Ezra Levant Show June 07 2018
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
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Summary
Donald Trump comes to Canada for the G7, and Justin Trudeau is doing his best to make his guest uncomfortable. Is it any wonder that world leaders just don t think it's important to come to Canada under Justin Trudeau's tenure?
Transcript
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Tonight, Donald Trump comes to Canada for the G7, and Trudeau is doing his best to make his guest uncomfortable.
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It's June 7th, and you're watching The Ezra LeVant Show.
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Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
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There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
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You come here once a year with a sign, and you feel morally superior.
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The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
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Donald Trump has been president for more than 500 days, and he hasn't come to Canada yet.
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Now, he's coming for the G7 meeting, but that's really the only reason why.
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The same for Emmanuel Macron, the president of France.
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And the same goes for Theresa May, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, and Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, etc.
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Under Justin Trudeau's tenure, world leaders just don't think it's important to come here.
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It's like that video clip I played for you the other day from the G20 meeting,
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where Justin Trudeau was walking through a meeting of literally the world's most important political leaders,
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Very busy packing and unpacking his briefcase there, just trying to make it look like he wasn't friendless.
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He's going to look at him again, sort of hanging out by Donald Trump.
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Come on, look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me, look at him, look at him.
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Donald Trump briefly chats with him, and then watch this.
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Watch how quick, he turns his back on him, and he hands him off.
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Okay, so he talks to him for a few minutes, and Justin Trudeau says something extremely deep and engaging,
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and Trump gives him, I don't know, count the seconds, we're about 10 seconds, 11 seconds, 12 seconds, 13 seconds,
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and Trump passes him off to some other guy, and it's done.
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Actually, I guess that passing off happened earlier.
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You can imagine Trump has done that move a million times before,
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walk away from someone who wants to talk to him more than he wants to talk with them.
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And it's not that funny when it's the Prime Minister of Canada that nobody wants to talk to.
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We're supposed to be the closest friend and ally and trading partner in the United States.
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The bizarre three-way handshake schmazzle with, oh, look at this.
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They were only up here when Canada was chosen to host a summit.
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There's his myth that Trudeau is a smooth and suave operator.
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It's the view of his psych offense at the CBC, that's for sure,
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I mean, Trudeau was a disaster in India, just for the most obvious example.
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But Trump is finally coming to Canada, even though Trump is obviously focused on bigger things.
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I've seen reports that Trump does not want to spend any more than a few hours in Canada,
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if he can help it, because he's more focused on his upcoming meeting in Singapore
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in an attempt to fulfill his audacious scheme of denuclearizing that country.
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But fixing the Korean War, it's still technically in a state of war, you know.
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It's a ceasefire, a truce, for more than 60 years.
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His staff can handle the regular stuff with the G7.
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And Trump isn't much for a G7 kind of thing anyways.
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He likes bilateral deals, as in the U.S. and one other country doing a deal.
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A bunch of those bilateral deals, rather than a big mess of a multilateral deal
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That's why Trump hates the U.N. and has for so long.
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Something Trump has pitched to Trudeau in the case, the course of the NAFTA negotiations,
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Trump wants a better deal for America, for sure.
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Trump says he thinks that can be done in a bilateral Canada-U.S. deal
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I mean, I have to say that that sounds commonsensical.
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Trump clearly has a bean as bonded about Mexico
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and has for years and talks about a wall with Mexico
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and talks about MS-13 gang members coming up from Mexico.
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isn't it in our Canadian interest to get out of the same deal with Mexico
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so we're not collateral damage if Trump and Mexico have a big fight,
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but I think Canada's PM should look out for us Canadians,
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not try to be a white knight for other countries.
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Anyways, things have been falling apart between Trump and Trudeau.
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I actually didn't think it would take this long.
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We're lucky in that Trump just doesn't care that much about Canada.
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which I think is the best case scenario for us, don't you think?
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So Trudeau and Trump were talking on the telephone the other day about NAFTA
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because Trump has put steel sanctions on Canada,
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As in, the U.S. needs its own steel industry domestically for strategic reasons
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They want to be able to use their own steel, make their own steel,
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so they're not dependent on, oh, I don't know, foreign leaders,
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who gave $10.5 million to an al-Qaeda terrorist like Omar Khadar.
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That's why he brings in the tariff to protect them.
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Now, Trudeau made a big fuss about that the other day,
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pretending that Trudeau deeply cared about our military alliance
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with the United States, and it was so mean for Trump
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I mean, this is the same Trudeau who withdrew our CFT-18 jets
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from the war against ISIS as the first act after he was elected prime minister.
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But he doesn't mind pretending he's pro-military
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Canada is a secure supplier of aluminum and steel
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Really, it was an aftershock of the U.S. Revolutionary War.
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who didn't want to be part of an independent America.
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The Canadians raided the U.S. and gave them a bloody nose.
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Now, they were Canadians, sure, but that was 55 years before Canada was even a country of its own.
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Anyways, isn't it sort of clear that that was a joke, just hyperbole?
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I mean, Trump is not still mad about the War of 1812 some 200 years later.
