Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Trudeau dishes out $2 billion contract to buy votes in Quebec

00:00:00.000 Hello, my friends. Just an astonishing move by Justin Trudeau's cabinet, deciding to go with

00:00:07.440 the highest bidder on internet services rather than lowest bidder so they can give make work,

00:00:14.700 fake work jobs to Montreal and bash Elon Musk at the same time. I'll explain what I'm talking about.

00:00:22.020 But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus. Just go to

00:00:25.960 rebelnewsplus.com. That's the video version of this podcast. Especially today, I want to show you

00:00:31.160 some amazing video from the first privately funded spacewalk. Did you know that over the last few

00:00:39.000 days, Elon Musk had four private sector astronauts in space and they did a spacewalk and it's not a

00:00:45.660 government program. It's not NASA. They were doing a spacewalk and it is awesome to behold. I want to

00:00:51.060 show you those video clips. So go to rebelnewsplus.com and click subscribe. All right, here's today's

00:00:56.640 podcast.

00:01:13.060 Tonight, why did Trudeau choose the highest bidder for his new rural internet scheme? It's September 16th,

00:01:20.060 and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.

00:01:24.460 Shame on you, you censorious bug.

00:01:35.940 Hey, remember about a year ago when the Maui wildfires wiped out so much of the western side of that

00:01:43.180 island, including the internet. And I went to Maui with a Starlink satellite internet system

00:01:50.580 that I had rented in Vancouver for just a couple hundred bucks. And it was so small and light,

00:01:58.000 I could fit it in the overhead compartment of the plane. And I took it to Maui and I wasn't sure if

00:02:04.260 it would work. And it worked. It gave us internet in this area that had been knocked out. And we shared

00:02:11.880 that internet access with a variety of people and other people were bringing those Starlink systems

00:02:17.280 too. Very cheap. It was so cheap. The guy I rented it from in Vancouver said he wasn't sure if it would

00:02:25.180 work in the middle of the Pacific. He didn't know if it was registered or locked in. And I thought

00:02:29.820 for 200 bucks, which is what I think I paid to rent it for a week or two, I thought, I'll risk it. And it

00:02:37.280 absolutely worked. It worked great, high speed. It was idiot proof, like I could set it up with no

00:02:43.840 problem. And it was sort of a miracle. We forget how plugged in we are until we don't have internet. 1.00

00:02:50.600 And that was my first experience with Starlink because I live in a big city, but I know other

00:02:56.180 people who live in the country, explore by them too. And of course, the founder of Starlink, because of

00:03:01.440 its relationship with the rocket ship company, SpaceX is Elon Musk. And I got a question for

00:03:08.140 you. If we're trying to bring internet to Canada's vast North, do you think we should use Starlink?

00:03:16.260 Do you think we should use SpaceX? Cheap, proven to work, working right now? Or do you think

00:03:22.920 Justin Trudeau, I'm laughing even before I tell you the punchline. Do you think Justin Trudeau can take

00:03:29.820 taxpayers money to try to invent a competitor system that is cheaper and better by handing out

00:03:38.180 billions of dollars to his friends in Quebec? What do you think we should do? I'll come back to that

00:03:44.780 later. I just want to talk a little bit more about Starlink because I'm sort of excited by them.

00:03:49.080 I just saw a couple days ago, United Airlines, which is one of the largest American airlines, has

00:03:55.820 announced they're going to put Starlink in its entire fleet of a thousand planes. And they're

00:04:01.780 going to have high speed internet for free in a thousand of their planes. And I just want to show

00:04:08.560 you a little bit about what United says that'll look like, because if it is indeed high speed,

00:04:13.420 imagine streaming video calls or whatever from the plane. Take a look.

00:04:16.260 All systems are go. Transmission starting in three, two, one.

00:04:25.820 Have a nice day.

00:04:44.100 Have a nice day.

00:04:55.820 That's Elon Musk. You and I think of Elon Musk perhaps as the Twitter guy. And it's true because

00:05:03.520 we're Twitter centric. But I tell you, a lot more people are probably being touched by him

00:05:09.020 through his global, cheap, reliable internet. And of course, the rocket ship company that puts all

00:05:16.120 those satellites into space. That's how Starlink works. Just this week, like just a couple days ago,

00:05:24.240 they had a private space flight to the International Space Station. Did you know that's happening? I find

00:05:32.560 that sort of incredible. SpaceX launches four private citizens, including two Saudis, on commercial flight

00:05:39.440 to the space station. That was last year. So he's been doing private space flights for more than a year.

00:05:45.400 But what happened just this past week, pardon me, is a four person private mission to do a spacewalk.

00:05:55.060 And at 1,400 miles from Earth, it was the farthest anyone had been away from the planet in nearly 50

00:06:01.560 years. Imagine that, a private spacewalk. So you're not just going up and down for a few minutes. You're

00:06:08.820 going up there. You're in orbit. You undo the hatch and you go out. And it's just astonishing. And this

00:06:15.320 is the free market. Take a look at them opening the hatch. Would you be a little scared? They did it.

00:06:22.560 There is our first view of the forward hatch, wide open to space.

00:06:32.800 And then take a look at them actually doing the spacewalk, emerging from this private rocket ship

00:06:39.300 and doing a spacewalk.

00:06:40.740 I'll be with you in test matrix one, watching from the nose cone.

00:06:51.060 Up, down, left, and right are threes.

00:07:00.980 Pitch and roller are three. Yaw is a two.

00:07:03.960 And you know, because you've got the design mind of Elon Musk, and he does things aesthetically,

00:07:11.000 the rocket ships are pretty, the Teslas are pretty. He made some pretty cool spacesuits

00:07:16.060 too. Would you agree with me? Those are his private sector spacesuits. I don't know. It's

00:07:20.920 sort of amazing. It's serious stuff, though. It's fun to talk about, and it's a little bit

00:07:25.660 inspirational. But here is a chart of all the companies and governments in the world putting

00:07:31.040 stuff into space. And SpaceX puts more than 90% of everything the Earth sends into space. That

00:07:39.280 company does. But if you look, you'll see who's next and who's next behind that. If not for SpaceX,

00:07:48.360 which is by far number one, number two, as you can see in the chart, would be China. If you take

00:07:55.300 Elon Musk out of the picture, China is winning the space race. And then after China would be Russia.

00:08:03.620 And then after Russia would be Japan. And then after Japan would be India. And only then do you have 0.84

00:08:14.080 something called the United Launch Alliance. That's Boeing's mess. As you know, Boeing can't get their

00:08:20.740 spaceship up to rescue the two astronauts from the space station. And then they magnified, if you

00:08:27.520 understand that chart there, you can see even bad guys like Iran on there and an Iranian terrorist

00:08:33.620 group is on there. So like I say, you and I might think of Elon Musk as the Twitter guy, as the freedom

00:08:39.700 of speech guy, maybe as the Tesla guy. And those are all important things. But he's actually the leading

00:08:45.600 astronaut executive of our age. And if you had any doubts about that, they just did a spacewalk

00:08:52.300 with private sector everything. And NASA can't get off the ground. You know, I saw a TV show on Apple

00:09:01.760 TV. And I was on a plane and I had nothing to do. So I watched it. And, and I was hooked in the first

00:09:09.480 minute because they sort of did a trick on you. And, um, it's not really a spoiler. It's the premise

00:09:16.300 for the whole show. Let me show you the trailer for a TV series on Apple TV called For All Mankind.

00:09:26.480 And it's about, you know, going to the moon. Can you watch this trailer? I'm going to play 50 seconds

00:09:32.700 of it, but really pay attention to the last five seconds. Cause that totally got me. Take a look

00:09:39.660 at this. I believe that this nation should commit itself to landing a man on the moon and returning

00:09:48.080 him safely to the earth. After thousands of years gazing up in the heavens and dreaming of this day,

00:09:56.180 a man is about to set foot on the moon across the world. People wait with bated breath. Ladies and

00:10:05.320 gentlemen, this is a live signal. There he is. The shock across the nation at this event is just

00:10:16.120 indescribable. The Soviet cosmonaut has become the first to set foot on the moon.

00:10:28.780 Now I watched too much of this series cause I was on the plane a lot. Actually, I think I just watched

00:10:33.920 like four episodes back to back now that I think about it. Uh, the theory, the premise behind the

00:10:40.040 show is that in the great space race, the Soviet union gets to the moon just before America does.

00:10:48.140 And you know, if a few things had gone a different direction, they just might've remember they had

00:10:53.200 Sputnik and they had Yuri Gagarin before NASA had its effort. And what's interesting is based on the

00:11:00.880 premise that the Soviets get to the moon first, everything else that follows America's plane catch up.

00:11:07.040 And I have to say, even though it was sort of dull and slow moving in parts, this TV series for all

00:11:12.840 mankind, they were absolutely realistic in this way. The whole American project was dominated by

00:11:20.900 bureaucracy and politics. And they had a huge emphasis I'm talking about in the show of gender and race

00:11:30.580 and D E I diversity, equity and inclusion. And I thought that is so spot on and compare that

00:11:40.240 to the reality of Elon Musk running circles around not just NASA, but the Chinese and the Russian and

00:11:49.240 the Indian and the Japanese space programs. The difference between a can do engineer in the private

00:11:57.100 sector versus these government bureaucracies is astonishing. If you want to see the anti-Musk,

00:12:04.540 watch that Apple TV show. You're wondering, what am I doing talking about Musk so much? Well,

00:12:09.700 back to the news of the day. Remember I mentioned Canada's getting some internet for our North.

00:12:14.740 Here's the global news headline. The Canadian government announced a loan of $2.14 billion to help

00:12:23.020 a Quebec company. Really? Is it a Quebec company? I'll come back to that. Build a broadband satellite

00:12:30.040 network that will connect more remote communities to the internet. And of course, that announcement was

00:12:36.820 over the weekend. It was timed, as you may know, for today's by-election. Do you know there are two

00:12:44.260 by-elections today? One of them in Montreal in the district of La Salamard Verdun, which used to be

00:12:52.180 Paul Martin's riding way back in the day. And it was where David Lamedi, the crooked justice minister,

00:12:57.320 was from before he sort of skulked out of parliament. Anyways, so this announcement was made on the weekend

00:13:02.280 to try and buy some votes with $2 billion. And Michael Barrett, an MP for the Conservatives,

00:13:09.540 well, he used Twitter the way it ought to be done. He said, hey, Elon Musk, how much would it cost to

00:13:15.940 provide Starlink to every Canadian household that doesn't have high speed? If this $2.14 billion

00:13:23.580 plan is the panacea of expanding access, competition, and service, where is the interest from private

00:13:30.280 investors and banks? That's always a good argument, which is if this is such a good idea,

00:13:36.060 why don't other people think it's such a good idea besides Trudeau throwing his money around?

00:13:40.620 And would you believe it, Elon Musk, perhaps the busiest man in the world, if he's not building

00:13:45.780 cars, he's building spaceships, he's not building spaceships, he's building internet, he's got

00:13:50.940 another company called The Boring Company that builds tunnels, he's got another company called

00:13:55.080 Neuralink. Believe it or not, he responded and he said, less than half that amount. But it's not just

00:14:02.360 that. It's less than half that amount. And it's ready now. And it's proven to work now. It's not

00:14:08.280 some loan to some friends of Trudeau to buy some election votes. And maybe in the future, it'll work.

00:14:16.080 It's ready now. I know that because I took a little Starlink from Vancouver to Maui and I used it and it

00:14:21.660 was amazing. And it was 200 bucks. Anyways, Barrett, the MP wrote back to Elon Musk saying,

00:14:27.160 sounded like common sense. Yeah. Like I say, and it works. And it's ready. So it's not speculative.

00:14:36.220 But of course, what Michael Barrett and what Elon Musk don't understand, or maybe they actually

00:14:41.040 understand it perfectly, is that spending more from a government point of view is the point of

00:14:47.680 things. It's not a problem. It's why they do things. Again, that's the difference between how Elon

00:14:53.080 Musk operates his companies versus how NASA in that TV show I was referring to. I mean,

00:15:01.180 when Elon Musk took over Twitter, you'll recall, he fired 80% of the staff, the folks who just did

00:15:07.940 DEI stuff and all the soft stuff. They weren't engineers. They didn't actually run the company.

00:15:14.340 They were like barnacles on the ship. He fired them all and focused on engineering.

00:15:19.900 And what you have to understand is that when you buy something through the government, those barnacles,

00:15:27.800 those extra jobs, those perks, those soft things, that's what it's all about. It's a feature, not a

00:15:33.940 bug. It's how politics works. If you are spending twice as much money as you need to, to get something

00:15:40.380 done, you and I as taxpayers would say, oh my God, that's insane. But from a politician's point of view,

00:15:45.980 you're thinking, I am the sugar daddy bringing home billions of dollars to my district and I want

00:15:51.300 to brag. I want that number to be bigger. Can we get it even bigger? Can we get it even bigger? It's

00:15:56.080 how politics is done, especially in Montreal. You'll have to remember SNC Lavalin, Trudeau's favorite

00:16:03.480 company that he interfered with. They were, not only did they want huge contracts, they were corrupt and

00:16:07.900 bribed their way to get them. Remember, that's that whole Jolie Wilson-Raybould thing. Trudeau was trying

00:16:12.880 to get her to call off a prosecution of the corruption. This is the Arrive Can app. The

00:16:17.420 Arrive Can app could have been made for 50 grand. We know that because some guys sort of made a

00:16:21.980 replica of it over one weekend. But the reason it cost more than 60 million dollars was the whole

00:16:28.500 point of it. Arrive Can was not about doing anything. It was about a way to shovel money to

00:16:35.080 liberal insiders. Our friend Andy Lee points out that this is just the latest payment to the Canadian

00:16:43.700 alternative to Starlink called Telesat. Three years ago, they got a billion and a half dollars. I guess

00:16:51.820 they burned through it and they need more. Now, Francois-Philippe Champagne, who is the minister in

00:16:58.980 charge of this, he saw this kerfuffle. And of course, they hate Elon Musk because he's for freedom. And

00:17:05.900 Francois-Philippe Champagne, the Trudeau cabinet minister, said, typical Polyev nonsense. They'd prefer 1.00

00:17:13.260 giving money to foreign billionaires instead of supporting our industry and our workers. This loan will

00:17:19.780 help build a world-class Canadian-made satellite network and supports thousands of jobs in Quebec. Now, that's

00:17:27.380 common sense. Well, first of all, Elon Musk is actually a Canadian citizen. I don't know if you know

00:17:33.940 that. He immigrated to Canada. His mom's Canadian. He went to school here. He got his Canadian citizenship. But

00:17:41.980 second of all, more obviously, Trudeau gives billions of dollars to megacorporations all the time. He gives

00:17:47.560 billions of dollars to electric vehicle companies, tens of billions of dollars. And he's giving billions of dollars

00:17:54.060 here to Telesat, which is a multi-billion dollar company. So they are still, they're proposing to

00:18:01.500 give more billions of dollars. But what's even crazier about it is to create a replica of Starlink.

