Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Trudeau's exhaustive lip service no longer resonates with Canada's youth

00:00:00.000 Hello, my friends. I'm looking at a few liberal statements echoing the budget earlier this week,

00:00:06.660 a crazy statement by the liberal mayor of Calgary, who basically says you'll own nothing and you'll

00:00:12.660 be happy. I'll show you the video clip. She really does come close to saying that. And then the

00:00:18.020 outrageously foolish cabinet minister called Seamus O'Regan. I'll take you through one of

00:00:23.100 his tweets. And we'll have a great chat with my friend, Lauren Gunter. That's all I had. But

00:00:28.080 please, before you listen to the podcast, consider getting the video version of it because I really

00:00:33.740 want you to see Jody Gonnick's video and you got to see it. It's so crazy. To get the video version

00:00:39.760 of the podcast, go to rebelnewsplus.com. Click subscribe. It's eight bucks a month. You get

00:00:44.900 all my video shows every weekday and you support Rebel News because we don't take any money from

00:00:51.060 Trudeau. We rely on you. That's Rebel News Plus. Okay, here's today's podcast.

00:00:58.080 Tonight, why is it so hard for young people to make ends meet in Canada?

00:01:16.200 It's April 18th and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.

00:01:18.600 You're fighting for freedom. Shame on you, you censorious bug.

00:01:28.080 The left used to stand with the little guy, but not anymore. I mean, I'm speaking in terms of

00:01:39.420 political parties mainly, but the movement in general. Trudeau, for example, I mean, he exudes

00:01:46.180 privilege. He's a trust fund kid. No Trudeau has worked in three generations. All the money has come

00:01:51.820 from his grandfather that he's never met. His grandfather was quite an entrepreneur. He had

00:01:57.280 a chain of gas stations around Montreal. Trudeau inherited millions. He doesn't know what it's

00:02:04.000 actually like to pay bills. He's always had daddy's accountants to pay them and daddy's lawyers

00:02:08.740 to bail him out of trouble, like when he sexually assaulted Rose Knight some 20-odd years ago.

00:02:14.880 Trudeau exudes wealth and privilege. Donald Trump's a billionaire, but he's got a working-class

00:02:21.280 sensibility. He knows how to talk to the blue-collar folks. I mean, he's always at construction sites,

00:02:27.640 at least in his previous life. Trudeau, by contrast, has the adornments, the accoutrements of luxury,

00:02:35.720 private jets, billionaire vacations in the Bahamas, but without the sense of responsibility,

00:02:40.480 without having earned it. In fact, Trudeau seems to be taking advantage. As you know,

00:02:47.380 he separated from his wife, Sophie Trudeau, quite a while ago, but kept that secret so that he could

00:02:54.120 continue to take her, which is really bizarre, on luxury vacations on the government jet. Here's a

00:03:01.260 photo of Sophie Trudeau that she published before it was known that she was seeing another man. I'm not

00:03:07.920 talking about prurient details here. I'm not talking about the sexual politics of that bizarre family.

00:03:14.480 I'm saying she was no longer Justin Trudeau's wife in any meaningful way, but she was just coming 0.99

00:03:21.420 along for the taxpayer ride. That's what I mean by luxury. Trudeau goes to Jamaica and stays in an

00:03:27.020 $80,000 resort and said, oh, no, no, everyone does this, staying with friends. Just absolutely outrageous.

00:03:33.360 That's Justin Trudeau. Jagmeet Singh, incredibly, is even worse. Before he became the leader of the

00:03:43.060 NDP, he actually did glamour photo shoots showing off luxury goods, tens of thousands of dollars on

00:03:51.420 a watch and luxury travel. I don't begrudge a guy money that he earns, but when you claim to be for

00:03:58.340 the working man and when you rail against the rich, you should play the part in your own personal life,

00:04:03.200 I think. Funny enough, of the three men, Justin Trudeau, Jagmeet Singh, or Pierre Polyev, he's the

00:04:09.800 one by far with the most working class background. And I think he's doing well amongst people in the

00:04:16.800 working classes, not just because he has policies that suit them, but because he's used to them.