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I don't think he has the lightheartedness or the subtly or the self-critical nature
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He either didn't get that it was a joke, or he did,
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and he leaked that part of the private conversation to CNN,
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to the most Trump-hating journalist at all of CNN.
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His name is Jim Acosta, just to tweak Trump's nose.
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Will it help convince Donald Trump to lift the steel tears?
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Do you think it will convince Trump to have more or fewer phone calls with Trudeau,
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or fewer meetings if confidential things they talk about are leaked in an embarrassing manner to CNN?
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and I bet it did well with the Liberal Party base, by which I mean the CBC.
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three different very high-level sources in the American government
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tell him the comment was meant as a joke and taken as a joke by Trudeau.
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Trudeau is not only violating a conference, but lying about it.
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I hear that goes over well in foreign capitals.
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the Trump administration noticed that and doesn't like it.
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Chrystia Freeland, the foreign minister who bizarrely is leading Canada's NAFTA file directly.
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That's Chrystia Freeland, a former journalist who has never negotiated anything
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tougher than buying a house, and her millennial hipster squad.
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That looks like a really cheap Netflix movie, doesn't it?
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That motley crew there is up against lifelong trade lawyers and negotiators on Trump's side.
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I'm not making fun of their personal appearance.
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I'm making fun of that crew of millennial hipsters is about to be crushed
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by the top lawyers and bureaucrats and negotiators in the world.
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But Chrystia Freeland herself chimed in, choosing to mock and deliberately misunderstand the national
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Trump isn't worried about Canada invading and torching the White House.
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He is worried about having strategic depth to his steel industry.
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And the liberals who are starving our own military wrapped themselves on the flag.
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These personal attacks on Trump are going to backfire on the whole country.
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I want to give you a little insight into how the party, the Liberal Party, truly feels about Trump.
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One of the ways to know how they talk is to watch Scott Gilmore.
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He's the house husband of Trudeau cabinet minister Catherine McKenna, the global warming minister.
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Scott Gilmore writes for McLean's magazine, which gets $1.5 million a year from Trudeau.
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So he's an unofficial liberal spokesman in that he can say what they honestly think.
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But since he's only married to a cabinet minister, it's unofficial.
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Scott Gilmore says, America's allies have used all their diplomatic tools.
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Trump still keeps punching them in the nose as he dismantles the international order we've spent a century building.
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Trump has adopted a Russian style of governance, rhetoric, and foreign policy.
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With Russia, the only way to push back is to target the oligarchs at the center of power.
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In the case of America, there is only one oligarch.
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I just, but, okay, you're thinking that's his crazy Twitter feed.
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Instead of taxing American goods, Canada and the Western allies should collectively pressure the only pain point that matters to this president, his family and their assets.
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Yeah, you're trying out that medicinal marijuana a little bit.
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That's what $1.5 million a year from Trudeau buys you.
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Do you doubt that Scott Gilmore and his cabinet minister wife talk like that at home?
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The liberal cabinet ministers talk like that, even worse, amongst themselves in private.
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Here's some of what Trudeau's cabinet ministers say in public.
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Just a few samples that haven't yet been scrubbed off the Internet.
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Now, some of these are from 2016 or before Trump was president.
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That doesn't go to anything other than it shows how they truly, truly feel.
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Here's just some plain old physical mockery from Scott Bryson, Trudeau's Treasury Board boss, who says,
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Gosh, when Trump finds out, there'll be hell to pay.
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I don't know if Trump thinks it's funny, but, hey, it's worth getting a few cheap laughs,
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Here's Carolyn Bennett, another Trudeau cabinet minister.
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Michelle Obama denounces Trump for bragging about sexually assaulting women.
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So why is the Canadian cabinet minister sharing that?
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Jimmy Fallon delivers epic Donald Trump RNC speech.
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More than 450,000 voted before anyone had seen Trump's tape.
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So here she is on the eve of the U.S. election, just pounding Trump.
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You can't, you just can't keep your thoughts to yourself.
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And you're not smart enough to have deleted this and you, you think that, listen, I have no doubt at all that Carolyn Bennett feels that way.
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But why is she doing that from her ministerial Twitter account when we're trying to negotiate a NAFTA deal?
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Why don't you have common sense and delete that?
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Right after David Duke, the KKK leader, was in the news, he says,
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I wonder how many people are searching the world's databases for a picture of Trump and Duke right now.
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That's the prime minister's right-hand man comparing Donald Trump to the Klansman.
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I don't know if you remember this, but look, look at this one.
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Literally weeks before Trump's election, the Liberal Party of Canada put out a massive email to all of their members
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denouncing Trump as divisive and negative and pinning neighbor against neighbor and going on and on.
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Sort of, you know, ascribing to Trump the abusiveness of their own liberal email.
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Imagine attacking one of the two leading presidential candidates.
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Just weeks before the election in a close race.
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Not even waiting a couple weeks to make sure you weren't mocking the new incoming president.
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I like him, but I'm pretty sure Stephen Harper didn't like Barack Obama and vice versa,
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but they still work together, more or less, for the benefit of their respective countries.
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It's true that Donald Trump has started to ratchet things up in his Trumpy way.
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But I will tell you, they have been very difficult to deal with.