00:18:09.620 I went online and I checked and Telesat, that's the Canadian company that Trudeau and Francois-Philippe

00:18:16.520 Champagne are giving to. It may say it's Canadian, but it's actually foreign-owned in the majority. I

00:18:23.200 understand 86 percent of the shares are owned by foreigners. So yeah, it's Canadian, about as

00:18:29.820 Canadian as Tim Hortons. If you check on that, you'll see Tim Hortons is owned by a U.S.-Brazilian

00:18:35.060 conglomerate. But like I say, the waste is the point. And you can see that there in the tweet.

00:18:39.760 That tweet is saying, hey, by-election voters in Montreal, we are making stupid decisions so we can 1.00

00:18:47.460 give you money. But there's another point here. Why would Trudeau and Francois-Philippe Champagne 0.99

00:18:53.880 and the entire establishment, the bureaucracy, all the consultants, all the lobbyists,

00:18:58.580 why would they prefer to spend double on something that's not proven as opposed to buying something

00:19:04.320 off the shelf that works? Or just saying, hey, people in rural or northern parts, why don't you buy

00:19:10.380 your own internet? And if you want to help, give them a tax credit for it. Or a tax refund.

00:19:14.620 Instead of the government coming in and doing it, how about letting ordinary people make their own

00:19:21.360 choices? And if you want to subsidize those individual choices, fine. Why does the government

00:19:26.660 need to throw around billions of dollars? And why are they so averse to Elon Musk? Not only do they say

00:19:32.120 we're not going to use Elon Musk's cheaper proven system, but he's just some foreign billionaire.

00:19:37.560 We hate him. Why would they say that? Well, I think I know why. You might recall that exactly

00:19:44.300 a week ago or a week and a day ago, I was in Brazil. I had never been in South America before,

00:19:51.620 but I went to Brazil for about 36 hours because I went to one of the largest free speech rallies in

00:19:57.440 world history. 200,000 people had lined the streets of Sao Paulo in support of the opposition leader

00:20:05.580 there. His name is Jair Bolsonaro. Because the incumbent regime, the president of Brazil, Lula is

00:20:13.020 his name, and his right-hand man, a judge named Alexandre de Moraes, they had banned opposition critics and

00:20:21.780 opposition leaders and opposition journalists one after the other and banned them from Twitter and banned

00:20:28.200 them on the internet. And when Twitter said, hey, you're not following the law, Lula and de Moraes

00:20:34.020 banned Twitter itself completely from the internet in Brazil. You cannot use Twitter. 20 million plus

00:20:42.440 users in Brazil had their accounts just turned off because too many of them were seeing things that

00:20:47.700 the government didn't want them to see. Now, Elon Musk defied this, and so the government started

00:20:53.200 seizing assets of Starlink in Brazil. But Elon Musk did an astonishing thing. He left the internet

00:21:01.660 satellites on anyways. So he wasn't being paid. He couldn't do business. He couldn't collect the

00:21:09.120 hundred bucks a month or whatever he was getting. But he kept the internet on. He made a tweet about it

00:21:15.160 saying he has to take care of hospitals and schools and places in the wilderness, and it would be

00:21:19.760 irresponsible to cut them off. I actually believe him that he cares about those customers.

00:21:24.700 But I also believe him that he cares about free speech.

00:21:28.360 So now do you see why Justin Trudeau and Francois Philippe Champagne, a close ally of China too,

00:21:34.100 now do you see why they would never, ever let Elon Musk have anything to do with the internet in Canada?

00:21:41.300 Because maybe, just maybe, under Bill C-63, Justin Trudeau's pending censorship bill

00:21:46.360 called the Online Harms Act. Maybe, just maybe, one day he'll do a Lula. He'll do a Brazil. He'll try to

00:21:53.920 shut down Twitter. In the name of disinformation, wouldn't surprise me, is Stitch. Now, if he's

00:21:59.780 working with some liberal client like Telesat that has received billions of dollars, of course they'll

00:22:05.440 turn off the switch for Trudeau. It's the least they can do. In fact, getting paid to turn off a

00:22:11.600 system, that's perfect liberal math. But if Elon Musk himself were told to turn off the internet,

00:22:17.140 you know he would defy them. That's why they're giving the money to tell us that.

00:22:22.440 Stay with us. More on the story next.

00:22:24.460 It's so clubby in Montreal between the Liberal Party and the corporations. We saw that during the

00:22:43.700 fiasco when SNC-Lavalin was being prosecuted for corruption. And by the way, they didn't deny it

00:22:49.700 anymore. They had admitted it. They just wanted a plea deal, whereas Jody Wilson-Raybould was taking

00:22:56.140 advice from the public prosecutions directorate to go ahead with the trial. Trudeau intervened,

00:23:02.000 and in the end he fired Jody Wilson-Raybould because she wouldn't go easy on his crooked

00:23:08.200 corporate buddies. No one is denying that SNC-Lavalin were breaking the law. What's so astonishing

00:23:15.840 is that Trudeau was defending them anyways. And here we are a few years later, and it feels like

00:23:21.780 the exact same thing. A preference to give billions of dollars to Quebec insiders instead of a more

00:23:29.220 reasonable, less slush-fundy alternative. And joining us now to talk about this murky company,

00:23:36.280 Telesat, is our friend Andy Lee, who is very good at digging around. Andy, great to see you again.

00:23:42.200 Good to see you too. It's good to be back. Yeah, so Telesat, big news. We've been hearing a lot

00:23:50.580 about, you know, we're supposed to be getting high-speed internet to rural communities for a

00:23:55.320 long time now. And so Telesat was one of those companies that was supposed to be providing this.

00:24:00.800 And so we've been funding the company heavily. I didn't go all the way back, but in the last

00:24:07.040 couple of years alone, you know, in 2021, we had a grant that was given that actually is not really

00:24:17.340 out there yet. It was for $600 million, so over half a billion dollars was given to them in a grant.

00:24:25.440 They had a grant in 2018 for $85 million. And then in 2021, we had the $1.44 billion that was given to

00:24:33.500 them. And now we're looking at $2.54 billion. And that's on top of government contracts. And again,

00:24:40.620 I haven't added them all up. I stopped at about $400 million for the last couple of years. So

00:24:47.400 they're also getting regular income through federal contracts as well. And so what have we gotten for

00:24:52.080 that? We got a promise that we were supposed to have a, you know, a satellite low orbit, you know,

00:24:59.400 internet, uh, by 2024. And where is it?

00:25:03.780 I tell you, I was adding up some of those numbers. You said the 600 million here, 1.4 billion there.

00:25:09.360 I mean, you're, you're into the billions of dollars and I mean, I don't know enough about Telesat,

00:25:17.900 but it seems to me that Elon Musk is the first and the best and the cheapest and the like Starlink,

00:25:24.580 there's just no way a late to the game Canadian competitor is going to beat Starlink for quality,

00:25:33.280 cheapness, and it's ready to go right now. I don't even understand. Are they like,

00:25:37.640 are they basically trying to build a Canadian competitor to Starlink? Is that what's going on

00:25:42.300 here, Andy?

00:25:43.480 Well, I think that was initially, um, like judging by the press releases. Yeah. That's what they were

00:25:48.640 looking at to compete with. Right. But obviously they failed to do so, um, despite all the spending,

00:25:55.300 um, so Starlink has kind of become the gold standard for satellite communications. So, you know,

00:26:00.340 at this point we're throwing a lot of money at something, trying to reinvent the wheel, um, and

00:26:05.160 it's going to cost us. Uh, and the ironic thing is that, you know, we don't even have our own launch

00:26:10.140 capabilities for these satellites. Telesat actually inked a deal in September of last year

00:26:15.420 with SpaceX, um, to launch their own satellite systems. So they've, um, I think they've secured

00:26:23.660 14 launches and they can launch 18 satellites, I believe per launch. So, you know, again, it's kind

00:26:31.300 of like, what are we getting for value for our money? And it's sort of like, okay, well, we want to

00:26:35.300 invest in Canadian companies, but at the same time, is it worth it for somebody who's already sort of

00:26:41.440 laid this ground, right? What's the value for our money? And are we going to be getting better service

00:26:47.480 and are we going to be getting it for as good of a price, which is, you know, it's considerable when

00:26:52.960 you look at Elon Musk is saying, well, I'll do this for less than half. Um, and the company itself

00:26:59.320 isn't worth that much, right? We're putting billions of dollars into it. I mean, it's market cap,

00:27:03.540 I think is under $600 million. They're saying that, you know, their, their sort of net worth

00:27:08.260 maybe last year from their financials was about 1.2 billion. So maybe the companies might be worth,

00:27:13.800 you know, $2 billion, but we're sinking, we're sinking two or three times into that to make it

00:27:20.380 feasible. And again, we haven't got a product yet. So it's like deliverology, right? And why are we not

00:27:27.560 holding these people to account when they're not meeting their, their deadlines, especially with

00:27:31.340 talking about this amount of cash. And, you know, obviously this, the CEO has got some deep ties

00:27:37.540 to say our brand new Trudeau appointed financial special economic advancer, Mark Kearney. Um,

00:27:44.420 and it wasn't just that one meeting last or this year, sorry, they were at a charity get together

00:27:49.420 in 2024. I also went back and found them at another charity get together in 2023. And then before that,

00:27:55.900 um, you know, there was talk of Dan Goldberg, who's the CEO was in, um, uh, for the London marathon,

00:28:02.160 he met up with Kearney there and there's a big blurb talking about their friendship and things like

00:28:06.320 that and how he, uh, Kearney, you know, really reinforces Dan's company and things like that.