00:04:23.400 He's from them. I think he is a working class conservative. Justin Trudeau the other day was

00:04:30.760 in a meeting in Calgary and he talked about, once I met the overall people, it's like he was in a

00:04:36.420 museum and saw some freak curiosity. Look at that, someone in overalls. Did you see that clip?

00:04:42.660 A few years ago, I was in Hamilton in a classic steel plant and I was meeting, you know, some of those

00:04:49.540 overall folks who were proud to say that they were third and even fourth generation steel workers

00:04:56.600 in Hamilton. Yeah, I really don't think anyone in the Liberal Party knows what it's like to be in the

00:05:03.120 working world, to know what it's like to have to make payroll, to know what it's like to have to earn

00:05:07.860 money and have it clawed back by the tax man and have to add more and more hours, but there's just not

00:05:13.180 enough hours in the day. I don't think anyone in Justin Trudeau's circle is like that. Now, Trudeau uses

00:05:19.440 some Marxist language. His budget was basically a soak the rich. You don't like the rich, do you?

00:05:25.880 I don't know if that's working though, because I think people feel like they should be able to

00:05:32.120 afford things, but the extraordinary inflation and outlandish housing costs and so many terrible

00:05:38.660 things conspiring against them makes it impossible for them to live. Trudeau may be talking about

00:05:44.380 punishing the rich, but it seems like everyone is being punished. Here's a video by Trudeau's right

00:05:51.640 hand woman in Calgary, the mayor, Jody Gondek. I'm going to talk more about this in a minute with our

00:05:56.460 friend Lauren Gunter, but just take a look at this and look at this rich woman of privilege, liberal, 1.00

00:06:04.340 two houses, saying, oh, if you can't afford a house, well, you'll own nothing, but you'll be happy.

00:06:10.600 Take a look. So we're starting to see a segment of the population reject this idea of owning a home

00:06:15.560 and they're moving towards rental because it gives them more freedom. They can travel to different

00:06:20.160 places. They can try out different communities. Their job may take them from place to place.

00:06:25.100 And so people have become much more liberated around what housing looks like and what the tenure of

00:06:30.060 housing looks like. But as municipalities, we haven't kept pace with that change. We're still stuck

00:06:36.220 in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. The craziest part there is her implication that wanting a house 1.00

00:06:42.160 is some old-fashioned, outdated idea. She didn't come out and say it's racist and bigoted, but

00:06:48.960 I'm sure she wanted to. As if people, only people in the 40s and 50s wanted a house and a backyard and

00:06:56.760 to be able to, you know, maybe have one parent stay home with the kids. I mean, isn't that crazy?

00:07:01.660 We went from a time when dad could work in the factory and come home in time for dinner

00:07:06.860 and they had enough to have a house and a happy house and maybe the occasional vacation. Those days

00:07:12.420 are long gone. Judeau said it was a housing budget. What a laugh. I'll talk more about that with Oren

00:07:18.760 Gunter. But in many ways, I don't think it's housing anymore. It's more like warehousing.

00:07:25.340 900,000 foreign students, many of them from India or China, sharing a combination is meant

00:07:33.760 for a fraction of that. I know, especially here in the greater Toronto area, you sometimes have

00:07:38.080 one apartment or one house with four, five, six, seven, eight people in them just jammed in there.

00:07:44.140 That's terrible for them, but it also drives up the price for anyone trying to have that old-fashioned

00:07:50.220 style of living. And look at the solution. Like I say, warehousing people, 40 and 50-story sardine

00:07:58.520 cans. That's not the dream. Here is a tweet showing some proposed and approved housing projects in

00:08:05.860 Kitchener, including 40 and 50-story apartment buildings. In Kitchener? Well, yeah, when you're

00:08:13.200 trying to absorb 2.2 million migrants a year, which is what Trudeau did this year, that's how it's got to be.

00:08:18.560 In Calgary, Jody Gondek is proposing to rezone the entire city that way. Kate McMillan from the

00:08:26.980 website Small Dead Animals had this tweet, making it look like, yeah, that's how they do it in China.

00:08:34.100 It's just so out of touch. I don't think that they actually know how people live and that people do

00:08:39.580 want a house in a backyard and they want to be able to afford it. I saw this from Seamus O'Regan,

00:08:44.980 who is called Shameless O'Regan by his former colleagues at CTV. Look at this tweet. He said,

00:08:51.320 the right to disconnect is coming to Canadian workers. Employees will have to let you log off

00:08:58.720 at the end of your day. Well, boy, thank goodness for Seamus O'Regan coming to save all of us.

00:09:05.600 But look at the community note. Do you know what that is? It's something that Elon Musk has really

00:09:09.500 expanded on Twitter. It's letting ordinary people clap back at liars is really what it is.

00:09:15.660 It's when you get to add context, particularly to a politician's lives. So here's the community note

00:09:21.560 that corrected Seamus O'Regan, or at least made it less misleading. Quote,

00:09:28.180 the federal government has jurisdiction to enact employment law only in a few federally regulated

00:09:35.820 industries. Only about 910,000 Canadians would be impacted by such a measure. Right to disconnect

00:09:42.620 is not coming to the vast majority of Canadians, I'll say. So if you work for Air Canada, they're

00:09:51.660 federally regulated. If you work for one of the national railroads or the banks, or if you work for

00:09:57.320 the federal government itself, I guess you'll have the right to disconnect, as in you won't have to

00:10:03.120 answer your boss's emails at 8 p.m. Fair enough. But when you put yourself in the position of the

00:10:09.920 hardest hit group of Canadians, millennials, if you're a millennial, those industries I just mentioned,

00:10:16.600 that's not you. You're probably trying to get as many hours as you can to make your keep. Maybe you're

00:10:23.980 doing Uber or DoorDash on the side just in your downtime to make a few extra bucks. You're stringing

00:10:30.440 together gigs and contracts. You're not making enough to stop work at 5 o'clock sharp. Who works

00:10:37.060 9 to 5 anymore? Well, government bureaucrats do. I've never worked just 9 to 5 in my life. I don't

00:10:44.340 think most people can afford to only work 9 to 5. I don't think that Seamus O'Regan is saving workers

00:10:51.220 from anything other than in the public sector when they have nothing to worry about anyways.

00:10:56.620 By the way, what has Seamus O'Regan ever done for a living? I looked him up, and his entire life he's

00:11:02.260 only done politics and that period of time when he hosted a talk show on a government-regulated TV

00:11:08.680 channel. How did he get his job at all? And how did he get a cabinet position where he's actually

00:11:16.880 supposed to be making big decisions? What's his credential? What's his authority? What did he

00:11:22.440 study in school? What's his experience? Has he ever done anything in life? Oh, right, right, right, right.

00:11:30.180 Here's his credential. He was a part of Justin Trudeau's wedding party, along with other liberal

00:11:37.380 cabinet ministers to come. Yeah, that's how. Stay with us for more.

00:11:54.280 Well, it's been a couple days since Justin Trudeau and his finance minister,

00:11:58.280 Christian Freeland, introduced the budget. Taxes are up, including carbon taxes. Justin Trudeau

00:12:05.120 is absolutely set on that. Capital gains taxes and other things. Basically, as various former

00:12:14.060 liberal finance officials have said, it's the most brutal budget in 40 years. It's a tough one for

00:12:21.520 liberal proxies around the country to sell. Let me show you what the Calgary mayor, who is a liberal

00:12:27.880 by every measure, even if she's not officially a liberal mayor, listen to her talk about life

00:12:34.120 when houses are no longer affordable for the ordinary person. Take a look.

00:12:38.680 So we're starting to see a segment of the population reject this idea of owning a home,

00:12:43.180 and they're moving towards rental because it gives them more freedom.

00:12:46.480 They can travel to different places. They can try out different communities. Their job may take them

00:12:51.280 from place to place. And so people have become much more liberated around what housing looks like

00:12:56.140 and what the tenure of housing looks like. But as municipalities, we haven't kept pace with that

00:13:01.860 change. We're still stuck in the 40s, 50s and 60s. You know what? The World Economic Forum said it a lot

00:13:08.680 briefer when they said you'll own nothing and you'll be happy. Joining us now from Edmonton is our friend

00:13:14.400 Lauren Gunter, senior columnist at the Edmonton Sun. Lauren, I'm not sure if it's true that people are

00:13:20.420 rejecting home ownership. I think it's sort of the other way around. People are not qualifying 0.97

00:13:25.920 for home ownership. They cannot afford home ownership because prices are high, mortgage rates

00:13:33.740 are high, prices are rising faster than incomes are rising. I think she's trying to pretend that

00:13:40.580 it's a good thing that people are voluntarily choosing, that they're positively rejecting home

00:13:46.280 ownership. I think she's fibbing there. Well, I think she's fooling herself. That's the problem 0.72

00:13:53.300 with progressives is that they will concoct these narratives in their head and tell it to themselves.

00:13:59.940 It's not like she sits down with a message massager and says, oh, how do we deal with this?

00:14:06.980 You know, nobody can afford a house. So how do we make it look like a positive? She actually believes

00:14:11.160 that it will make you freer. The same way that I've given up trying to have meat. So I'm freer in

00:14:18.020 my diet now. I don't have to worry about where my next beef is coming from. It's ludicrous. It really

00:14:25.660 is. It's the end of the Canadian dream as brought to you by progressive elites who have so messed this

00:14:33.160 up. I mean, there are two facts on this that I think bear keeping in mind. One is in their commentary

00:14:42.960 on the federal budget, the Canadian Taxpayer Federation said that in the time the Liberals

00:14:49.380 have been in power, it's not quite nine years yet, 2015 until now, rents and mortgage payments in Canada

00:14:57.640 have doubled. Now, whose income has doubled in that amount? No one's income has doubled. The economy

00:15:05.160 hasn't doubled in size. So what you're looking at is housing eating more and more and more into

00:15:12.400 the average family's budget. And that is seen in something from the Royal Bank that came out

00:15:18.600 about 10 days ago, where they said in 2015, when the Liberals took over, it took 44% of the median

00:15:27.340 income to afford a home. Now that's still too steep. In the United States, it's about 37%. And in some

00:15:35.180 places, even in Canada, it's below that. But it was on average about 37% in the States, 44% in Canada

00:15:42.300 in 2015. Manageable, little hard, but manageable. Now in Canada, it's 63% of the median income in order

00:15:54.160 to qualify for a home. So that's why you have both mom and dad working outside the house. That's why 0.72

00:16:00.740 both of them may have second jobs as well. I mean, if you're just going to afford to get the kids into

00:16:07.280 soccer and hockey, go on a short little vacation in the summertime, own a home, you have got to be out

00:16:14.920 there earning well in excess of $100,000 in Canada. It is insane. And that's what Gondek is trying to

00:16:23.300 justify in a sunny way. I mean, this is Trudeau's old sunny ways. Well, what's the sunny way of

00:16:29.780 describing how hard it is to buy a home in Canada? Well, you'll be free. You'll be freer. Think of

00:16:37.640 that. It's like, what was, I'm sorry, what was the motto over the concentration camps?

00:16:44.960 Arbeit mach frei, work makes you free. Hard work will make you free. Exactly. And this is a saying

00:16:53.720 like that, you know, rentership will make you free. Rejecting owning a house will make you free.

00:17:00.440 I don't think she, her statement was serious enough to warrant a serious rebuttal. But your

00:17:07.280 comment about how much of a paycheck goes towards housing, it's true on both the mortgage side and

00:17:14.480 the rental side. So renting is expensive too. Renting does not set you free. It's extremely expensive.

00:17:22.560 You just don't build up the equity. You're working for the landlord. And her idea, oh, you go traveling.

00:17:27.280 What does that mean? You pack up all your stuff, put it in storage. Like, what does it mean you can

00:17:32.480 travel when you rent? Is she saying that you'll stop renting, put everything in long-term storage?

00:17:39.680 Like it doesn't even make any sense on its own terms. You've spent so much money on rent. How can

00:17:44.780 you afford to travel? That's the reality of it. This is a let them eat cake mentality. And she has two

00:17:51.780 homes in Calgary herself, according to disclosures that she's made as a politician. So she, maybe she

00:17:59.340 should liberate herself from the burden of having two houses before telling the rest of us.

00:18:03.240 It's not just Gondek. I mean, I saw an announcement about 10 days ago where Chrystia Freeland, the deputy

00:18:10.580 prime minister and finance minister, was in Victoria to open a new apartment tower that had been built

00:18:16.880 largely with federal loan money. About $100 million in federal loan money went into this place and the

00:18:24.720 cheapest apartment in it. Now, Freeland said, this is the way Canadians are going to live. So densely

00:18:32.000 packed into high-rise towers, not owning, but living in an apartment in this tower. And the crazy thing

00:18:40.020 about this is that she never even bothers to check what the heaven's name she's talking about. So

00:18:45.740 this tower is called Hudson House. The cheapest apartment was $1,600 a month, which is 11% higher

00:18:54.400 than the average apartment price in Victoria. So even with all this federal help, so you remember in the

00:19:00.680 budget, $15 billion to build apartments. But even with all this money, this one in Victoria,

00:19:07.020 the rent is higher than average. How is that going to deal with the housing affordability crisis?

00:19:12.740 And that was for a suite. It's called a micro suite.

00:19:15.900 Oh my gosh.

00:19:16.880 330 square feet.

00:19:19.140 Oh my gosh.

00:19:20.160 You know, we have a kitchen now.

00:19:21.420 330 square feet? I mean, we've got some video of that. Can I show some video of that? Here's

00:19:27.280 Chrystia Freeland bragging about, I mean, it's sort of like if they were to brag about the Arrive

00:19:33.120 Can app, which they spent, you know, I mean, this government can't actually do anything. Here,

00:19:37.860 let's just watch a minute of this propaganda reel that Chrystia Freeland put up about this 1.00

00:19:42.540 extraordinary government run apartment. Take a look.

00:19:45.780 I am so glad to be here in beautiful Victoria, British Columbia. And I am here at Hudson House.

00:19:52.400 You can see amazing views all around me. This is an apartment building that has 227 apartments

00:20:00.160 for low and middle income Canadians. And it was built thanks to our apartment construction loan

00:20:07.500 program. I am really, really glad that we have that program in place that has built great apartments

00:20:15.060 like the ones here and is building more apartments for Canadians from coast to coast to coast.

00:20:22.240 There you go. You know what? I mean, the government that can't get your passports

00:20:25.620 on time, the government that they really can run nothing. Chrystia Freeland herself before she became 1.00

00:20:32.800 an MP was a disaster in the one business thing she tried her hand at Reuters next, which was like a 0.93

00:20:39.480 high tech project. It it's just, it's shocking. It's gross. Do you think anyone's persuaded by it,

00:20:48.280 Lauren? No, no, I don't. Because if you're a real family, you say you're a young family with a,

00:20:55.620 kid or two, and you're out looking for some place to live, you've outgrown the place that you're in,

00:21:02.120 you run up against the reality of this all the time. Every time you go apartment or house shopping,

00:21:08.140 you run up against a reality that contradicts what Jody Gondek and Chrystia Freeland and Justin Trudeau

00:21:16.100 say about all of this. It's, you know, you don't always run up against it if you happen to live in

00:21:21.840 Tabor, Alberta, or Antigonista, Nova Scotia, or some of the smaller communities around the country

00:21:27.520 where housing affordability is still there for for a lot of people, maybe even for most people. But if

00:21:33.660 you're now in the seven, eight, 10 largest cities in Canada, it's becoming less and less affordable

00:21:40.620 all the time, because of government program. Let's take take a look at this $15 billion that the liberals

00:21:46.780 are going to give away to help apartment construction in the country. There is so much

00:21:52.720 green garbage in it, so many regulations to benefit the environment, to create net zero housing, to

00:22:00.740 create sustainable housing, that there is no way these units are going to cost less than the units

00:22:09.980 that already exist, which means that the rents are going to have to be higher, which means you're going

00:22:14.120 to drive the prices up, not down. It has nothing to do with affordability. It has to do with all of

00:22:19.320 their woke dreams in the Liberal Party. And I think that we must mention corruption, because when they

00:22:25.300 shoveled billions out the door in a pandemic fuss, oh, it just so happened a lot of it went to former 1.00

00:22:31.380 MPs, the husband of a cabinet minister. You know, we're seeing, I mentioned the arrive cam, because

00:22:37.740 you know, to make an app, there are companies that make apps for tens of thousands of dollars.

00:22:43.800 To make an app with the same functionality for $63 million takes a liberal, because everyone's

00:22:49.820 getting a cut, everyone's getting commission, everyone's subcontracting. And I simply do not

00:22:55.380 believe that that $15 billion or whatever that's being shoveled out the door will actually go to

00:22:59.580 home building. I think maybe a quarter of it will, and the rest will go to every scheme and scam

00:23:04.840 out there. And Lauren, I want to say that, of course, what determines a price? Well, supply and

00:23:12.380 demand. And what Christopher Phelan was talking about there is providing some supply in the form

00:23:18.780 of overpriced apartments, but demand is the issue. Candace Malcolm recently calculated that the total

00:23:25.360 number of immigrants to Canada last year was not half a million. It was 2.2 million. 900,000 of them

00:23:33.200 were students, foreign students. More than half a million were temporary foreign workers. So right 1.00

00:23:39.420 there, you've got 1.5 million before you even have people who are on the permanent immigration or

00:23:44.420 refugee track. 2.2 million people. Canada added a million people in the last six months. You cannot 1.00

00:23:52.280 build faster than that. And what's happening, and let me give you the report from Toronto, and I bet it's

00:23:56.800 the same in Vancouver and Montreal and probably Edmonton and Calgary, you have three, four, five,

00:24:03.180 six, seven, eight people living in one place. You have houses that are not, it's, and no single

00:24:11.740 family units are affordable in places like Toronto. You cannot put 900,000 foreign students in a country 1.00

00:24:19.560 country and not expect housing to go up faster than anyone can afford. I don't know. I think that's

00:24:25.020 a huge issue, Lorne. That is an enormous cause behind all of this, and I'm not anti-immigrant. I'm quite

00:24:32.300 happy for us to have a strong flow of immigrants every year, but I am anti-bad arithmetic. These people 1.00

00:24:41.280 simply can't do the arithmetic. Canada, if it's lucky in a year, builds enough housing for 300,000 people.

00:24:49.560 Okay? So what happens if you add 2.2 million, and you've built enough housing for 300,000? Gee,

00:24:56.780 I don't know. Maybe those people start bidding the price up, and it's not their fault. Like,

00:25:02.140 you know, we made foreigners the boogeyman in rising house prices for the first eight years of 1.00

00:25:10.460 the Liberals' tenure. And, you know, yes, there are some foreign investors who buy mansions and don't

00:25:18.100 live in them, and that sort of inflates the market a bit. But nothing compared to 2.2 million people

00:25:25.760 coming looking for a home. And they have every right to look for a home. They didn't ask us to

00:25:32.120 invite them in. The Liberals went to the door and went, welcome. Welcome. You know what? I saw a new

00:25:37.460 Leger poll saying that new immigrants are actually harder line on immigration than what they identified

00:25:46.220 as white Canadians. It's an interesting survey. I'm going to do a show on it tomorrow. It's not often

00:25:51.440 that you see polling questions broken down by race, ethnicity, national origin. This breaks it down by

00:25:57.220 Indians, Southeast Asian, Chinese. Like, they really get into it. They're not shy. And it's amazing to me

00:26:04.040 which groups are saying, stop. And any white politician that's worried about talking about

00:26:10.180 this issue will have some courage because the people who are clamoring the most for the brake

00:26:17.160 pedal here, frankly, they're Chinese Canadians, according to this poll. I'll give all the details

00:26:21.160 tomorrow. And I just think it's woke white folks who are saying, keep the floodgates open.

00:26:26.600 Look, look who is the most determined to have the Chinese interference in our elections 0.99

00:26:32.400 uncovered. It is diaspora organizations. It's Hong Kongers, Uyghurs. It's all sorts of people

00:26:41.980 who are themselves victims of the Chinese government's surveillance and intimidation

00:26:48.460 who want this out there. And yet, every time somebody else raises this as an issue, the liberals say,

00:26:55.460 oh, you're racist. It's racist to think that China was interfering. It's not. It is simply

00:27:01.960 practical. And these people have messed up so much. They've messed up their dental care program.

00:27:08.480 They messed up their $10 daycare program. They haven't started their pharma care program yet,

00:27:13.540 but I guarantee you it will be messed up too because they simply don't know how to organize

00:27:19.860 things. They can spend money. They can ship the money out the door, as you were saying,

00:27:23.440 but they don't know where to put it. Yeah. I want to leave you with a clip from Newfoundland.

00:27:29.960 Newfoundland is a liberal government with a liberal premier, Andrew Fury. I keep saying Anthony Fury

00:27:35.700 because there's a great journalist in Toronto. He's a good friend named Anthony Fury.

00:27:39.960 That's right. By the way, you know, we see all these polls, but a poll is just a guess. It's a snapshot in

00:27:46.280 time. It's not a prediction of the future. So when you actually have a by-election,

00:27:49.880 a special election, you can't read too much into them because by-elections free people.

00:27:55.760 They can vote strategically. Like rent. Yeah. They free people the way around.

00:28:00.420 That's right. I mean, what I mean by that is in a by-election, people can be a little wilder

00:28:05.180 than if they were thinking, oh, I don't want to mess things up for a general election.

00:28:08.880 So, but just a few days ago in the Newfoundland and Labrador district of Fogo Island,

00:28:16.060 which has been liberal since forever, the conservative candidate won pretty handily.

00:28:22.600 Now, maybe that's a protest vote. And remember, that's a provincial district.

00:28:26.000 So can you really hang it around the neck of Justin Trudeau? Well, I think these days,

00:28:30.480 the word liberal is tainted by Justin Trudeau. And so much so, take a look at this. Here is the liberal

00:28:37.720 premier of Newfoundland, not just saying he's against carbon taxes, but sort of accusing Trudeau

00:28:45.620 of being nasty. Here, take a look at the clip for yourself. Take a look.

00:28:48.980 On the carbon tax in particular, the prime minister has tried to bait me at times with

00:28:53.960 certain ad hominems and name calling almost. But look, we have a very different opinion on the

00:29:02.480 carbon tax. It's not right for the people of the province right now. I wish the prime minister

00:29:07.480 would understand that. He's being very sclerotic in his approach on this ideologic marriage that

00:29:12.120 he has, this principle. That's not to say that we don't believe in fighting climate change. We

00:29:16.520 certainly do. But this policy is wrong.

00:29:18.760 You know what? I don't know much about Premier Fury, but the fact that he feels politically

00:29:26.380 comfortable taking a few shots at Trudeau and taking a stand against the carbon tax tells me he's

00:29:32.220 been listening to the ground. He's been listening to his people. He doesn't care about Trudeau or the

00:29:37.500 Ottawa clique or the Ottawa media. He's more worried about Fogo Island. And he's decided that going with

00:29:44.100 affordability is more important than going with ideology. I thought that was hopeful.

00:29:49.060 Yeah. Yeah, I think it is too. And I think you would find that just about every premier in the

00:29:56.180 country is prepared to take a run at Trudeau right now. And that's how unpopular he is.

00:30:02.220 You know, our mutual friend, Lori Goldstein, had a piece today that ran in the Sun papers that said,

00:30:08.860 Trudeau used to be Teflon. Now he's Velcro. And you're starting to see that in all of the interactions

00:30:16.500 between other politicians and him. You know, you even I think you even see that from a couple of liberal

00:30:22.280 senators who have who have said things that are anti the government in a very mild way, but still

00:30:30.220 something you would never have seen under Chrétien, for example, who was the whipcracker.

00:30:35.940 Yeah. Well, very interesting times, Lorne. Great to see you. Thanks for taking the time with us.

00:30:41.240 You bet.

00:30:41.960 There you have it. Lorne Gunter, senior columnist with the Edmonton Sun. Stay with us. More ahead.

00:30:46.220 Hey, welcome back. Your letters to me. Trish Herskorn, if I'm saying that right, says,

00:31:03.700 was stunned with the guilty verdict when days prior, it appeared that the prosecutors didn't

00:31:08.440 really have any valid grounds for their indictments against these three gentlemen.

00:31:12.240 You're talking about the case of the Coutts three. I have to admit, I was surprised as well. I was

00:31:19.460 surprised for two reasons. I didn't think that the charges had substance to them. I didn't think that

00:31:25.580 the whatever the case against the men was, it didn't rise to the burden of proof required to be

00:31:31.720 convicted of a crime, namely, proof beyond a reasonable doubt. And I thought the jury, which I saw

00:31:39.000 being empaneled, I thought the jury looked like good, solid Southern Alberta folks, severely normal

00:31:47.200 folks, not pernicious and vendetta-driven prosecutors. Well, I guess the jurors had a different point of view.

00:31:55.640 I was surprised. We'll have to see what the sentence is. Could range from anything like a slap on the wrist

00:32:02.160 to actual jail time. William Telefee says, bring this to the Supreme Court now. This is empowering

00:32:12.400 this tyrannical government. Well, like I said before, in about 90 days, there will be a sentencing hearing

00:32:20.700 and the verdict could be appealed or the sentence or both. Now, I honestly don't know how it works

00:32:30.540 in the case of a jury trial. I'm sorry, I just don't have that much experience and it's been

00:32:35.340 about 20 years since I myself practiced law. But I think, you know, I don't know what the grounds would

00:32:43.620 be. By the way, you can't go straight to the Supreme Court in Canada. You have to go to a

00:32:49.240 provincial court of appeal first and the Supreme Court only picks and chooses what it wants to hear

00:32:56.180 because it's just one court. And unless you're appealing a murder conviction, you really don't

00:33:03.020 have the vast majority of cases that seek to be heard at the Supreme Court are rejected.

00:33:10.140 I think that really the controversy will be what is the sentence?

00:33:14.580 Theoretically, a mischief charge could yield as much as, I think, 10 years in jail.

00:33:21.920 I think that the Crown will probably be asking for a period of months in jail. I think that the

00:33:28.320 defense will ask for no custodial time, just a suspended sentence. If I had to guess, and I hate to do it,

00:33:36.520 I hate to say it, and I don't know what's in the mind of this judge, I would say it's not unlikely

00:33:44.500 that there could be a 30-day sentence the men would be out earlier than that. I hope that doesn't come

00:33:49.900 to pass, but that's just if you were pressing me to make my guess. Elmo says, have them walk across

00:33:58.120 the border into America and claim political asylum. Yeah, it's not a bad idea, but these men are rooted 0.97

00:34:04.340 in Alberta. They have families there. They're not running away. And as you heard Alex Van Herc say

00:34:11.520 the other day, in a way he accepts the verdict of his peers. He doesn't agree with it, but these are

00:34:18.800 not men looking to shirk their punishment. That's the style of Mahatma Gandhi's civil disobedience.

00:34:26.440 You break the law knowingly and peacefully, and you don't try and run away from the consequences.

00:34:31.540 You bear the consequences because you feel it would be unjust to obey the law and also inappropriate

00:34:41.360 to dodge the consequences. It's a very unusual thing what Gandhi did, and I saw a little bit of

00:34:47.120 a whiff of that listening to how Alex Van Herc talked about he disagrees with the verdict, but he'll

00:34:52.080 bear it. I don't know. I thought that was actually touching how he talked about that, but hopefully there

00:34:56.320 will be no custodial sentence. We'll see. That's our show for today. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all

00:35:02.860 of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night, and keep fighting for freedom.

Rebel News Podcast - April 18, 2024

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Trudeau's exhaustive lip service no longer resonates with Canada's youth

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