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They're very spoiled because nobody's done this.
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But I've never actually seen Donald Trump take aim at Justin Trudeau himself,
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who Trump repeatedly praises and calls a friend, my friend Justin.
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But the liberals are 100% personal in their attacks on Trump.
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I've been very, very clear in my approach as a feminist, as someone who has stood clearly
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and strongly all my life around issues of sexual harassment, standing against violence
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against women, that I don't need to make any further comment at this time.
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Yeah, I think it's better if Trump ignores Canada.
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I'm sort of glad he hasn't been here in 500 days.
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If Trump separates Canada from Mexico before he pummels Mexico, I think that's a good thing.
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I think it's been our good luck that Trump has not visited us.
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And I think it's good news that he's only going to the G7 in and out.
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And he's really focused on North Korea and Iran and China instead of us, don't you think?
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But one day, and I fear that day is imminent, Donald Trump will pay attention to all the
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And it won't just hit Trudeau, which would make me chuckle.
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I actually think Justin Trudeau wants that to happen.
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Because while it will devastate our economy, it'll make Trudeau the world's anti-Trump martyr.
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And no one will love him harder than the government journalists at the CBC state broadcaster.
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I think a trade war, a personal war of words with the U.S. president will hurt Canada badly.
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But if it gives Justin Trudeau an easier enemy to campaign against in the next federal election
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than the Conservative Party, and if it'll make Trudeau the toast of the town of the United Nations,
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well, it almost sounds like it was Gerald Butz's plan all along, doesn't it?
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We'll talk more about this with Joel Pollack of Breitbart.com.
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Well, we just marked the 500th day that Donald Trump has been president of the United States.
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And I don't know if you remember, but right before his inauguration, I published this quick book called
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Trumping Trudeau, how Donald Trump will change Canada, even if Justin Trudeau doesn't know it yet.
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And you tell me if I had this called 501 days ago.
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The Justin Trudeau era came crashing to an end on November 8th, 2016, when Donald Trump was elected president of the United States.
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On everything from carbon taxes to Cuba, Canadian policy is suddenly obsolete.
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Will Trudeau and his advisors realign themselves with our largest trading partner and ally?
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Or will Trudeau do what his father did, play the role of anti-American gadfly to the delight of the third world, but the detriment of Canadians?
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And joining us now via Skype from Los Angeles is our friend Joel Pollack, the senior editor-at-large of Breitbart.com,
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who's been following Trump and the Canadian negotiations.
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Maybe you can set the record straight about something.
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Do Canadians joke about burning down the White House?
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You know, once in a blue moon, Canadians, it's sort of a, well, the last time we fought, we beat you, ha-ha,
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because we know we're one-tenth the size of Canada, and our military is a fraction,
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and we're the junior, in the Batman and Robin, you know, analogy, we're the Robin.
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So it's not a joke, it's not, we don't say, ha-ha, we got you, it's, thank God we have been at peace with America for 200 years,
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and then we sort of, because we know it's such an imbalance of power, that it's sort of, I wouldn't say it's a joke, Joel,
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but I'd say that it's something we tell ourselves to remind us, well, it's an antidote to the fact that we are not as powerful as America.
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You don't have to apologize for telling the joke.
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No, I don't think we tell the, it's not a joke, and I'm not apologizing, I'm just saying, I don't think Canadians say,
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ha-ha, in your face, America, we burned down the White House.
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No, it's just sort of a joke about, well, our military is pretty weak, and thank God we're not at war,
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but if you really want to exhum the past 206 years ago, we did sock it to you.
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Most Canadians don't even know what the War of 1812 is.
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Now, I know you're mentioning that, I mentioned it in my monologue today,
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because Donald Trump clearly meant it as a joke on the phone call.
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and he's a provocateur, and he's an empresario, and he, I mean, we saw his campaign rallies.
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I noticed that CTV's Washington correspondent said that three different senior U.S. sources told him
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that that comment about, that Trump made to Trudeau on the phone call about the War of 1812
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was said as a joke, and it was taken as a joke by Trudeau.
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So Trudeau later trotting that out and saying, oh, what an idiot, he thinks we're going to invade,
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is not only a breach of the confidentiality of the call,
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but it's a lie because both men knew it was a joke.
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And the fact that three senior officials reached out to the CTV bureau chief
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tells me that Donald Trump is not amused by this.
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I think it was probably leaked by the Canadians because Trudeau is trying to show that he can
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stand up for Canada against Trump, and the way he chose to do so was to embarrass the president.
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He's using the power of the bully pulpit in a slightly devious way, but we're doing the same.
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And I don't think that any Canadian leader has to apologize for anything they do to defend
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Canada's interest the same way that we wouldn't.
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And I think it's healthy for both countries to be advocating for their citizens,
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even if sometimes it does test the bonds that have been cultivated over centuries,
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To answer your question from earlier about Trudeau setting himself up as the anti-American,
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You know, he came to the United States not too long ago and delivered a commencement address
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where he talked about the importance of tolerance and diversity, which normally would be fighting
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Because our campuses are so overrun by the left, which hates diversity of opinion and thought.
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But I think it was also a dig at the Trump administration and he was trying to preen and
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grandstand for the left, which, of course, outside the university campus pretends that
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it is the font of all diversity and tolerance and that the retrograde conservatives who currently
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occupy the White House and Congress are the enemies of all that's good and wonderful
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So I think he is posturing in a cultural sense as the opposite of Trump and America.
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I think in a military and geopolitical sense, that's probably not true.
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I think the past 20 years have taken the United States and Canada inexorably into the same
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corner, like it or not, I think, on the Canadians' part, because I know there's a left-right
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divide in Canada over how and when and where to stand with the United States.
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Certainly the policy on Israel has gone back and forth between administrations.
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You know, the Trump administration is very pro-Israel, the Trudeau administration far less
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But I think this trade issue is interesting and obviously not the first trade issue that
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Even when NAFTA was in full swing and people were very positive about it, there were disputes
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over salmon fishing and disputes over all kinds of things.
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This one just happens to have happened as Trump is trying to confront Mexico and trying
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And there's a sense among the China skeptics in the United States that China is using Canada
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Now, whether that's true or not, you'd have to ask an economist.
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I don't actually know, because the claims and counterclaims and all these trade arguments
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But I think what's interesting is that the one area where there really is a strong disagreement,
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where Trudeau is playing the role you described, is cultural.
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And on the trade issues, maybe it was silly of him to leak that conversation.
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But at the same time, I think that Canada's got to do what's in Canada's interest.
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And there may be a method to that particular kind of madness.
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Trump plays dirty on social media, and he knows how to leak to the New York Times just
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as much as anybody, even though he calls it the failing New York Times.
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What's amusing to me is how the media tried to take that joke, our media anyway, tried to
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take that joke and turned it into a major faux pas by President Trump, when clearly everybody
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in the room or on the phone would have understood it was a joke.
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And I, you know, if you've been to enough hockey matches, you've heard worse.
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And I take your point about Canada has to do what's in Canada's interest.
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But I fear, and this is, I mean, this is, Joel, you cover the United States, and you
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cover other countries, true, but you're from an American perspective.
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I have been following Trudeau very closely, obviously.
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And I had been following him for years, even before he became an MP.
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And I want to give you an example that literally the day after Donald Trump announced his executive
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order, right when he became president, restricting migration to the United States from several
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Muslim-majority countries that had a terrorist problem.
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And it was shocking proof, I think, to the liberals in the world that Trump actually meant
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Joe, I don't know if you know this, but Justin Trudeau literally tweeted, in reaction to
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So it was a hastily, personally drafted tweet that was one of the most retweeted things Trudeau
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Well, if Donald Trump is closing the borders, we're opening the borders.
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Everyone who's thrown away from America is welcome here.
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So I'm putting it to you, Joel, and this is my theory, and I think my viewers know this,
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and I'm bouncing it off you as an American, you're a casual Trudeau watcher, we're serious
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Sometimes Trudeau does things that are in Canada's interest, and if he's taken on Donald Trump
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in Canada's interest, I'm a Canadian patriot, I'm going to back that, even though I like
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But so many of the things Trudeau does are not in Canada's interest.
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Trudeau's saying, if Trump says black, I say right.
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Trudeau's saying, if Trump says closed borders, I say open borders.
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It's almost as if Justin Trudeau has said, I'm going to do the opposite of Trump.
00:27:01.740
And I think he wants to suck up to the United Nations to get on the Security Council.
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Justin Trudeau would rather be loved at the United Nations than loved in the White House.
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Also true of Barack Obama, who wanted to be loved by the United Nations more than he wanted
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I think the Iran deal is a classic example, right?
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He took that to the UN before he took it to Congress.
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And he was required by the Constitution to take it to the Senate, which he never did.
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And I think that is a posture that Trudeau shares with Obama.
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And to the extent that Trump is the anti-Obama, I would put it this way.
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We don't have many of those, but he's a throwback to a modern, almost Roosevelt-era president.
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Trudeau is also a postmodern president, where the posture you take, the attitude you have
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is what you want people to judge you on, rather than the results you achieve.
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I mean, if Trudeau is posturing in this way, he may be overlooking the real damage that
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a deteriorating media relationship with President Trump could have on Canada.
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I somehow think that Canada is going to be OK through all of this.
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And the real challenge is getting everybody on board in dealing with China.
00:28:25.160
And I'm not sure that Trudeau has thought that through, because obviously Canada is a country
00:28:32.420
that's important for China as a destination for exports and also as a source of raw materials.
00:28:38.060
And the problem is that having Canada with such open trade with the United States gives
00:28:44.900
China a backdoor, according to critics at least, gives China a backdoor through which
00:28:49.540
it can dump cheap goods in our markets and hurt our workers.
00:28:55.780
And there's a lot that Trudeau could do in Canada's interest if he found a way to work
00:29:02.000
Maybe he's missing out on that opportunity because he sees that posturing, that almost
00:29:06.600
cultural disdain for the Trump administration and for the people who elected him.
00:29:12.200
And if that's what's happening, then I think you're right.
00:29:14.500
This is a case of Trudeau doing what's in his own ideological or cultural interest and
00:29:22.720
A clip we play many times on this show is a clip when Trudeau was running for, he was
00:29:28.540
just early in his political career, and he was asked a question he wasn't really ready
00:29:32.960
He said, he was asked, what is your favorite country other than Canada?
00:29:38.420
And he, without, and that's a great question, isn't it?
00:29:44.360
And he answered very candidly, and here, we'll just play the clip.
00:29:49.900
There's a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship
00:29:59.560
is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime.
00:30:04.020
So, Joel, there's Justin Trudeau saying he loves China, and he didn't say the language,
00:30:10.860
the food, the culture, the history, the people.
00:30:13.360
He said that the basic dictatorship, that was what he liked about him.
00:30:22.840
I think that, and Justin Trudeau has talked about changing the polarity of the world.
00:30:30.340
His people talk about replacing America with China.
00:30:36.360
And I know, I feel like I'm trying to persuade you or educate you about Trudeau instead of
00:30:40.460
asking you about the Trump-Trudeau relationship.
00:30:44.160
Trump withdrew America from the Paris global warming scheme.
00:30:47.680
Not that America was following it even under Barack Obama.
00:30:50.340
But Trudeau, instead of saying, oh, we must now realign our economy with America,
00:30:56.880
especially our energy economy, they're, damn, the torpedoes go ahead,
00:31:00.420
and they're actually talking about, well, maybe we need to be closer with China
00:31:06.280
I think Trudeau genuinely would rather have a China-centric world than a Trump-centric world.
00:31:14.900
I just don't think Americans know this yet, and maybe we shouldn't tell them
00:31:24.100
And look, I think that, I happen to be a free trader, so I actually think that the United States
00:31:30.700
would do well to have a closer economic relationship with China.
00:31:33.800
The difficulty is that it's a one-sided relationship.
00:31:37.020
And China flouts the rules to which it subscribed at the WTO.
00:31:43.840
You almost don't need new tariffs to punish China.
00:31:46.920
All you need to do is enforce the rules that are already breaking in order to force them
00:31:52.340
to play by the same rules that everyone else has to.
00:32:00.280
It would impose economic costs on China, which they should have been paying already.
00:32:03.100
So I think we've got to take it very carefully.
00:32:06.640
I do think that the NAFTA negotiations, if Canada didn't understand it before, it certainly
00:32:13.260
understands now, Trump doesn't really care about NAFTA and would be just as happy to
00:32:20.720
And I think that's partly because Mexico and Canada didn't take Trump seriously.
00:32:23.540
I think they ought to, and they ought to realize that Trump is very much about keeping his
00:32:31.720
He hasn't done so in some areas, but those are the areas that Congress controls.
00:32:36.300
Where he's been able to control anything in particular under his presidential powers,
00:32:44.840
And the president also has a certain amount of power to set trade policy.
00:32:51.980
If he's taking that posture into this relationship, then it could really become volatile.
00:32:59.380
Somehow I think this is all going to pan out, but we'll have to see.
00:33:02.560
Joel, I'm going to get emails from our viewers who say, I've been talking way too much in this
00:33:06.980
interview and I've been trying to persuade you.
00:33:10.880
But I do have one last question I'd like you to take on.
00:33:13.040
First of all, your last remark there is very, very telling.
00:33:18.600
That Canada has underestimated Trump's resolve on this.
00:33:23.580
Trump is extremely effective on Twitter because he says in 180 characters or whatever, 140 characters,
00:33:29.700
what other presidents have said only through veiled statements or diplomatic speeches that don't get noticed.
00:33:37.420
I mean, Trump immediately changed the North Korean dialogue,
00:33:40.580
immediately changed the dialogue with the Palestinians in a couple of tweets.
00:33:44.060
And I feel like things are degenerating a little bit between Trump and Trudeau on a personal level.
00:33:49.940
And I wonder if we're going to see the kind of nicknaming, name-calling, Twitter sparring between Trump and Trudeau that Trump's so natural at because he's a brawler from Manhattan.
00:34:06.180
So far, Trump has actually been quite praising of Trudeau personally.
00:34:14.600
I wonder if we're going to try his patience by leaking and being, like Trump is a real tit-for-tat guy, massive retaliation guy.
00:34:21.840
Do you think this meeting in Charlevoix, Quebec, for the G7 is going to make things smoother or make Trump just say,
00:34:29.320
tell you what, I'm going to tweet at you and knock the Canadian dollar down 10%?
00:34:35.800
Well, to be honest, I don't think Trump cares about the meeting in Canada.
00:34:40.260
And that has less to do with Canada and more to do with North Korea.
00:34:43.620
He's got a single-minded focus on the meeting in North Korea that follows.
00:34:50.480
He doesn't want to be photographed alongside all the other leaders.
00:34:54.900
And leading is what he hopes to do in Singapore.
00:34:57.720
So I think he's almost stopping over in Canada as a formality.
00:35:01.300
He'll do his best to get along with everyone and then move on.
00:35:05.800
If Trump does get into a kind of Twitter contest with Trudeau, Trudeau is toast.
