Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Premier Smith's diplomatic prowess might just save Alberta oil and gas

00:00:00.000 I think Premier Daniel Smith just might save Alberta from Trump's tariffs.

00:00:21.320 It's December 6th, 2024.

00:00:24.400 I am Sheila Gunn-Reed, but yes, you are watching The Ezra Levant Show. 0.94

00:00:30.000 Shame on you, you sensorious bug. 0.99

00:00:44.000 Well, surprise, it's me.

00:00:46.160 If you were hoping for Ezra Levant to be hosting the show today, well, he's on a very special project.

00:00:52.440 We can't really tell you about it yet, but he needed to take the day to work on it.

00:00:58.560 And 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.

00:01:07.840 And I have to quickly host the show because I have to get on a plane to go to Paris, France.

00:01:12.820 Oh, but friends, it's not going to be a vacation.

00:01:15.380 I'm going there with my friend Alexa Lavoie.

00:01:17.320 I think we're only going to be on the ground for two days, which is actually more than my travel time there and back.

00:01:24.560 I think my travel time is like a day and a half there and a day and a half back.

00:01:28.560 You can see all of our reports at NotreDameRestored.com.

00:01:34.040 You can donate to offset the cost of our trip.

00:01:36.200 We are going there for two different reasons now.

00:01:38.020 We were initially only going there for one.

00:01:40.260 So first reason, Notre Dame Cathedral is reopening after nearly being destroyed by a super duper suspicious fire in 2019.

00:01:51.140 And 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.

00:02:01.520 They think it was an electrical fire.

00:02:04.800 Maybe.

00:02:05.260 They don't know.

00:02:06.400 Will we know the full story now that the French government has fallen and Macron may no longer be the French president?

00:02:16.520 That's where Alexa comes in with her French language skills. 1.00

00:02:20.520 So we will be filing stories in English and in French.

00:02:23.760 And again, you can offset our costs to go there and follow along with our journalism at NotreDameRestored.com.

00:02:32.680 Now, you need a show, beloved subscriber.

00:02:36.100 And Ezra's working and I've got to leave.

00:02:38.120 So I didn't have a lot of time to plan a show.

00:02:41.080 But thankfully, our friend from Post Media, Lorne Gunter, will be joining me in a long form interview.

00:02:47.480 And what are we talking about?

00:02:48.720 Well, we're talking about Trudeau's latest last minute gun grab.

00:02:51.600 We're talking about the fight for oil and gas by Premier Daniel Smith here in Alberta.

00:02:57.520 We'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.

00:03:08.680 We'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.

00:03:21.820 And 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.

00:03:38.240 OK, so that's the interview.

00:03:40.520 So joining me now is a good friend of the show, Lorne Gunter, Post Media columnist.

00:03:50.820 And 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.

00:04:00.420 I 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.

00:04:20.840 And that is stop the flow of people and illegal drugs across the border.

00:04:29.080 Daniel 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.

00:04:48.700 What do you think the impact will be on Alberta?

00:04:54.900 Will we escape some of these Trump tariffs because of Daniel Smith's, I think, clever work with the United States governors?

00:05:02.480 Yeah, I think so.

00:05:03.100 I 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.

00:05:16.240 And so he is, first and foremost, a negotiator.

00:05:20.820 So 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.

00:05:35.280 Ah, 25% sounds good.

00:05:37.060 And that'll wake them up.

00:05:38.440 And to his very great credit, it did wake up the federal government.

00:05:44.460 You 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,

00:05:56.780 now 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. 1.00

00:06:10.820 We 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.

00:06:31.320 And, 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.

00:06:51.460 So they've decided to use Canada as a backdoor into the United States.

00:06:57.600 And Horan, the new border czar for Trump, he recognized this when he was with immigration control in the United States.

00:07:12.160 And, 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

00:07:22.680 and who have only ever come to Canada because they saw us as a quick leap pad into the United States.

00:07:32.320 You 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

00:07:43.980 and then become a problem for them, an asylum seeker in the United States.

00:07:48.440 So this now the liberals claim to be confronting.

00:07:53.420 I'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.

00:08:08.040 One is immigration and race, which to them is inseparable.

00:08:11.380 And the other one is abortion. 0.93

00:08:14.100 If you want to prove your bona fides as a progressive, you have to be in favor of open immigration.

00:08:23.100 And 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.

00:08:31.660 And two years ago, they let in 2.3 million people into a country of which at that time was about 38 million.

00:08:39.560 It's just – it's insane what they've been doing.

00:08:42.940 They let in 700,000 or 800,000 – the one that really bugs me is 700,000 or 800,000 foreign students.

00:08:48.320 Because, 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.

00:09:03.340 Maybe goes back to help out his home country or her home country.

00:09:07.440 Maybe doesn't.

00:09:08.220 But that's the kind of student we're thinking.

00:09:10.020 Most of these people come over.

00:09:11.420 They go to a career college.

00:09:13.340 They take a six-month program on business administration, which, you know, we can look at some of the effectiveness of these programs.

00:09:21.920 Sure.

00:09:22.540 Exactly.

00:09:23.420 But while they were here until September, they were allowed to work 40 hours a week.

00:09:27.500 Now that's been cut back to 24 hours a week.

00:09:29.660 So what they were doing was they were coming – they were doing these courses at these career colleges.

00:09:35.220 But really what they were doing was coming here to work.

00:09:37.640 And then when their student visas ran out, the Liberals extended them three times.

00:09:43.580 So most of these people had been here for as much as five years. 0.99

00:09:49.900 And so the Americans aren't stupid.

00:09:53.260 I 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. 0.91

00:10:03.900 And where do you think they're going to go?

00:10:05.300 Do you have a way of getting rid of them and making sure they leave the country? 0.99

00:10:09.740 Are they just going to find a new rocksome road and walk across the other way from Canada into the United States?

00:10:17.160 We'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.

00:10:32.640 But 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. 1.00

00:10:51.080 And the Americans know this, and Trump's people know this, and they sent us a warning.

00:10:55.220 And thankfully, it kind of woke up our federal government.

00:10:59.960 The proof's in the pudding.

00:11:01.400 The devil's in the details.

00:11:02.880 We can see whether they walk the walk now that they're talking the talk.

00:11:06.620 But 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.

00:11:20.280 Yeah, 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.

00:11:27.680 We're really cracking down on illegal immigration and people who are making these irregular asylum claims.

00:11:33.620 But then he made it easier to just fly into Pearson and do it.

00:11:36.940 Right.

00:11:37.080 So 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.

00:11:45.040 Well, and of course, the change from Roxham to Pearson was basically a sock to Quebec.

00:11:51.200 Quebec was getting the bulk of the Roxham Road pedestrian crossers, and they didn't like that. 1.00

00:11:58.240 So 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.

00:12:09.400 So all of this for the last nine years has been, I hesitate to say carefully scripted, but it certainly has been deliberate.

00:12:20.660 I don't think these people carefully script anything.

00:12:22.880 I 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.

00:12:34.360 Oh, yeah.

00:12:35.700 I think they're headed towards a Kim Campbell-style blowout, I think, in 2025.

00:12:40.680 Fingers crossed.

00:12:41.260 Yeah, from my lips to God's ears.

00:12:43.260 And 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,

00:12:58.740 the burden on our health care, the burden on our housing prices, the downward effect on our wages,

00:13:06.620 none of those things were enough to get Trudeau to act on behalf of Canadians.

00:13:11.220 He 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.

00:13:20.080 It's terrible.

00:13:20.900 It's obvious.

00:13:21.440 All the reactive stuff is just useless, especially when you don't know what the problem is in the first place.

00:13:28.280 You can throw up solutions, but if you haven't recognized what the real problem is, your solutions may or may not hit the right mark.

00:13:35.900 They're probably not going to.

00:13:37.300 But further to your list of economic woes, of course, a week ago today, StatsCan came out and said that for the sixth consecutive quarter,

00:13:47.800 Canadian per capita GDP had fallen.

00:13:51.200 And there's two reasons for that.

00:13:52.700 It's the eighth out of nine quarters.

00:13:54.920 So for more than two years now, our per capita GDP has been in decline.

00:14:00.180 In the United States, where the voters are much more economically attuned than many Canadian voters, particularly central Canadian voters,

00:14:08.540 this government would be toast.

00:14:11.000 You couldn't come back from it.

00:14:12.700 It turned out that the Biden government was toast because of its poor handling of the economy,

00:14:17.620 whether they added Kamala Harris and every legacy outlet in the United States was falling all over.

00:14:25.760 You think our media is biased.

00:14:28.020 I have not seen the kind of bias for Kamala Harris that I saw in the United States.

00:14:33.280 It was revolting.

00:14:34.700 But point here.

00:14:36.620 Our economy is faltering for two particular reasons.

00:14:40.440 The economic policies of the liberal government, which comes as no surprise to anyone, drive away investment,

00:14:46.100 particularly in the energy sector, but in all the manufacturing and mining and everything else that we're good at.

00:14:52.840 So our economy has slowed way, way down.

00:14:56.540 Our growth this year might be 0.8 or 9%, but that's not enough to really call it growth.

00:15:05.260 But at the same time, too, we're adding 100,000 newcomers every month.

00:15:12.020 And they're looking for housing and they need health care and they want jobs.

00:15:15.120 And they are eating up GDP, as everyone is.

00:15:20.280 I'm not saying this is just an awful thing immigrants are doing. 1.00

00:15:23.540 But 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.

00:15:35.460 It's just there are more people looking for a slice of the pie.

00:15:38.320 And the pie is not shrinking.

00:15:40.400 But it's not growing either.

00:15:43.140 And so the problem with the liberals is, as you said, they're reactive to everything.

00:15:49.220 They haven't a clue what to do.

00:15:51.600 You know, when you get into a 12-step program, the first one is recognizing you have a problem and what that problem is.

00:15:58.820 But 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.

00:16:06.200 Yeah, I think one of the other steps is making amends.

00:16:09.460 I don't think we'll ever see that either.

00:16:13.560 Now, let's sort of drill down a little bit to Daniel Smith, who is in the mix of all of this.

00:16:20.620 Because 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.

00:16:32.720 In a way, I don't think we've ever really seen a Canadian premier do.

00:16:40.160 In fact, I think Rachel Notley did the opposite.

00:16:43.480 She recalled our envoy to Washington, Rob Merrifield, as one of her first acts of business.

00:16:52.000 What do you think?

00:16:53.100 Do 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?

00:17:04.480 Yeah, oh, absolutely.

00:17:05.380 And 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.

00:17:26.440 And 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.

00:17:40.720 And they know what the economic trends are based on what they see.

00:17:46.080 And 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.

00:18:02.080 The 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.

00:18:11.820 And then every once in a while, like at Christmas time, they have to go up and get the tree from there.

00:18:16.080 And bring it back down.

00:18:18.140 So we are not their biggest problem.

00:18:21.600 But 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.

00:18:33.300 They're not going to do that.

00:18:35.200 But she gave him a political win.

00:18:38.160 She gave Trump a political win.

00:18:39.620 And to some extent, so did Trudeau by flying down to Mar-a-Lago and having dinner.

00:18:47.180 Yeah, exactly.

00:18:48.480 You know, and so what?

00:18:51.380 You know, you got to do what you got to do.

00:18:54.760 If 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.

00:19:07.220 So, 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.

00:19:22.700 But you did it anyway because that's how you do business.

00:19:25.080 And that's what Trudeau has to learn with Trump.

00:19:29.920 Yeah, it's all about building relationships, as Trudeau actually once said.

00:19:35.400 One of your earlier points when you're talking about Danielle Smith, she has made really good inroads with the Western governors. 0.96

00:19:44.100 So much so that they've invited her to their next meeting to sit in as an observer and a participant.

00:19:51.000 Apparently she's going to make some remarks there. 1.00

00:19:53.100 Very few premiers have worked that angle that well.

00:19:58.780 And she is also filling a very important void until Pierre Polyev, fingers crossed, gets to be prime minister.

00:20:07.380 He cannot, as the leader of the opposition, be making bold foreign forays on behalf of the country.

00:20:16.060 He has no authority to do that.

00:20:17.780 He has no justification for doing it.

00:20:20.720 So she has filled in that sort of – she's kind of the leader of the opposition to Trudeau on economic issues and foreign affairs.

00:20:31.820 And I think she's been doing a very, very good job.

00:20:34.000 You know, it looked like Doug Ford was going to be that for a little while.

00:20:37.600 And then, of course, he just was happy to take any kind of federal subsidy that came Ontario's way.

00:20:43.660 And, you know, he's backed off.

00:20:45.620 Like, 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.

00:20:58.820 And where there's already been $44 billion of investment in EV manufacturing and batteries.

00:21:06.960 Investment, exactly.

00:21:08.280 I felt the investment being sucked out of my wallet the other day.

00:21:11.900 That's the kind of investment it is.

00:21:14.200 So Ford has been – Ford has not been as forceful against the liberals as we initially thought he might be.

00:21:22.420 But Danielle Smith has stepped in. 0.97

00:21:24.220 She has not backed off once.

00:21:26.880 And 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.

00:21:45.720 Your prices are going to go up because we don't have the oil and gas industry anymore.

00:21:49.720 And she's been equally good on a number of other confrontations with Ottawa.

00:21:57.000 You 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.

00:22:08.240 But he was not as tough even as Smith has been legally and in an intergovernmental affairs way.

00:22:16.760 So I've been very impressed with the way she's handled.

00:22:20.120 Sure.

00:22:20.520 It feels as though she's the government-in-waiting envoy to the United States.

00:22:25.780 But 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.

00:22:38.740 And she's winning.

00:22:40.080 Like, it's not Jason Kenney's strongly worded letters to the prime minister anymore.

00:22:44.320 This is real efforts to preserve the Canadian economy.

00:22:48.400 I 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.

00:23:01.320 Yeah.

00:23:02.220 You know, I wouldn't even – I've been doing this for 30-some years.

00:23:06.480 I didn't – it didn't even occur to me that they would have the constitutional authority to do that.

00:23:12.420 And they may not.

00:23:13.400 Somebody might challenge it and they may get shut down.

00:23:15.440 But she's not afraid to try these things.

00:23:18.920 And that impressed me.

00:23:20.120 When she said, hey, we can make our borders solid.

00:23:22.360 We can shut down any kind of illegal immigration into the United States from Alberta.

00:23:27.540 It's not huge.

00:23:28.900 Most of it goes through Ontario.

00:23:30.980 But, yeah, I thought, good for you.

00:23:34.920 Yeah.

00:23:35.600 Yeah, 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.

00:23:46.100 If Justin Trudeau is going to keep releasing them on bail, at least we can better monitor them in Alberta.

00:23:50.240 She's thinking outside the bun, as they say.

00:23:55.080 Speaking of Justin – you know what?

00:23:57.100 I was going to segue into Justin Trudeau's latest bad idea, which is the gun grab.

00:24:02.180 But we'll talk about that in a second.

00:24:03.480 I'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.

00:24:16.400 And that is her latest swath of what they're calling transgender, anti-transgender legislation. 0.99

00:24:24.180 I don't think it is.

00:24:24.980 It's about fairness in sport.

00:24:26.340 It's about parents' rights.

00:24:27.520 And it's about preserving the integrity of a child's body until they're old enough to make those decisions, like tattoos and piercings.

00:24:36.200 And 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.

00:24:58.180 Now, pediatricians are supposed to rush to help them get puberty blockers and reassignment surgery.

00:25:07.860 It's ludicrous.

00:25:09.280 I 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. 0.61

00:25:20.960 And unfortunately, you know, I would be prepared in some cases to say, okay, well, let their parents and doctors decide.

00:25:29.800 But 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.

00:25:46.940 And 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.

00:26:04.420 And the people on the transgender rights side say, it's unfair, it's unfair.

00:26:09.080 Yes, it's unfair that I wasn't big enough to play in the NFL, but life is like that.

00:26:14.640 Life throws us certain unfair things that we cannot, the government simply cannot overcome.

00:26:22.560 There's no way that, okay, it's unfortunate.

00:26:26.620 If you were trapped in the wrong body and you need to transition, that has got to be a huge mental burden.

00:26:36.080 It's got to be enormously painful physically and mentally to have to go through that.

00:26:40.940 We 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.

00:26:56.160 We can't compensate you for the fact that that's unfair.

00:26:59.220 And 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?

00:27:10.440 I guess it is, but life has unfairness in it.

00:27:14.800 And it's not the government's job to make everybody else suffer so that you feel you're being dealt with fairly.

00:27:23.540 And that, to me, I think, has the most popularity of any of the three things that the UCP did.

00:27:31.760 And that was to say, transitioning girls and women cannot play in female sport. 0.78

00:27:38.480 Yeah, 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.

00:27:49.940 And she would have lost her scholarship if a boy or a biological male identifying as a girl stepped into her position. 0.62

00:27:58.680 And it's just a danger, especially in the contact sports.

00:28:03.260 My wife and I have a very good friend who is the head of Swim Canada.

00:28:09.540 And 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.

00:28:30.940 You can't compete as a female if you transition. 1.00

00:28:33.260 And so, of course, the activists have said, well, that's why we need puberty blockers.

00:28:37.400 We need it to make it fair so that when these kids finally get to transition, they will be able.

00:28:43.060 Nothing says you get to play at a high level of sports.

00:28:46.600 Our daughter was a professional soccer player.

00:28:48.780 She played at high levels all the way through school.

00:28:52.180 She went to university on scholarships, much as your child has, and then went to Europe for two years and played professional soccer.

00:29:00.020 And as open and accepting as she was of transgendered individuals, she said it just wouldn't be fair.

00:29:09.040 If 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.

00:29:21.160 And, okay, so there's your problem with fairness versus the transgender problem with fairness. 0.97

00:29:29.820 How do we reconcile that?

00:29:31.820 And I think the UCP government's done the right thing.

00:29:34.760 Now, here's my concern with this latest slate of legislation.

00:29:39.260 There are three pieces there.

00:29:40.300 It's not that I think that the legislation is bad.

00:29:43.420 I think it actually is fair and it balances rights as best as they could on a difficult issue.

00:29:50.860 My 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.

00:30:00.780 And 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.

00:30:25.580 And there's another sort of side story happening in all of this.

00:30:31.560 A lot of the lawyers that are involved in these legal challenges are funded by EGAL.

00:30:37.140 EGAL is funded nearly exclusively by the federal government.

00:30:40.860 So in another end run, it looks like Justin Trudeau is meddling in provincial politics by funding the activists groups.

00:30:46.260 And 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.

00:30:55.580 And 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.

00:31:05.380 They just give more money to EGAL to go and do it.

00:31:08.380 And so, yeah, you can certainly be assured that that's what's going on.

00:31:13.240 I go back to a story that I covered in the 90s.

00:31:19.460 I start to sound like my walker is just off camera.

00:31:22.700 The, 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.

00:31:37.380 Um, uh, they'd been sterilized and by the government and they were seeking some sort of redress.

00:31:45.000 And 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.

00:31:59.100 And the courts left it alone.

00:32:01.060 So it says it's as simple as that from a legal standpoint, from a political standpoint, it may be more contentious.

00:32:08.500 It 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.

00:32:20.380 Like, I'm not too worried about that.

00:32:22.700 I'm a little concerned that Smith won't say that's what she'll do, but, uh, you know, let's see what happens with this.

00:32:30.840 I mean, they've gone, they've gone as far as any provincial government has.

00:32:34.000 I think they've done a really good job on this.

00:32:36.920 They've done a very fair and balanced job, as you were saying.

00:32:40.460 And, uh, yeah, they, could they improve it with the notwithstanding clause?

00:32:44.180 Yeah, for sure.

00:32:45.140 Yeah.

00:32:45.340 Yeah, 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.

00:33:03.560 I would just lower that.

00:33:04.220 Well, 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.

00:33:12.780 Um, that's, that's rubbish from a court, frankly, because the notwithstanding clause is a constitutional clause.

00:33:22.620 So therefore it must be constitutional to use it.

00:33:26.120 Right.

00:33:26.780 And Quebec uses it all the time.

00:33:28.780 Constantly.

00:33:29.420 None, none of these people who are these high and mighty, uh, progressives, none of them ever complained that Quebec used.

00:33:37.520 Quebec used it all the time.

00:33:38.600 Quebec 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.

00:33:53.240 I didn't hear many.

00:33:54.840 There 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.

00:34:06.060 They use it on language issues all, constantly.

00:34:09.240 They use it all the time.

00:34:10.340 At one point they were adding it to every piece of legislation that they were passing in the national assembly.

00:34:16.000 So I can't remember what the example was, but it was something as, as, um, innocuous as, uh, renewal of license plate tags or something.

00:34:25.640 It puts an notwithstanding clause on it.

00:34:27.840 You know, it's just nuts.

00:34:29.000 Now, 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.

00:34:43.800 Uh, but I think there's a third one and that's gun control.

00:34:46.700 And, 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.

00:34:54.560 Justin 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.

00:35:08.900 So I think we're up to 1,500, maybe even more than that is closer to 1,800 now.

00:35:14.400 Yeah.

00:35:14.680 Just models being banned.

00:35:16.680 Um, just, uh, frankly, cause they kind of look cool, which is not a good way to be banning firearms.

00:35:22.180 I 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.

00:35:35.480 Yes. 0.52

00:35:35.960 There is usually a hunting variant, which doesn't look scary.

00:35:40.640 It doesn't look like a machine gun.

00:35:42.360 It doesn't look like it'd be carried by a soldier.

00:35:44.160 It looks like it's being carried by a hunter, same mechanisms, same muzzle velocity, same firing power.

00:35:51.560 Everything is identical, but it looks different.

00:35:54.080 So we're not going to ban those.

00:35:55.140 Do you think anybody who is truly serious about a mass killing is going to, Oh, I can't do that.

00:36:03.540 Cause I like the way this one, this mass killer look, but this other one, it's for wimps.

00:36:09.540 It's just for hunters.

00:36:10.660 I don't, I don't like camel.

00:36:12.240 You 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.

00:36:34.300 So 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.

00:36:46.880 It's up by over 60% in Peel, in the Peel region, which is the area around Toronto.

00:36:52.360 It's up by almost 60% in Hamilton.

00:36:55.120 It's up by 45 or 46% in Toronto.

00:36:58.920 So they're having a problem, but they, they will tell you the police officers in particular, but also sometimes the chiefs will tell you.

00:37:08.840 This is a problem with smuggled guns, 85 to 90% of the guns that they seize at crime scenes.

00:37:16.880 Have been smuggled from the United States.

00:37:18.960 And 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.

00:37:27.400 I've, I've never fired one.

00:37:28.820 I'm not interested in them, uh, from a, from a hunting standpoint or target shooting.

00:37:34.860 This is purely political for me.

00:37:37.000 I do not trust any government who doesn't trust my law abiding neighbor to own a gun.

00:37:44.040 That's it's political for me, but guys.

00:37:46.740 I 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.

00:37:57.880 He said, but most of these ones come from the States too, and they just remove the serial number.

00:38:01.680 So when they say 85 to 90% are guns from the United States, it's probably closer to 95% are guns from the United States.

00:38:09.240 And so that's what you should be going after.

00:38:11.220 But what did the liberals do?

00:38:12.440 One 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.

00:38:22.760 Yes.

00:38:23.620 And the reason they gave for that goes back to my immigration racism marker for them.

00:38:30.480 They said, well, it disproportionately affects indigenous and black Canadians.

00:38:36.520 So therefore we're going to get rid of what, who cares what color the person is who's smuggling guns in and selling them to criminals. 0.79

00:38:43.700 I don't care. 0.93

00:38:44.360 But you could tell me they're all white. 0.85

00:38:47.080 I'm not going to say, oh, that's unfair to white people.

00:38:49.520 So let's not, let's not have that law. 0.99

00:38:52.400 Hey, they're, they're nuts about this.

00:38:54.500 And the 324, it's hard yet to determine of the 324 models banned yesterday, how many guns that mean.

00:39:05.160 But there's, it's probably a few tens of thousands of guns.

00:39:09.240 The initial ones were much more popular.

00:39:11.040 Uh, 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.

00:39:23.260 If they know that.

00:39:23.800 If they know that.

00:39:25.360 But the preposterous thing about that is they have spent over $70 million on the 2020 confiscation.

00:39:35.880 They banned a whole bunch of guns.

00:39:37.400 You had to turn them in by 2022, and then 2023, then 2024, and then they moved it to 2025.

00:39:44.620 They've spent over $70 million at the federal level administering this gun buyback.

00:39:52.060 And they have not collected one gun.

00:39:55.660 Not one.

00:39:56.620 They haven't, they haven't seized a single gun, not from a dealer or from an individual.

00:40:00.980 And 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?

00:40:15.920 We were told these guns were so dangerous that ordinary people couldn't be trusted to own them.

00:40:22.420 And yet five years, almost five years later.

00:40:25.280 Right.

00:40:25.960 Every single person who had a gun that was banned in 2020 still has that gun.

00:40:32.460 Right.

00:40:32.560 You 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.

00:40:43.940 If 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.

00:40:49.560 Right.

00:40:49.960 This is, this is just horse hockey thinking.

00:40:53.800 And this government is full of it.

00:40:55.460 And 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.

00:41:06.700 It's on the eve of the Ecole Polytechnique shooting for which they'd been getting harassment from victims groups and from anti-gun organizations.

00:41:17.700 And, 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.

00:41:30.940 So it's all political.

00:41:34.620 It's completely political.

00:41:36.060 And, you know, just going back to your point of, you know, this is costing, you know, we're approaching a hundred million dollars.

00:41:45.800 I don't even have a clue how many of these firearms are in Canada because they're moving them directly from non-restricted to prohib.

00:41:52.380 So these, many of these guns were never, ever registered.

00:41:55.900 So they're just spitballing how many of these firearms are in Canada.

00:42:01.120 Like, they banned the Mini-14 Ranch Rifle because it looks cool.

00:42:05.980 I wouldn't use that thing to, I mean, it's not suitable to hunt a deer.

00:42:10.500 It's more for varmint control.

00:42:14.120 And this is what the liberals are doing.

00:42:15.640 And this is the thing that really got me yesterday because the irony here is just chef's kiss liberal perfection.

00:42:22.820 Talks 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.

00:42:32.980 So I could not defend myself using these firearms against a burglar who's attacking me and I'm 30 minutes from the nearest municipality.

00:42:42.520 But they're perfectly fine for the Ukrainians to defend themselves.

00:42:44.840 You 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.

00:43:06.600 But, you know, they'll say, oh, oh, Pierre, that's such a fabulous idea that you've come up with there from Justice Canada.

00:43:16.920 Oh, that'll be a big winner.

00:43:19.360 It's the same mentality that thought taking GST off of things for a couple of months would be a big winner, right?

00:43:27.120 Nobody's going to buy this.

00:43:28.460 You 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.

00:43:40.920 And I think like everything else the Liberals are doing these days, it's not going to work.

00:43:44.880 Yeah, they think they're going to send my mini 14 to Kiev.

00:43:48.660 It's just crazy.

00:43:51.640 Lauren, thanks so much for taking the time today.

00:43:53.840 How do people find your work at Postmedia?

00:43:56.120 Yep, you can, the easiest, directest way is edmontonsun.com.

00:44:03.240 Great.

00:44:04.020 Thanks, Lauren.

00:44:05.340 This is Ezra's show, so I'm sure he'll have you back on again very soon.

00:44:09.460 Very good.

00:44:10.200 Thanks, Sheila.

00:44:11.160 Stay with us.

00:44:11.960 Your letters to Ezra, read by me, up after the break.

00:44:26.120 Well, welcome back.

00:44:28.200 You know, it feels like every single minute of every single day we're getting some form of viewer feedback.

00:44:33.520 And I know it sounds like I'm complaining, but I'm definitely not, because it means that you are engaged in our content.

00:44:38.680 It means that you care about the work that we're doing here at Rebel News for better or for worse.

00:44:43.680 I should tell you, I really don't care if politicians like us here at Rebel News.

00:44:47.220 In 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.

00:44:55.260 It'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.

00:45:03.500 So if we lose the people, we lose Rebel News.

00:45:07.180 And it's why I open up the end of my weekly gun show to our viewers.

00:45:11.680 Ezra 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.

00:45:19.200 And 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.

00:45:34.960 I think that's probably the best way to describe it.

00:45:37.100 A pro-Hamas astroturf mob stormed the parliament buildings.

00:45:44.560 And in the before times, the left would describe this as an insurrection.

00:45:50.840 However, their friends are doing the insurrectioning, so it's just a peaceful protest.

00:46:00.520 And, you know, imagine if the truckers had done this.

00:46:03.100 And that's what some of you noted.

00:46:05.080 Let's get into the comments.

00:46:06.620 Mystery Cheese writes,

00:46:08.860 Don't forget that two NDP MPs joined that protest and are actively working more for Palestine than Canada.

00:46:16.420 Now, I don't know if they're actively working more for Palestine than Canada, but I think it was more than two NDP MPs.

00:46:23.940 I think it might have been three.

00:46:26.120 Matthew Green, Lee Gazzin, no surprise there, and Edmonton's own Heather McPherson.

00:46:32.320 They were seen supporting the pro-Palestinian mob that took over the parliament buildings today.

00:46:38.100 And at least one Liberal MP, no surprise there, chronic house flipper, Tlaib Noor Mohamed, was seen schmoozing with the group.

00:46:47.340 And that was after they were all forcibly removed from the parliament buildings.

00:46:53.160 Go figure.

00:46:53.980 Now, remember, remember how the media was completely outraged at the prospect that members of the Conservative Party were, I think, kind.

00:47:11.900 I don't even think kind is the right word.

00:47:13.440 I 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,

00:47:25.980 to 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.

00:47:34.720 The media lost their marbles, the Liberals said, how dare you meet with these seditious insurrectionists.

00:47:44.820 And look at this, the truckers never stormed the House of Commons.

00:47:50.420 Canada Rye writes, so the Freedom Convoy was labeled as terrorists, but this is okay in Canada, right?

00:47:56.300 The Freedom Convoy, they never went anywhere near storming the House of Commons.

00:48:05.120 They left the place cleaner than when they got there.

00:48:08.760 The crime rate actually went down in Ottawa while the truckers were there.

00:48:13.780 And yet, they were not just labeled as terrorists.

00:48:18.240 The feds used a counterterrorism law on them.

00:48:22.380 They used martial law, the Emergencies Act.

00:48:25.460 That's what it is.

00:48:26.060 It's to give the police unique and extraordinary tools to deal with, I don't want to say an extinction-level event,

00:48:35.040 but a Pearl Harbor-level event on Canadian soil.

00:48:38.960 That's how the Liberals treated the Freedom Convoy.

00:48:43.640 And they didn't storm anything.

00:48:46.880 They were a little bit too fun-loving for the boring people in Ottawa.

00:48:51.840 Not 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.

00:49:04.760 Okay.

00:49:04.900 I'll stop.

00:49:07.460 Harry Tinder, 5093, writes,

00:49:10.420 Never mind the comparison with the trucker protest.

00:49:13.080 Compare this with the January 6th invasion of the U.S. Capitol building that was labeled an insurrection.

00:49:20.140 People were jailed for ridiculously long sentences.

00:49:24.420 You know, great point.

00:49:26.420 You know, the police just forcibly removed these people and then said,

00:49:32.140 All right, off you go.

00:49:33.340 But Tamara Leach right now is in, well, nearing the end, I believe, of the longest mischief trial in the history of the Commonwealth. 0.85

00:49:49.600 And what did she do?

00:49:53.780 She was, I guess, the spiritual and possibly a bit of a logistics head of the Freedom Convoy.

00:50:04.300 But she called for peace over and over again.

00:50:07.340 She didn't trespass.

00:50:10.220 I'm still trying to figure out what exactly her mischief even was.

00:50:14.880 And yet the feds are pursuing her with everything they've got, including a multimillion dollar prosecution.

00:50:24.300 For what?

00:50:25.380 For a crime that which she was convicted of, she would never see the inside of a jail cell.

00:50:31.300 And that is to say, she spent nearly 50 days in jail on a breach of her conditions, which was never a breach at all.

00:50:39.620 After that, they should have just washed their hands of this mess.

00:50:42.960 But the feds are still pursuing this for political reasons.

00:50:46.080 And as you rightly point out, in the United States, those insurrectionists, the people who wandered through the Capitol building might goofballs a little bit.

00:51:00.060 But, I mean, these are not insurrectionists.

00:51:03.440 These are not seditionists.

00:51:04.840 They're just minor trespassers.

00:51:08.640 They're in jail for years and years and years.

00:51:12.760 And in Canada, if you are a supporter of the Hamas rapes, murders, and kidnappings, an apologist for those things, 0.96

00:51:25.180 and you storm the House of Commons, Parliament buildings, and trespass, you will have support of at least one government MP and three opposition MPs.

00:51:39.480 Well, 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.

00:51:51.360 So let's just say four government MPs, three in government by proxy, supported these yahoos. 1.00

00:52:00.860 And where are the police?

00:52:02.220 Where are the mischief charges?

00:52:03.700 Where are the frozen bank accounts?

00:52:05.180 I don't know.

00:52:07.360 I don't know.

00:52:08.220 Wouldn'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?

00:52:18.640 Because, you know, these people don't do anything for free.

00:52:20.760 So have we bothered tracking?

00:52:22.940 I don't know.

00:52:23.460 But if you were a trucker, you got your bank account frozen.

00:52:27.120 If you were a grandma who gave money to the Freedom Convoy, you got your bank account frozen.

00:52:32.880 If 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.

00:52:46.760 You just had the wrong politics to be financed for that combine or those 40 head of cattle.

00:52:54.920 It's despicable.

00:52:56.860 This Reign of Terror by Justin Trudeau, it cannot come soon enough.

00:53:01.580 And I don't want to exaggerate and say Reign of Terror.

00:53:03.620 Let's call it Reign of Tyranny.

00:53:04.820 Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.

00:53:08.920 Thanks 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.

00:53:17.920 I think he's back in the driver's seat.

00:53:20.460 But on Monday, I've got to go catch a plane to Paris for the opening of the Notre Dame Cathedral.

00:53:28.080 And you can follow all of our reports from there at Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Restored.com.

00:53:36.640 And as Ezra always says, keep fighting for freedom.

00:53:40.060 We'll see you next time.

Rebel News Podcast - December 07, 2024

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Premier Smith's diplomatic prowess might just save Alberta oil and gas

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript