, that was a special case where there were a few progressive media outlets that complained about the use of notwithstanding, but it, because it was Quebec doing it, they basically just shrug it off.
00:34:06.060They use it on language issues all, constantly.
00:34:29.000Now, uh, you mentioned that the two, I think, cornerstone issues to count yourself as, uh, progressive in this country are abortion and open borders policies.
00:34:43.800Uh, but I think there's a third one and that's gun control.
00:34:46.700And, uh, I think in a last minute hail Mary to prove that he, I don't know, is still a progressive as though that we're ever in doubt.
00:34:54.560Justin Trudeau has just decided again, sort of outside of the work of parliament to add another 324 new models to the ever growing ban list from that order in council back in 2020.
00:35:08.900So I think we're up to 1,500, maybe even more than that is closer to 1,800 now.
00:35:16.680Um, just, uh, frankly, cause they kind of look cool, which is not a good way to be banning firearms.
00:35:22.180I mean, the most ridiculous part of this, there's so many ridiculous parts we get into, but, but to me, the most ridiculous part is for every one of these models that's been banned, because it looks scary.
00:36:12.240You know, it's insane, but their obsession with it, with the liberals, this goes back to Christian and Alan Rock back in the nineties, their obsession with going after law abiding gun owners to try and solve gun crime is insane.
00:36:34.300So there've been the Edmonton police service yesterday said that gun crime in Edmonton is way down, but we know from the Ontario police services that it's way up.
00:36:46.880It's up by over 60% in Peel, in the Peel region, which is the area around Toronto.
00:36:58.920So they're having a problem, but they, they will tell you the police officers in particular, but also sometimes the chiefs will tell you.
00:37:08.840This is a problem with smuggled guns, 85 to 90% of the guns that they seize at crime scenes.
00:37:16.880Have been smuggled from the United States.
00:37:18.960And it's probably higher than that because for instance, one of the guys I know who really understands guns and for me, guns are only a political issue.
00:37:37.000I do not trust any government who doesn't trust my law abiding neighbor to own a gun.
00:37:44.040That's it's political for me, but guys.
00:37:46.740I know who know the situation inside out say, if police recover a gun that has had the serial number removed, that's considered a domestic gun.
00:37:57.880He said, but most of these ones come from the States too, and they just remove the serial number.
00:38:01.680So when they say 85 to 90% are guns from the United States, it's probably closer to 95% are guns from the United States.
00:38:09.240And so that's what you should be going after.
00:38:12.440One of the very first things they did when they became government in 2016 or 2017 was get rid of the mandatory minimum sentences for smuggling guns from the United States.
00:38:44.360But you could tell me they're all white.
00:38:47.080I'm not going to say, oh, that's unfair to white people.
00:38:49.520So let's not, let's not have that law.
00:38:52.400Hey, they're, they're nuts about this.
00:38:54.500And the 324, it's hard yet to determine of the 324 models banned yesterday, how many guns that mean.
00:39:05.160But there's, it's probably a few tens of thousands of guns.
00:39:09.240The initial ones were much more popular.
00:39:11.040Uh, that's now I, the latest estimate I saw, which I trust is up to about 170 or 180,000 guns were banned in 2020 in the first round of this.
00:39:56.620They haven't, they haven't seized a single gun, not from a dealer or from an individual.
00:40:00.980And yet they say, oh, this move yesterday with 324 more models of guns, it's going to, it's going to add to the safety that's been in there from our, how can they be safer if they're in all in exactly the same hand?
00:40:15.920We were told these guns were so dangerous that ordinary people couldn't be trusted to own them.
00:40:22.420And yet five years, almost five years later.
00:40:32.560You know, I, I likened it one time to the, the ridiculous things that when you used to go on an airplane and they say, you have to put your phone into airplane mode because it might affect the navigation system.
00:40:43.940If the phones were that dangerous, they'd take them from us at the door and they wouldn't let us have them back till, you know.
00:40:55.460And you can tell that this is purely political because they said they were going to ban 324 models immediately, but they didn't put the list out till several hours later.
00:41:06.700It's on the eve of the Ecole Polytechnique shooting for which they'd been getting harassment from victims groups and from anti-gun organizations.
00:41:17.700And, you know, the person, one of the two ministers there was Duclos, who is not related to the gun issue at all, but he's the chief political minister for Quebec.
00:42:14.120And this is what the liberals are doing.
00:42:15.640And this is the thing that really got me yesterday because the irony here is just chef's kiss liberal perfection.
00:42:22.820Talks are currently underway with the Ukrainian government to hand over the seized firearms to their military to use against Russia, said Defense Minister Bill Blair.
00:42:32.980So I could not defend myself using these firearms against a burglar who's attacking me and I'm 30 minutes from the nearest municipality.
00:42:42.520But they're perfectly fine for the Ukrainians to defend themselves.
00:42:44.840You know, that is one of those, that's one of those pledges that they were sitting around a committee and somebody said, hey, if we say we'll send these guns to Ukraine, people will think that's really great that we're killing two birds with one stone, to use an analogy that probably shouldn't be used in the gun debate.
00:43:06.600But, you know, they'll say, oh, oh, Pierre, that's such a fabulous idea that you've come up with there from Justice Canada.
00:43:28.460You might win a few votes back that you lost in Montreal, maybe a couple that you lost in Toronto, but this is purely a political exercise.
00:43:40.920And I think like everything else the Liberals are doing these days, it's not going to work.
00:43:44.880Yeah, they think they're going to send my mini 14 to Kiev.
00:44:28.200You know, it feels like every single minute of every single day we're getting some form of viewer feedback.
00:44:33.520And I know it sounds like I'm complaining, but I'm definitely not, because it means that you are engaged in our content.
00:44:38.680It means that you care about the work that we're doing here at Rebel News for better or for worse.
00:44:43.680I should tell you, I really don't care if politicians like us here at Rebel News.
00:44:47.220In fact, I hope they're slightly scared of us in a healthy sort of way, because it's our job to hold them to account on behalf of the people.
00:44:55.260It's the people who matter to me, because without the people, there is no Rebel News, because we'll never take a penny from Justin Trudeau to do the work that we do.
00:45:03.500So if we lose the people, we lose Rebel News.
00:45:07.180And it's why I open up the end of my weekly gun show to our viewers.
00:45:11.680Ezra opens up the end of his show for viewer feedback, and that's what we're going to deal with right now, your viewer feedback.
00:45:19.200And this comes to us by way of Ezra's show a couple of days ago, wherein a pro-Hamas mob, I don't know how to describe it.
00:45:34.960I think that's probably the best way to describe it.
00:45:37.100A pro-Hamas astroturf mob stormed the parliament buildings.
00:45:44.560And in the before times, the left would describe this as an insurrection.
00:45:50.840However, their friends are doing the insurrectioning, so it's just a peaceful protest.
00:46:00.520And, you know, imagine if the truckers had done this.
00:46:53.980Now, remember, remember how the media was completely outraged at the prospect that members of the Conservative Party were, I think, kind.
00:47:11.900I don't even think kind is the right word.
00:47:13.440I was going to say kind enough to meet with some members of the Freedom Convoy, but just had the decency to go outside in Ottawa, where they all work,
00:47:25.980to meet with this thousands strong human rights protest that had taken the time to drive all the way across the country to have their voices heard.
00:47:34.720The media lost their marbles, the Liberals said, how dare you meet with these seditious insurrectionists.
00:47:44.820And look at this, the truckers never stormed the House of Commons.
00:47:50.420Canada Rye writes, so the Freedom Convoy was labeled as terrorists, but this is okay in Canada, right?
00:47:56.300The Freedom Convoy, they never went anywhere near storming the House of Commons.
00:48:05.120They left the place cleaner than when they got there.
00:48:08.760The crime rate actually went down in Ottawa while the truckers were there.
00:48:13.780And yet, they were not just labeled as terrorists.
00:48:18.240The feds used a counterterrorism law on them.
00:48:22.380They used martial law, the Emergencies Act.
00:48:46.880They were a little bit too fun-loving for the boring people in Ottawa.
00:48:51.840Not all of you, but there's a lot of boring bureaucrats in Ottawa who just didn't like all that blue-collar merrymaking out on their boring, grey, Soviet-style streets.
00:50:25.380For a crime that which she was convicted of, she would never see the inside of a jail cell.
00:50:31.300And that is to say, she spent nearly 50 days in jail on a breach of her conditions, which was never a breach at all.
00:50:39.620After that, they should have just washed their hands of this mess.
00:50:42.960But the feds are still pursuing this for political reasons.
00:50:46.080And as you rightly point out, in the United States, those insurrectionists, the people who wandered through the Capitol building might goofballs a little bit.
00:51:00.060But, I mean, these are not insurrectionists.
00:51:08.640They're in jail for years and years and years.
00:51:12.760And in Canada, if you are a supporter of the Hamas rapes, murders, and kidnappings, an apologist for those things,
00:51:25.180and you storm the House of Commons, Parliament buildings, and trespass, you will have support of at least one government MP and three opposition MPs.
00:51:39.480Well, I don't want to say opposition, three NDP MPs, who are technically not in the government, but thanks to a coalition with their leader Jagmeet Singh, they may as well be.
00:51:51.360So let's just say four government MPs, three in government by proxy, supported these yahoos.
00:52:08.220Wouldn't you want to know how much money is flowing from Iran to these pro-Hamas terrorist supporters to help them organize their weekly protests?
00:52:18.640Because, you know, these people don't do anything for free.
00:52:23.460But if you were a trucker, you got your bank account frozen.
00:52:27.120If you were a grandma who gave money to the Freedom Convoy, you got your bank account frozen.
00:52:32.880If you were a farmer who showed social media support for a trucker, you got your financing denied by Farm Credit Canada, the federal government's bank for farmers, and they never told you why.
00:52:46.760You just had the wrong politics to be financed for that combine or those 40 head of cattle.
00:53:04.820Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
00:53:08.920Thanks so much for tuning with me as I subbed in for the boss while he's working on a very, very special assignment that we cannot wait to tell you about.
00:53:17.920I think he's back in the driver's seat.
00:53:20.460But on Monday, I've got to go catch a plane to Paris for the opening of the Notre Dame Cathedral.
00:53:28.080And you can follow all of our reports from there at Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Restored.com.
00:53:36.640And as Ezra always says, keep fighting for freedom.