00:35:10.180
Not only because Trump is by far the best insult president in history,
00:35:15.000
but the other thing is Trudeau is almost self-mocking.
00:35:18.980
I mean, when Trudeau went to India, the photographs he took of himself
00:35:22.600
and the videos of the Bollywood dancing and all that stuff,
00:35:28.380
People thought it just looked completely ridiculous.
00:35:30.660
And I think that it would not take much to push Trudeau's image
00:35:35.180
into a place from which he could never recover.
00:35:37.760
And I'm not saying that just because Trump is so good at this.
00:35:39.940
I think it's just not a contest Trudeau wants to enter, to be honest.
00:35:45.940
He's got these boyish good looks and so on and so forth.
00:35:49.540
But that can also be a burden and not necessarily a good thing.
00:35:56.880
I think that you don't want to get in that ring with Donald Trump
00:36:00.140
and you probably don't want to get into that ring with the rest of the United States
00:36:08.880
We've kind of been nice to him because it looks like members of the Trump administration like him,
00:36:15.020
including the president, but also Ivanka Trump seems to be quite warm toward him.
00:36:20.660
But I think that people like him and also the Trump administration,
00:36:24.780
in a more strategic sense, hopes to use some kind of a deal with Canada,
00:36:31.680
So I think there may be a reason for the warmth that Trump has shown Trudeau.
00:36:36.100
But if Trudeau keeps pushing this, I think that he's basically done.
00:36:41.300
You know, some of Trump's nicknames, you forget about them, but some of them stay forever.
00:36:45.520
And Trudeau does not want a forever nickname from Donald Trump.
00:36:49.600
Well, Joel, you've been very generous with your time.
00:36:53.920
I hope that Trudeau just bites his tongue as Stephen Harper did so many times with Barack Obama.
00:37:01.840
Stand up for Canada where you need to, but don't pick unnecessary fights.
00:37:06.180
I'm just worried there's no grown-ups in the Trudeau administration.
00:37:16.080
He's the senior editor-at-large at Breitbart.com.
00:37:18.420
We were talking about the G7 meeting in Charleville, Quebec.
00:37:23.920
Because they're asking for more than we are able to give right now.
00:37:41.300
They're asking for more than we're able to give right now.
00:37:43.460
And he uses his sexy voice because if he can distract from how outrageous what he's saying
00:37:50.720
is, by going full drama teacher, maybe you'll forget that he just told a veteran who was
00:37:56.440
wounded, by the way, that was a wounded vet, well, you're just asking for more than we can
00:38:01.240
So Omar Khadr, to whom Trudeau gave $10.5 million in an apology, that wasn't asking for more
00:38:09.320
And the reason I played for you that old clip is because there's an outrageous story, a new one.
00:38:14.300
I saw this on the online bulletin board called Reddit the other day, but I had not seen it
00:38:19.440
confirmed until, to their credit, CTV News followed up the story.
00:38:24.420
And Daniel Otis of CTV inquired, and it is true, the Canadian Armed Forces are asking soldiers
00:38:38.280
And they say there's a shortfall of equipment, but they claim it's, oh, we're just doing so
00:38:46.000
I am so skeptical of this story, the official explanation of it.
00:38:49.820
And joining us now to hopefully shed some light on it is our friend Lee Humphrey.
00:38:54.820
He's the founder of Veterans for the Conservative Party of Canada.
00:38:57.740
He's the president of James International Security Consultants.
00:39:02.760
Lee, whenever the government says to soldiers, we're cutting your pay or give something back,
00:39:10.080
it irritates me in general, because it shows to me the liberals don't care about our armed
00:39:19.040
Give us back your rucksacks and your sleeping bags.
00:39:27.340
Well, I guess first, it's always easy to tell who the government of the day is.
00:39:33.400
They make it dead simple to understand it's the liberals when they do things like this,
00:39:38.180
when they penny pinch the armed forces, when they challenge veterans in court and they tell
00:39:47.800
On this specific topic, we went through this in the 90s.
00:39:56.480
But you have to remember, in the early 90s, we had three battle groups deployed, almost 3,000,
00:40:03.300
4,000 people deployed, and another three training to replace those troops that were deployed.
00:40:14.560
Today, we barely have 1,000 people deployed with an additional couple of hundred training to go.
00:40:21.380
And the missions that are deployed, only one of them is going to be replaced.
00:40:26.800
One is being carried out by special forces who aren't affected by this.
00:40:30.400
So, whether there's an ulterior motive, as you suggest, or simply, over the last two years,
00:40:37.580
they haven't done what is normally done in a procurement system, which is purchasing additional
00:40:44.080
pieces of equipment as equipment wears out as it gets too old.
00:40:49.160
You know, one of those two things is happening.
00:40:51.380
But either way, the idea that the Army does not have enough sleeping bags when we have the
00:40:57.060
fewest number of deployed troops that we've had in almost a decade, if not two, and we
00:41:03.880
have fewer recruits coming in today than we've had in the last 20 years.
00:41:08.860
So, it's perplexing, at the very least, if not strange.
00:41:19.540
In December, we saw a military base, the official publication of the base, I think it was
00:41:25.880
that C.F. Borden, C.F. Borden, asked soldiers to chip into the base's food bank because there
00:41:35.280
were some families having trouble making ends meet.
00:41:37.320
When we raised some dough, they turned it away in a political flourish.
00:41:40.500
So, I'm thinking they're really cheaping out and making ordinary soldiers bear the brunt
00:41:54.640
I accept that it's possible the explanation is just, Justin Trudeau will not buy sleeping
00:42:02.160
But you point out that we don't have a big influx of soldiers.
00:42:05.220
So, let me put to you a thesis, a hypothesis, speculation.
00:42:10.200
We know that two years ago when Justin Trudeau brought in 40,000 or 50,000 Syrian migrants
00:42:16.760
without planning what was going to happen, without social services planning, we know that the
00:42:21.880
Canadian military was ordered to be ready to house thousands of these Syrian migrants
00:42:30.480
We did an access to information search and we found that there were detailed plans being
00:42:35.820
developed by the military to house migrants on bases, including to build Muslim mosques
00:42:41.380
with Canadian taxpayers' dollars on these Canadian military bases.
00:42:46.900
There was halal food operations that were being planned for.
00:42:51.700
Now, in the end, these Muslim migrants from Syria were not put on Canadian forces' bases
00:42:57.600
and they've sort of flooded and saturated the rest of the social services.
00:43:04.340
We've had tens of thousands of migrants, not come from Syria, but rather walk up from the
00:43:11.400
Quebec says it has no more room for them, so they're being bused to Ontario.
00:43:16.540
John Tory, the mayor of Toronto, says there's no more room for them.
00:43:20.580
I have a theory, it's based on nothing other than a hunch, that these rucksacks and sleeping
00:43:27.260
bags are being commandeered to house these migrants in our community centres.
00:43:34.100
Is that me just indulging in paranoia or is that something that might happen?
00:43:40.660
It entirely might happen in the sense that what the military does and does better than
00:43:46.100
just about any identifiable group in Canada is prepare and plan.
00:43:51.300
So if they were given a warning order to prepare potentially to temporarily house an additional
00:44:00.100
surge group of migrants that might show up at the border this summer in temporary accommodations,
00:44:07.680
then they might, as part of that planning process, identify the number of, say, sleeping
00:44:15.180
bags and the number of rucksacks which are used to carry them about, that might be needed
00:44:25.860
Therefore, they would have to draw them in now, get them cleaned, dry cleaned and washed
00:44:32.000
and serviceable, make sure they knew their numbers and that they were prepared.
00:44:36.860
So it's entirely possible this is a contingency operation that's being prepared in case there's
00:44:44.100
a large surge or possibly, and again, I'm only speculating, maybe, just maybe, they intend
00:44:51.320
to keep these illegal immigrants that are crossing the border in a migrant camp closer to the border
00:45:02.320
And with the potential of spring and summer weather, they need sleeping bags, they need
00:45:09.400
And the only reason I'm brooding this is because they were put on notice before.
00:45:16.240
So I absolutely accept your explanation that the Liberal government is penny-pinching when
00:45:27.760
We know that they've reduced danger pay for some soldiers.
00:45:40.260
So this could just be the Trudeau Liberals being cheap.
00:45:43.860
But because they were put on notice before, that's why I'm thinking maybe we're going through
00:45:49.220
I think we're going to put in an access to information request to see what we can smoke
00:45:53.520
And I've got to tell you, Lee, the government delays their access to information requests
00:45:59.080
So we probably won't learn the truth about this until 2019.
00:46:03.520
Let me just ask you from a morale point of view.
00:46:07.060
I've got to think if someone's joining the Canadian Forces, they might be doing it for
00:46:14.920
They might be doing it because they need a job.
00:46:16.540
They might be doing it for reasons of family tradition.
00:46:20.940
But I don't think anyone's doing it for the money.
00:46:23.580
I mean, I just don't think they're doing it for the money.
00:46:25.660
So these intangible benefits, pride, patriotism, loyalty, family tradition, adventure, excitement,
00:46:40.300
And so symbolic gestures like a visit to Afghanistan by Stephen Harper.
00:46:46.980
I know that was his first visit, his first foreign trip as prime minister in 2000, and
00:46:52.280
I think it was six, was to Afghanistan, not to America.
00:47:04.540
And Trump really tries to, like the other day Trump stood, I think it was the Naval Academy,
00:47:11.600
Trump stood for 90 minutes and shook every single hand of every single grad.
00:47:22.980
I think that makes a difference for a military man.
00:47:27.200
I think these morale things really count, and being asked to give up a sleeping bag is
00:47:32.220
probably something that a soldier thinks about quite a bit.
00:47:42.300
You know, there's two types of visits that occur when you're deployed.
00:47:46.060
There's the type of visit that you very much look forward to.
00:47:50.760
You want to engage with these people because you believe that they're there truly to support
00:47:56.060
Prime Minister Harper was beloved by most in the military.
00:48:01.660
There's the other type of visit when you have to deal with, in my case, visits by Prime
00:48:07.680
Minister Kretchen, as an example, where you realize this was a superficial visit done for
00:48:13.840
a photo op, and you were a prop, and you had to do extra work to make it happen, and you
00:48:21.840
But the troops, I'll tell you, Ezra, they may join for a variety of reasons, and they
00:48:29.480
The reason they stay is a camaraderie, a loyalty, a tradition that builds amongst them.
00:48:36.880
And they see very clearly through these political choices that are made, and they know well which
00:48:45.960
party supports them generally, although every party makes mistakes, and they know which party
00:48:52.440
rarely supports them, and rarely does it because it's a mistake, but does it because it's purposeful.
00:49:01.320
And the liberals fall into the latter category.
00:49:03.520
And as long as I've served, which goes back to Trudeau Sr., it was very clear who was in
00:49:11.340
government, depending on the amount of training you were doing, depending on the equipment you
00:49:16.700
were getting, and the level of support you were getting from home.
00:49:19.660
And young Mr. Trudeau is no different than his father.
00:49:24.600
He uses the military as a prop when absolutely necessary.
00:49:28.500
Other than that, they're to be ignored and not cost it.
00:49:33.760
You know, there's so many thoughts going through my mind.
00:49:36.700
I know his father, Pierre Trudeau, did not serve in the Second World War, and that's fine.
00:49:42.940
But Pierre Trudeau tooled around Montreal on a motorcycle wearing a German-style helmet,
00:49:50.040
you know, that very recognizable Wehrmacht helmet.
00:49:55.260
And I think that Trudeau has his father's disdain for the military.
00:49:59.740
I was thinking the $10.5 million he gave to Qatar, I can't imagine that every single sleeping
00:50:06.980
bag in the armed forces combined would, I mean, let's say you have a super fancy sleeping
00:50:21.460
Well, $10.5 million to Omar Khadr would buy 10,500 of them if it's as expensive as 1,000
00:50:29.040
So just one payment to Omar Khadr would cover every sleeping bag here.
00:50:34.840
I'm frustrated and I'm angry hearing about this and I want to learn more about it because
00:50:39.600
I don't think it's as simple as penny pinching.
00:50:42.880
I think there's something else going on here and I think they're being deceptive.
00:50:53.240
Give us your thoughts on this in the larger pattern of Trudeau's treatment in the military.
00:50:58.500
Well, I think in the larger pattern, there's also a story out today in the National Post
00:51:02.640
that showed that the radars that are used to guide our planes, our F-18 Hornets, are completely
00:51:10.240
worn out and that the government was warned the day they arrived that the previous contract
00:51:16.580
that had been let in 2011 had failed and a new contract had to go out to a new provider
00:51:27.060
So, you know, whether it's sleeping bags, whether it's F-18s or whether it's ships, the Canadian
00:51:39.540
We are moving quickly into another decade of darkness and unless there's a change of
00:51:45.460
government in 2019 and unless somehow we get past this nonsense of conservatives buy this
00:51:51.860
so liberals buy that or they cancel it and they start again and we move into a bipartisan
00:51:57.400
error when it comes to military procurement, we're going to see this cycle live itself out
00:52:05.340
And the young men and women that sign up today are at risk.
00:52:09.020
Our nation is at risk when we don't have the appropriate equipment, training, resources
00:52:14.940
and we're about to see that in Mali where we're sending young men and women into a terrible
00:52:20.020
country as we've talked about before without the proper equipment and without the proper
00:52:28.300
Well, Lee, thank you so much for being such a strong voice and such an expert voice in
00:52:37.280
I read the poem by Kipling called Tommy Atkins about how soldiers are only appreciated when
00:52:43.860
we desperately need them and when we're in times of trouble and the rest of the time we
00:52:50.380
And I can never quite make it through that poem without tearing up just a little bit.
00:52:55.000
And I always say that we have to care about not just veterans but serving soldiers on the
00:53:04.220
And I think we try to do that in a tiny way here at The Rebel, journalistically, and we've
00:53:11.160
And I think it's an important thing for our nation but also just out of personal moral gratitude
00:53:20.340
Surely, surely, surely, we can owe it to them to buy them a bloody sleeping bag.
00:53:26.360
And I find this an upsetting subject, Lee, and I'm glad you're such a strong voice of
00:53:32.940
reason and I look forward to keeping in touch with you in the months ahead.
00:53:39.340
That's Lee Humphrey, who's been our in-house expert on many issues, including our interesting
00:53:44.940
conversation about the proposed Mali peacekeeping expedition.
00:53:49.640
I find this a troubling story and I do not believe this sleeping bag story is what it seems.
00:53:54.940
And we will make more inquiries and hopefully find the truth beneath it.
00:54:23.180
I think Ontario was on a downward path, reminiscent of Michigan, which was the industrial heartland
00:54:29.260
I mean, Motor City was the highest industrial wage in all of America until the Democrats took
00:54:36.640
They don't use that phrase down there, but we use it up here.
00:54:43.240
I really think that's the path Ontario has been on for a decade.
00:54:45.980
Record debt, record taxes, record spending, record regulation, and social justice warriors
00:54:51.640
and scolding replacing entrepreneurialism and a hands-off government.
00:54:57.600
They're different flaws than his brother Rob had.
00:55:09.320
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, good night and keep