00:28:12.100 Um, so, you know, it's kind of like, we have such a productivity problem in Canada bringing,

00:28:19.140 you know, things to market in a reasonable time. So, and, you know, that was the big thing about

00:28:24.120 Philip Champagne was like, well, you know, you're picking a foreign company. And of course you went

00:28:29.620 and a lot of people went and found the financials and this isn't, you know, um, I mean, Starlink's

00:28:35.320 probably more Canadian than Telethat is right. I mean, at least Starlink is owned by a Canadian

00:28:40.580 citizen, whereas Telethat we know is mostly owned by United States, uh, you know, fund managers and

00:28:47.380 things like that. I think that somebody pointed out it's like 0.69% Canadian owned, which is not how it

00:28:53.200 was sold. We were told in the press releases that this is a Canadian controlled company. Um,

00:28:59.260 if we've got 0.69% of it, that's not a Canadian controlled company at all. It's a very much an

00:29:04.620 American company. Yeah. It was sold. It was sold to a U S defense contractor a few years back. I mean,

00:29:10.160 I, I really don't have a strong opinion about where it should be. Uh, I mean, if the idea is to get

00:29:16.020 internet, buy it from the cheapest, best provider, the fact that, that Telethat has to piggyback

00:29:22.780 onto SpaceX's rockets makes me chuckle because even that is, is buttering Elon Musk's bread,

00:29:30.700 but the, the denunciation of Musk as a foreign billionaire and, and the admission that this

00:29:36.760 is just a slosh money around Montreal. Now it makes sense. These photos with Mark Carney,

00:29:41.680 I think you were telling me before the Catherine McKenna, the disgraced former cabinet minister

00:29:46.480 was like, like, of course, and of course there's commissions for everybody and law. I mean,

00:29:51.760 what would the lobbyist get who arranged this deal? A hundred million bucks. I don't know. I mean,

00:29:57.440 there's so much scamming that we've, I mean, this is the arrive can of, of, uh, satellite

00:30:04.240 internet. If you want to, like, I was telling the anecdote a minute ago when I went to Maui

00:30:08.520 for the wildfires, I brought a Starlink with me. I think it cost me 200 bucks to rent it.

00:30:13.680 It couldn't have been easier. Imagine instead of saying, no, the government has a program. You

00:30:19.060 have to like, like no real person would prefer a government program if you're trying to get it

00:30:24.820 done. But if you're trying to butter everyone's bread, of course you go the Trudeau way. I don't

00:30:29.760 know. I feel this is just new levels of corruption to me, Andy. What do you think?

00:30:34.660 Yeah. I mean, they're, they're always finding new ways to pay themselves creatively,

00:30:39.480 you know, and we're being told, well, it's okay. Part of it's a loan. And that is true. Part of it's

00:30:45.040 a loan. And part of the 2021 one was a loan as well. Uh, that 1.44 billion half of that was a loan.

00:30:50.900 And, you know, there, we get paid out, um, at like 4.5%. But again, that money could be better

00:30:57.640 spent reinvested somewhere else. So let's not pretend like, you know, we're getting good value.

00:31:01.500 And are we sure we got the money back? I mean, I exactly. And we've got generous loan forgiveness

00:31:07.420 in our country, right? We're always writing this stuff up because we're saying, well, we need this

00:31:11.440 as vital infrastructure or whatever. So, you know, we'll just take, you know, whatever you owe us and

00:31:16.380 we'll, we'll cross it off the balance sheet. Um, so there's that. And then, but the tragedy of this

00:31:22.660 is that, you know, we're supposed to get paid out. So this is supposed to be an investment for us.

00:31:26.600 We're supposed to get paid out in dividends. So we actually want this company to do well

00:31:32.060 because we get paid back for it if it does. So if it fails, it's not a good thing, right? It's

00:31:37.880 nothing to, to cheer about. Um, so it's really kind of like a, a lose, lose situation. Yeah,

00:31:43.220 we could get Starlink for cheaper, but again, we've all invested in that and we're supposed to be

00:31:47.080 getting paid back for that investment, um, as the company succeeds. And on that note, you know,

00:31:53.580 I have serious questions as to, you know, their, their promissory, um, points in here,

00:32:00.380 there was a press release that was given out. I'm not sure if, sorry, if it was night 2019 or 2000.

00:32:10.800 Yeah, no, sorry. It was the 2021 press release. And so in that press release, it said that Telesat

00:32:18.060 was going to, with this $1.44 billion, maintain 700 jobs. So that's fine. But fast forward to 2024

00:32:27.280 and their new press release that was put out says that they have 500 employees. So we're already

00:32:35.380 missing 200 employees between 2021 and 2023. And the company's not growing. It's getting smaller

00:32:41.140 if their own press releases are to be believed. And so now we're supposed to be told that if you

00:32:46.760 inject another $2.5 billion into it, we're going to create 2000 more jobs. Well, where did those 200

00:32:52.500 jobs go between 2021 and 2024? What happened to them? I mean, we should be seeing growth, right?

00:32:59.400 For investment. I'm okay with doing subsidies and investing, but again, we need deliverable products,

00:33:04.460 right? We need accountability. We need something that works. We need something that's efficient.

00:33:08.560 And we need, you know, a result, right? And hopefully a marketable problem. And that just

00:33:15.580 didn't happen. And again, when even their government contracts are bizarre. When you look at them,

00:33:21.480 like these are contracts that are starting off for $700,000 with the government. And then all of a

00:33:27.080 sudden, it's a $6 million contract. Well, that's quite an amendment, right? We're talking about usually

00:33:33.280 their original, and this is, you know, what we've seen broadly across the, you know,

00:33:38.320 across the scope in contracting is that we're putting out these kind of lowball contracts

00:33:44.700 and then getting squeezed through it down the road where we're seeing the final results

00:33:49.440 costing, you know, two, three, four, five, 10 times the original amount, which is bonkers.

00:33:55.340 Yeah. I mean, no one has ever heard the name of the president of Telesat because he's not a great

00:34:01.760 space executive. Everyone knows Elon Musk because he's putting a rocket ship into space twice a week.

00:34:06.820 Um, I, and now you're using the language of investment and dividend and because that's how

00:34:12.660 the government phrases it because they don't want to say the truth, but it's, I think it's capitalism

00:34:17.940 in drag. If Telesat was such a good investment, there are trillions of dollars in the global stock

00:34:24.260 markets that are all hunting for the great deals, for the great opportunities. And no, no one would

00:34:31.000 invest in them. So it's by definition, if they need government money, no one in the private sector

00:34:36.900 likes them. I find this depressing. It's like that old company Bombardier where every year they would

00:34:42.260 get hundreds of millions of dollars. We're long past the hundreds of millions, Mark. We're well into

00:34:46.620 the billions. I just think it's sort of funny in a sad way to see them all, uh, disparaging Elon Musk,

00:34:54.420 the great industrialists of our age. And I didn't know it until you told me here that even though

00:34:59.420 they're disparaging Elon Musk, it's his rocket ships that they're using to put their satellites

00:35:03.660 up there. What an incredible story. And I don't think this is going to save the liberal candidate

00:35:09.820 tonight in the riding of La Salle-Emme-Verdon, where they're having a by-election. I think that's

00:35:15.820 what its purpose was. I don't think it's going to work. I think the liberals are going to lose

00:35:20.400 again, but Trudeau's going to hold his iron grip on power. Last word to you, Andy.

00:35:25.300 Yeah. Well, I mean, corporate welfare is alive and well, if you know the right people in Canada,

00:35:30.000 it's, it's not going to go out of style anytime soon, unfortunately. And yeah, but I mean,

00:35:34.920 the real losers are of course the people who don't have internet, because I do believe that

00:35:38.940 internet should be somewhat of a human right in a, you know, a G7 country such as ourselves.

00:35:45.140 I think that it's really, really important tool for everybody to have. And again, this isn't the

00:35:49.220 only investment that we're making into it. Like you have to understand this, the Canada

00:35:52.660 Infrastructure Bank, which is a whole nother Ponzi scheme. You know, they've invested billions of

00:35:58.320 dollars into bringing high-speed internet to rural communities. Right. And that's still a work in

00:36:02.580 progress. So, you know, it's just, it's throwing a whole bunch of good money after bad. When again,

00:36:09.020 this groundwork has been laid. I mean, my thing, I reached out to Elon Musk and I said,

00:36:13.900 since you're launching their satellites, why don't you just buy Telesat?

00:36:16.840 I know. You can afford it. It's much less than Twitter.

00:36:21.360 Yeah, that's right.

00:36:22.580 We could actually have a profitable Canadian company maybe that's successful.

00:36:26.400 You have to fire 80% of the staff. I think that's his way. Fire the 80% that don't do anything.

00:36:32.200 Annie, this is a crazy story, but it tells us so much about our own country,

00:36:36.020 how we despise those who actually build, how we pretend that sloshing around government

00:36:41.740 largesse is the free market. And there's sort of a, there's a nudge and a wink that they're saying,

00:36:51.420 hey, Montreal, we're ringing out taxpayers for you in the name of the internet. But everyone knows

00:36:57.980 it's just graft and grift. Andy, great to see you again. Thanks for your time.

00:37:01.720 Good to see you too. Take care and we'll see how it develops. Tell us,

00:37:06.140 us investors are fascinating. Yeah. I mean, most of them are companies,

00:37:10.520 but there's one individual in there. And so I'm digging into his, his SEC filings.

00:37:15.540 Well, we'll have to, we'll have to hear more from you and we'll have to follow you

00:37:19.320 on Twitter. You're doing great investigative journalism as you always do. Take care, my friend.

00:37:24.420 Take care.

00:37:25.080 Cheers. Well, there you have it. Stay with us. More after these words.

00:37:30.280 You know, the other day, Elon Musk was talking about how government just can't do anything

00:37:50.060 anymore. And he referenced the high speed train project in California, which has been talked

00:37:55.860 about for literally decades. And they've built like one mile of it from nowhere to nowhere.

00:38:02.180 And that's how it is when a government builds something, especially something complex.

00:38:07.860 The moon shot where America and NASA actually landed someone on the moon, maybe was the one

00:38:15.400 example to the contrary, where they actually managed to do it. But they don't seem to be able

00:38:20.780 to do that particular task anymore or much else. And what I learned from Andy that makes

00:38:26.120 me chuckle is that even this Telesat scheme at twice the price still relies on SpaceX rockets

00:38:32.720 because no one's sending things into space anymore other than the Chinese and Russians.

00:38:37.900 Let me read some of your mail. Frank says,

00:38:41.040 Trump is a genius. He has the pet owner's vote.

00:38:43.780 He's talking about Trump's reference in the debate against Kamala Harris of the allegation

00:38:50.040 that they're eating dogs and cats and other pets in Springfield, Ohio. Now, we sent David

00:38:55.520 Menzies down there for a couple of days last week. And as you saw, he's doing some really

00:38:59.780 great videos. But we actually could not corroborate any of the pet eating. And we didn't go down.

00:39:06.880 We went down there curious and thought it was plausible. But after poking around for a couple

00:39:12.640 of days and talking to everyone we could find, we didn't come up with any evidence that we came up

00:39:17.420 with tragic evidence that terrible Haitian drivers are, in one case, killed somebody.

00:39:24.640 And we learned a lot. But anyway, let me refer you to the truth about springfield.com to see all our

00:39:30.560 videos. But yeah, that meme of eating cats and dogs was just classic Trump meme.

00:39:38.320 CJP says, they technically fact-checked Kamala during the debate. It was a blink and you'll

00:39:43.880 miss it type thing. And even then, it was only things on her record and not the crap she was 0.99

00:39:48.540 saying about Trump. You're referring to the U.S. debate. I was in transit then, but my friends 0.95

00:39:54.900 Sheila Gunn-Reed and Avi Amini, and I think Avi might have, I think David might have been on it too,

00:39:59.380 did a live stream for the U.S. presidential debate, which is pretty fun.

00:40:03.840 Lawrence Veynot says, if things escalate with Russia, I think the U.S. election should be

00:40:08.080 postponed. Look at what's happening in Ukraine. Postponing the American elections, I don't think

00:40:12.720 that even happens in World War II or Vietnam. I don't, I don't, I think that would be a terrible

00:40:17.840 idea. Postponing the election is so abnormal. And to justify it with an emergency, well, then

00:40:26.960 there'll be emergency every week, won't there? And there'll be a climate emergency, just like

00:40:31.320 they use the COVID emergency to have mail-in ballots. I think, I think almost every emergency

00:40:37.420 imaginable can be overcome in the voting with an election, or can, can, you can vote despite

00:40:45.800 it. I can't even think, maybe during the plague, the Black Death in England, they might have 0.91

00:40:51.720 postponed a vote or two. But actually, they just moved Parliament, a few males down the

00:40:56.340 highway. And I think maybe they suspended Parliament for a few weeks. And I think about

00:41:01.200 that sometimes. And I think about the Amish. As you know, about a month or so, I visited an

00:41:05.960 Amish community in Ontario that has been fined almost $400,000 for not downloading the Arabcan

00:41:13.120 app on their smartphones. Of course, the joke being Amish don't have phones. They don't download 1.00

00:41:17.560 any apps. They don't use electricity. They don't even drive. They have horses and buggies,

00:41:22.000 literally. Imagine telling someone like that to download the Arrivecan app. They wouldn't

00:41:27.400 even understand what words you're saying. Anyhow, just, just astonishing. And what I learned

00:41:36.920 by visiting the Amish is that the mania never took hold of their community. Because if you're

00:41:43.080 Amish, you see things, you hear things, you read paper, you talk and you meet, but you're

00:41:48.520 not on your social media. You're not watching CNN or CBC. You're not hearing the propaganda.

00:41:53.680 I suppose you're getting print newspapers, but I don't think they're very worldly. And so

00:41:57.960 if you didn't have social media in your life, if you didn't have TV, you probably wouldn't

00:42:04.560 have noticed COVID at all. Maybe you would have had more people getting the flu. But I put

00:42:10.180 it to you that the number one way that we knew we were in a pandemic was because the media

00:42:16.420 kept telling us so. Our eyes themselves didn't see it, which is why they had to force masks

00:42:21.780 on everyone to keep people worried, because otherwise you wouldn't be worried. If you led

00:42:25.880 a normal life, I'm not saying the Amish live a normal life, but they didn't live the hyper-stimulated 0.99

00:42:31.320 narrative curated life that we lead, you wouldn't have got the mania, let alone the COVID.

00:42:39.520 That's our show for today. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World

00:42:44.640 Headquarters, to you at home, good night, and keep fighting for freedom.

00:42:48.320 time.

00:42:53.820 Yep.

00:42:55.320 You.

00:43:00.960 I.

00:43:01.340 I.

00:43:02.320 I.

00:43:02.720 I.

00:43:02.820 I.

00:43:03.100 I.

00:43:03.380 I.

00:43:03.900 I.

00:43:05.000 I.

00:43:05.580 I'm.

00:43:05.960 I.

00:43:06.140 I.

00:43:06.500 I.

00:43:06.620 I.

00:43:06.700 I.

Rebel News Podcast - September 17, 2024

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Trudeau dishes out $2 billion contract to buy votes in Quebec

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript