Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' passes, declares war on illegal immigration

00:00:00.000 Hello, my friends. What's this big, beautiful bill that Trump's been talking about? It was

00:00:03.640 passed into law today, and he's thrilled. I'll take you through it to explain why this bill is

00:00:08.740 so important and what it means for Canada, especially for making America more competitive

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00:00:46.380 You're listening to Rebel News Podcast.

00:00:48.800 Tonight, what was Trump's big, beautiful bill, and why did he fight so hard to get it passed

00:01:02.080 today? It's July 3rd, and this is The Ezra LeVance Show.

00:01:05.280 Shame on you, you censorious bug.

00:01:18.800 Well, tomorrow is the 4th of July, Independence Day in the United States, but the celebrations

00:01:25.320 of the White House began today with the passage of Trump's big, beautiful bill. That's what he

00:01:31.520 actually called it, which sort of makes me chuckle. Trump and his old team did a full-court press to

00:01:37.800 get it through Congress. Obviously, most Democrats didn't like it, but so too did some Republicans,

00:01:43.500 including some libertarians, and they've been out of sorts with Trump recently. They didn't like him

00:01:49.420 bombing Iran. My view is that America had a very limited military action there, and peace through 0.98

00:01:56.100 strength is different than peace through pacifism, but there's been, at least online, it looked like

00:02:01.740 there was a lot of dissent, but at the end of the day, the bill passed. I do want to study the

00:02:06.740 objections of the libertarian wing of the party that was against this bill, and frankly, against any

00:02:12.680 foreign entanglements as well. I think that was the objection to bombing Iran. But I think this vote

00:02:19.540 is proof that Donald Trump is the boss of Washington, D.C., at least for now. Who knows what will happen

00:02:25.960 in the midterm votes just a year and a half away, but for now, he can get a big bill passed. I mean,

00:02:31.840 there's a lot of log rolling, as they call it, lots of deals in there, but I think it is a pretty

00:02:37.420 MAGA bill. It reflects what he said in his inaugural address. I want to take you through

00:02:45.420 a few of the things that were in the bill that is now law. So there's reasons to celebrate that

00:02:50.200 the bill passed, but there were some new job stats for June that just came out, and we love talking

00:02:56.800 about America because it's so interesting. We're right next to it. Donald Trump is a force of nature.

00:03:01.820 What he does affects us in Canada. But I'd like you to, in your mind, compare how we are doing

00:03:08.260 and our approach in Canada to that in the United States. For example, these June statistics,

00:03:13.360 830,000 new jobs for native-born Americans as opposed to 348,000 jobs lost for foreign-born workers.

00:03:24.060 And I think that's been a big push of Trump to get Americans back into the workforce by removing

00:03:31.100 immigrants, including for reasons that they are ultra-low-cost competition for jobs, because

00:03:36.740 many of them are off the books. They're undocumented, as the left says. And Trump is for Americans,

00:03:41.480 not temporary foreign workers. So look at that stat again. Nearly a million new jobs for native

00:03:47.660 Americans, native-born Americans, and compared to a job loss for foreign-born. And in terms of full-time

00:03:57.280 and part-time, the split is 437,000 new full-time jobs. And actually, part-time jobs are being lost.

00:04:06.700 The unemployment rate is what I meant to mention next. It's 4.1% in the United States. That is so low.

00:04:14.600 That's down from 4.2% just a little bit. A lot of pundits expected it to go up. They thought,

00:04:20.500 well, Donald Trump is going to punish the economy with his tariffs. The economy seems to be absolutely

00:04:25.240 loving things. And one of the things that's a trick in Canada, our job numbers look good

00:04:32.620 artificially, not as good as America's, because the government just keeps on hiring. And those are

00:04:39.940 typically full-time jobs, very highly paid jobs. In the United States, the number of people employed

00:04:46.980 by the government fell by 275,000 in June, down about half a million since Biden lost. So the gains

00:04:56.840 are for American citizens in the private sector in full-time jobs. How's that not winning all over

00:05:03.180 the place? Anyways, my point is that was some good news that the administration got today. Let me take

00:05:08.480 you through some of the themes of the big, beautiful bill. And you know what? I don't want to pretend I'm

00:05:12.700 an expert in this bill. In fact, I'd like to get some American commentators to help me unpack it.

00:05:18.540 But again, some of it is really easy to understand. I don't think you need to be an expert to understand

00:05:23.440 what tax cuts in the United States will do to Canada's business community and our competitiveness. I mean,

00:05:30.060 we're already having a tough enough time because of tariffs. But what if they cut their taxes down there?

00:05:36.280 In fact, that's one of the selling points of the big, beautiful bill. It makes the 2017 Trump tax

00:05:43.100 cuts permanent, lowers taxes for individuals and businesses, increases tax deduction for

00:05:49.420 individuals and married couples, tax relief for small businesses and freelancers. One of the moves

00:05:56.260 that Trump did, which I think stole some thunder from Democrats who like to portray themselves as

00:06:01.740 standing for the little guy, is Trump talked about no tax on tips. You know what I mean? So who earns

00:06:07.720 tips? Well, I mean, obviously waiters, bartenders, people like that. No tax on tips. That is such a

00:06:14.520 blue collar, entry level, pink collar campaign pledge. It sounds like something the Democrats would say. No,

00:06:21.700 it's Trump's. He's also not having tax on overtime. Now, I don't know how you exactly police

00:06:27.100 the no tax on tips, because now you're really encouraging. It used to be that workers, and I

00:06:32.920 was a waiter back in the day when I was a teenager, you sort of hid what your tips were. Maybe there's

00:06:40.780 a real incentive to maybe not disclose what you made in cash. How would the government know? Well, now,

00:06:46.440 the more money you make in tips, the more money you make tax-free. So I don't know how it's going to

00:06:49.960 be policed exactly, but in a way, I don't care. The point is the taxes are going down, and especially

00:06:56.040 for, quote, the little people. I mean, it's one thing for the Democrats to say every billionaire

00:07:01.540 is a policy failure. That's a phrase I heard that Democrat who's leading the polls for New York City

00:07:07.940 mayor say. But no, Trump is a billionaire, but I think he's got more blue collar sensibility than

00:07:14.560 any Democrat around. You know, experts say a lot of things, but experts who crunched the math here,

00:07:21.060 the Council of Economic Advisors, says his big, beautiful bill could mean more than $13,000

00:07:25.940 more in take-home pay for a family of four. Like, just stop and think about the size of that.

00:07:31.960 By the way, that's in real U.S. dollars. So that's pretty much like $20,000 Canadian more

00:07:39.040 take-home pay for a family of four. Like, where is that for us? It's not even a dream for us. It's not

00:07:47.340 even a possibility. We all know that everything's going the opposite direction in Canada. It's going

00:07:52.440 to be more taxes, not less. I mean, it's hard to even imagine a Canada where a family of four would

00:08:00.400 get a $20,000 tax credit. I say that in Canadian dollars. He's got special help for small business

00:08:05.920 in there, about expensing. I'm not an expert in accounting, but he's trying to really juice

00:08:11.280 private industry as opposed to the Democrats and the liberals in this country who love government,

00:08:17.460 quote, investments. I hate that. And every politician in Canada does it. When they spend

00:08:23.580 money, they call it an investment. Here's Trump cutting taxes to let the private sector actually

00:08:29.600 make investments. So that's the money side. And I say that because the U.S. economy is about to

00:08:36.640 really have its golden age again. And I know that sounds a little bit jingoistic, but oh my God,

00:08:43.520 it is absolutely going to. In fact, it's already showing strength that exceeds expectations. And

00:08:50.000 with this bill being passed, how could it not? And again, who are our chief competitors? Who is our

00:08:55.400 market? It is a sad thing that they are our chief competitor and they're going to clean our clock.

00:09:01.880 I mean, the brain drain. Talk about the brain drain. If you are a young entrepreneur in Canada,

00:09:07.060 why? If you want to open a factory, which side of the border are you going to put that factory on?

00:09:12.180 Put aside the tariffs alone just to tax it. Speaking of borders, I think that's the biggest

00:09:16.600 part of this bill in terms of impact and importance. I like to follow a young guy named

00:09:21.760 Stephen Miller. He's not a young guy. He's about my age. He's a deputy chief of staff. He is so

00:09:26.740 hard line. He's interested in a lot of issues, but immigration is by far his most passionate issue.

00:09:33.860 And he has taken to Twitter in recent days saying that passing this bill was of civilizational

00:09:39.640 importance. As in, if we don't do this now, it'll never be done.

00:09:44.480 There's estimates vary, but I've heard the number 13 million illegal migrants just walked across that

00:09:50.260 southern border and some from our northern border too into America during Joe Biden's disaster term.

00:09:55.800 And that was on purpose. Of course, there was no physical reason why Biden couldn't keep him out.

00:10:00.380 Trump didn't need new laws or new budgets to do what he did in his first week.

00:10:04.460 He, but I tell you one thing, this big, beautiful bill is so enormous and it's, it's almost obsessive

00:10:13.920 focus is on immigration, which when you think about it has been the core Trump promise in 2016,

00:10:19.900 2020, and 2024. The Customs and Border Protection Service, CBP, that's what they call their border

00:10:27.660 guards. In their last year's budget was $17 billion, which is pretty big. And ICE had a bill, a budget of

00:10:36.000 around $9 billion. This new big, beautiful bill quadruples the border police budget and triples ICE's

00:10:48.700 enforcement budget. All told, the, the global budget for the border, for detention, for deportation

00:10:57.360 is about $150 billion, which is more, I think, than any military in the world, other than the United

00:11:08.060 States on military. I think that's more than any other country in the world spends on their,

00:11:12.360 on their real army. I'd have to check, uh, to be certain of that. But in a way, that's what it is.

00:11:19.380 America was invaded. That's what you call it when foreign nationals illegally crossed the border. That 1.00

00:11:24.980 is, and then, and some of them were not, quote, hostile, but they're, they're illegally. And in this

00:11:31.820 bill, Trump fights back with a staggering amount of resources, hiring 10,000 new ICE agents, ICE is the

00:11:41.080 immigration, I forget exactly what it stands for, immigration control enforcement or something.

00:11:45.700 Those are the folks who basically, uh, arrest illegals and deport them. Uh, it's doubling the 1.00

00:11:50.700 current 6,000 deportation officers. There's going to be 3,000 more border patrol agents along 5,000 more

00:11:57.940 CBP officers. I, you know, I'm just, I don't even know the difference in all these different officers.

00:12:02.180 They're building an army and they are aiming to have 3,000 deportations a day, which is a million a

00:12:09.240 year, which if you do the math, you realize that is not even close to what Biden let in. Even if Trump

00:12:16.420 keeps up that million a year number, he'll have 4 million done by the end of his term.

00:12:22.680 There's still more than that who came in, but this will set things in motion in the right direction.

00:12:28.540 And I can, I can hardly wait to see the knock-on effects it has. I mean, I saw a news story the other

00:12:37.800 day there was a meatpacking plant and it was raided by ICE because so many of the workers of the meatpacking

00:12:44.440 plant were there illegally. And I saw, uh, in the news story, what do we do now? So like, how do we

00:12:51.920 staff the place? Hey, I got an idea way at the back here. How about hire Americans? And the, 1.00

00:12:58.320 the meatpacking business in Alberta, uh, in Southeastern Alberta is overwhelmingly foreign

00:13:05.680 migrants. So I don't think they're illegal in Canada. They may be temporary foreign workers. 0.99

00:13:09.040 I got an idea. How about hiring Canadians? And if you're going to pay an extra five bucks an hour, 0.94

00:13:13.820 uh, suck it up and maybe charge an extra 50 cents a hot dog or something. But, uh, you're a Canadian, 0.73

00:13:22.020 you have a duty to hire Canadians. And, you know, I think you're going to see American teenagers 0.90

00:13:27.260 get summer jobs again. I think you're going to get, see Americans in service jobs again. 0.78

00:13:33.180 Um, is it really necessary to have millions of foreign migrants in your country just to operate 1.00

00:13:39.200 Ubers and DoorDash and, and, and take away services like that? Like how about hire Americans and how 1.00

00:13:45.600 about we hire Canadians? Um, the detention capacity, they're more than doubling into a hundred thousand,

00:13:51.760 um, to hold daily, uh, family detention centers. Um, which is, uh, what Trump has said before. He has

00:14:00.960 said, uh, he, when he was asked, do you break up families? He says, I'd rather not. So they all have

00:14:06.780 to go together. Welcome to a grownup being in charge of politics for once. Hey, there's another

00:14:11.460 move that Trump announced a few days ago with Ron DeSantis, who by the way, was his rival in this

00:14:16.600 year's primary. So I'm delighted to see them working together. And Kristi Noem, the, uh, Homeland

00:14:21.020 Security boss was there. Just let me play a minute of, and you know, I don't know if this was

00:14:25.600 DeSantis' idea or Trump's or might be Stephen Miller's, but one of the problems of course,

00:14:31.240 is immigration judges. First of all, there's a huge backlog. Second of all, they're all

00:14:35.380 ideologues. Well, look at this idea that Ron DeSantis says about using, uh, lawyers and others

00:14:42.040 within the, um, Florida national guard to have super quick hearings, real hearings. They will be

00:14:48.280 real hearings, but they won't be two years from now. They'll be two days from now. Here,

00:14:51.800 take a look at this clip. This is we're offering up our national guard and other folks in Florida

00:14:57.060 to be deputized, to be immigration judges. We're working with the department of justice for the

00:15:02.120 approvals. I'm sure Pam will approve. Uh, but then you have, I'll have a national guard judge advocate

00:15:07.200 here. Someone has a notice to appear. Biden would tell them to come back in three years and appear.

00:15:12.740 Now you'll be able to appear in like a day or two. So they're not going to be detained. Hopefully

00:15:16.780 for all that long, we'll have people here in this facility that can make, you know,

00:15:21.120 it's a bureaucracy. A president's got to deal with the bureaucracy. Now that Supreme court ruling

00:15:25.240 was good because that's going to allow him to be able to exercise article to the way founders

00:15:29.280 intended, but you still have bureaucracy. So we want to cut through that so that we have an

00:15:33.640 efficient operation between Florida and DHS to get the removal of these illegals done. 0.97

00:15:39.460 I think that's the favorite thing I've seen in a week. Anyway, there's a few other things

00:15:42.840 in this big, beautiful bill. I mean, I, as far as I'm concerned, immigration is more important

00:15:47.460 than everything combined, but they do have a tax credit for metallurgical coal. I don't

00:15:52.360 know if you know what that is. There's some coal that you burn for power plants, but metallurgical

00:15:56.960 coal is a special coal that you use to get a certain extreme high heat, high enough to melt

00:16:02.260 steel. Like you cannot make steel without coal. And it's been insane to see this war against coal

00:16:11.060 in the West, including in Germany, in Poland, in the UK and in Canada. So I just wanted to note that

00:16:17.580 this bill talks about actually giving a tax credit for metallurgical coal. Donald Trump believes in

00:16:22.980 energy and he doesn't believe that only China and India get to have it. Obviously there's a boost in

00:16:28.460 military funding, including for the border. There's even a $10 billion Mars mission in there,

00:16:33.220 which suggests that he's still friends with Elon Musk. Look, I'm sympathetic to concerns about the

00:16:39.620 deficit here. Absolutely. But I agree with Stephen Miller, the Trump's deputy for staff. He said this

00:16:46.100 is more important than anything else because it reflects and deals with everything else. You cannot

00:16:52.140 solve any other problem in America without solving immigration, whether it's crime or, or the

00:16:57.640 anti-Semitism and crazy pro-Hamas protests on the street, or the difficulty for young people to get

00:17:04.200 that first job or the high price of housing because there's so many foreign people bidding it out. 1.00

00:17:10.520 There's, there is no issue in the United States or Canada that is not exacerbated, if not even caused

00:17:17.920 by immigration. And once you stop the flow and then reverse it, and that was the re-migration we talked

00:17:24.540 about the other day. Once you start doing that, I think you're going to see the opposite of a vicious

00:17:30.840 cycle. You're going to see what they call a virtuous cycle. We already saw a little bit of that in those

00:17:35.380 job numbers with every 10,000, 50,000, a hundred thousand illegals deported. You're going to see

00:17:42.420 the crime rate fall. You're going to see fewer protests, uh, for Hamas and Iran. You're going to 0.93

00:17:48.240 see Americans getting jobs in factories. I, I think that Trump really is applying a simple,

00:17:54.900 but difficult plan. And he really staked everything on this big, beautiful bill and he got it through.

00:18:01.620 And I know there were those, including Elon Musk who thought it did not deal with wasteful spending

00:18:06.200 enough. And you know what? He's dead, right? One of my observations though, is that Elon Musk comes

00:18:11.560 from the world of Silicon Valley where owners, startup bosses, um, rule almost by fiat. I mean,

00:18:18.920 even if they have a board of directors, people like Mark Zuckerberg within his company have preferential

00:18:24.820 stock and they basically are the deciders. And when you invest in Facebook, you're really investing

00:18:29.420 in Mark Zuckerberg. And when you invest in SpaceX or Tesla, you're really investing in Elon Musk.

00:18:33.820 And we know that because the price of those companies fluctuate. For example, when Elon Musk announced

00:18:39.100 he was going back to Tesla after working in the white house, the price of Tesla went up. Um,

00:18:44.040 when you are the boss of a fast moving, disruptive, uh, visionary company, you make decisions like

00:18:50.980 that. And everyone just obeys you out of corporate loyalty, but also out of affection. That's not how

00:18:57.120 it works in a bipartisan Congress. You have to make deals that you don't like because power is not

00:19:03.200 centered in one person. Of course, the president's the most powerful man in America, but there's a

00:19:08.520 hundred senators who each think they're extremely important, 435 congressmen. And there's

00:19:14.020 a lot of jostling and to-ing and fro-ing to get a bill with this magnitude passed with its

00:19:18.980 immigration provisions will make the deportations more serious. And by the way, it won't be the

00:19:28.160 last country to do so. I predict that prime minister Nigel Farage in the UK will follow this

00:19:34.220 path. He'll see Trump and say, Oh, it's possible. We might do it. I think in the Netherlands, when

00:19:39.580 they're having another election later this year, you could see prime minister here at builders doing

00:19:45.160 the same thing. I think if France ever has a fair election and Marine Le Pen becomes president there,

00:19:51.360 you might see it there. I think the world is moving towards re-migration and Trump is leading the way. 0.99

00:19:56.960 Anyways, that's my update. That's my take on the big, beautiful bill, but I will get some Americans

00:20:01.520 on the show to help correct my errors in the days ahead. Stay with us more after this short break.

00:20:18.400 Well, the liberals are not dumb. They are perhaps the world's most successful political party.

00:20:24.940 They used to have rivals in Mexico. There was a political party there that lasted the better part

00:20:30.300 of a century. And I suppose you could refer to the communist party of the Soviet Union, but

00:20:35.020 actually, I think taken over the sweep of time, the liberal party of Canada is the most successful

00:20:42.340 political force in the Western world. Prove me wrong. Give me an example to dispute that.

00:20:48.740 And one of the reasons is that they're just so good at the practical politics of getting

00:20:54.700 elected in Canada. In the case of Mark Carney, he was not Trudeau. That was half the battle. And

00:21:00.660 on his very first day, he scaled down the carbon tax to zero. The law is still on the books for him

00:21:07.920 to charge that tax. It's just set to zero for now. And more than those two things, I think he knew that

00:21:16.060 there was a certain number of primarily Ontarian sort of Laurentian elites, people who are fairly well

00:21:23.180 off slightly low information, a little bit of an anti-Americanism. And so he was able to whip up

00:21:29.440 their fears about Donald Trump annexing the country enough to move, let's say, a million votes back into

00:21:36.360 the liberal column, which was enough to push him ahead into first place. They are not dumb. 0.96

00:21:42.440 And one of the things they're good at doing is realizing that the liberals are the parties, 0.77

00:21:47.780 the party of the cities and maybe some of the suburbs. They are not the party of the rural parts.

00:21:53.000 In fact, other than occasionally a seat in the north, the liberals really are shut out of rural

00:21:59.120 Canada, which means, you know, you might think that that is a deficit or a strategic loss, but not when

00:22:05.120 the mass of votes and seats are in the cities. In fact, it's an opportunity. Again, think like a liberal

00:22:11.440 for a minute. You can set up the country parts as a foil. You can demonize them. You can run against

00:22:20.080 them. For example, you can demonize, I mean, I think the most obvious example is firearms. You can say

00:22:28.040 that ranchers and farmers who use firearms for hunting or taking care of, you know, a coyote coming to

00:22:35.860 hassle to flock or even self-defense. You can demonize those country owners of long arms to distract, to

00:22:43.900 misdirect away from the actual crime wave that has overtaken our main cities. And there are simply enough

00:22:52.400 Canadians who will buy it to continue putting the liberals into power. How is that going right now? Have the

00:23:00.240 liberals decided to demonize lawful firearm owners again under Mark Carney, the way they did so

00:23:07.080 successfully under Justin Trudeau. And I'm old enough to remember Alan Rock and his gun registry a

00:23:13.220 generation ago. What are the liberals up to? Well, joining us now to tell us the answer is someone who's

00:23:19.460 a bit of an expert in the field. He is the YouTube journalist for Caliber magazine, Canada's only firearms

00:23:26.660 magazine. His name is Dan Fritter, and he joins us now via Zoom. Great to see you, Dan. Thanks for

00:23:31.580 taking the time with us. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. You know, I'm just thinking right

00:23:39.800 after the cabinet chapel, I think it was Andrew Lawton who started putting questions to the new

00:23:45.140 liberal minister in charge of firearms, just about licenses and firearms and what's the assault,

00:23:51.380 like the most basic questions. And the minister had no clue whatsoever. Um, here's a quick flashback

00:23:59.660 of that video. It was sort of a classic. I think, you know, the one. The minister know what an RPAL is?

00:24:04.720 I'm a minister. I do not. Remember. Does the minister know what the CFSC is? I'm a minister.

00:24:14.900 I do not. No. Remember. I'll stipulate chair. That is the Canadians firearm safety course that all gun

00:24:21.020 owners in Canada have to do to get their firearms license. Has the minister ever done the Canadian

00:24:25.440 firearm safety course? The Honourable Minister. Speaker, it's my third week on the job. No,

00:24:30.540 I have not. The Honourable Member. Does the minister know what safety classes and safety

00:24:36.020 demands are expected of law-abiding Canadian gun owners? The Honourable Minister. This is not about

00:24:41.460 law-abiding gun owners, Mr. Speaker. The Honourable Member. How can the minister make that claim when he

00:24:46.980 doesn't know the basic fundamentals of law-abiding gun ownership in this country, Chair?

00:24:51.060 To someone like you who actually knows something about firearms or someone like me who cares about

00:24:55.220 the right to own firearms, we might think that being a know-nothing might disqualify a cabinet

00:25:01.520 minister in charge of firearms. But in the Liberal Party, it's the opposite. The very fact that he

00:25:06.140 doesn't know what an assault rifle is allows him to speak with great confidence, not being worried

00:25:12.480 about getting any facts wrong. And so I think that what you and I and Andrew Lawton might have thought

00:25:17.840 was a foolish and embarrassing clip just showed the brilliance of the Liberal appointment. Maybe I'm 0.88

00:25:23.300 being too silly, but what do you think of that? I would agree. And I think it's also quite 0.97

00:25:29.400 concerning because this is obviously a highly technical file. It has a lot of background to it

00:25:34.560 because we had a pretty resilient and complicated system of firearms regulation pre-existing this

00:25:41.580 government. However, what's happened under Trudeau, who most are aware, kind of made edicts and then

00:25:48.620 government had to react to them. And there was no, from what we can tell, no room for government

00:25:53.420 departments to shift on those edicts, no matter how poorly informed they may have been. So we now

00:25:59.940 have a minister who seems to know very little to nothing about the existing firearms laws. And worse

00:26:07.320 still, he doesn't seem to have a staff underneath him that are familiar with how they could possibly

00:26:15.000 consult the minister and provide him with more information to make more informed decisions and

00:26:19.720 policies. Because as we've seen for the last five years, they've simply been doing what Justin Joe and

00:26:24.760 the PMO kind of ordered through the minister. And moreover, we've had five ministers overseeing this in

00:26:31.480 five years. So it's not like we've had a nice, long, continuous, consistent, you know, hand on the

00:26:38.020 rudder. It's been person after person after person. And each one has seemingly gotten less capable of getting a

00:26:44.380 handle on this stuff. And the whole time, the programs that Justin Trudeau launched primarily in 2020 have just

00:26:51.160 been expanding and expanding and expanding as effectively what seems to be the bureaucrats are just sort of

00:26:57.240 inflating this stuff more and more and more. You know, it's you said a lot of interesting things.

00:27:02.200 So I think one of them is how Justin Trudeau would just govern really by optics first press release first

00:27:08.040 policy second, I want to say something really passionate. And then the smart people will figure

00:27:13.080 out how that's supposed to work. And luckily, that meant a lot of things he had schemed up never actually

00:27:19.080 got implemented, because it was just about the initial press hype. But I mean, it has been so long in

00:27:26.120 that they are actually doing some terrible things. Let me bring your attention to a recent story

00:27:32.600 written by Tristan Hopper. In the National Post, his headline was internal report shows Ottawa doubt

00:27:40.280 over budget gun buyback will ever work. And let me just read you the first sentence. The Liberal

00:27:46.360 government's plan to quote buy back thousands of once legal Canadian firearms is not on schedule and

00:27:53.560 over budget. But a newly released internal report shows that Ottawa is doubtful that it is working

00:27:59.560 as announced. Do you have any update on that? I mean, the idea that they've spent half a billion

00:28:04.280 dollars so far, and haven't actually bought back any guns, it feels like the arrive can app like it

00:28:09.880 feels as much about a source of fraud or padded budgets is actually a gun project. Maybe everything

00:28:15.800 the Liberals do is just a patronage deal. Today, it looks like an arrive can app tomorrow looks like a

00:28:20.840 gun buyback. It's all about just lucrative contracts to buddies. I don't know. You tell me what's going

00:28:25.880 on with the gun buyback. I think effectively, you know, going back to what you'd said previously as

00:28:30.200 well, Trudeau had these really impassioned statements he would make and then, you know,

00:28:34.680 jump how high was sort of the response. For example, in the gun buyback we're discussing now,

00:28:39.800 he made this announcement in the wake of the massacre of Porta Peak. And then they consulted with the New

00:28:44.440 Zealand government because obviously Jacinda Ardern had made international headlines for 1.00

00:28:48.680 making a very similar pronouncement. And no one seems to have stepped in to tell him that Canada

00:28:53.480 is a very different country from New Zealand. We are not an island nation off the coast of countries

00:28:58.360 that have massive existing gun bans. We are bolted to the most heavily armed country in the world,

00:29:02.840 and it's not close for second place where criminals get the primary source of their firearms. So they were

00:29:08.680 embarking on this plan, consulting with the New Zealand police, and it's just been slowly turning

00:29:14.840 forward. So on one hand, they are doing it, they've bought back just over 12,000 firearms from

00:29:19.000 businesses at this point. But it's not getting any, it's taken five years for them to do that. And

00:29:25.160 those are businesses, it's a very small number of the overall firearms are targeting. It's just sort of

00:29:30.280 crawling towards an eventual failure. And moreover, you have to be careful, because I think the

00:29:35.080 government will frame a lot of this discussion around buyback, and they have in the past,

00:29:38.760 around the getting of guns is the success of this program, instead of looking at does it have

00:29:45.240 any impact on public safety. And in that regard, since 2015, violence with firearms in Canada has

00:29:50.840 increased relatively steadily. It is about 19% higher today than it was in 2015. And since 2020,

00:29:57.480 when these long guns were banned by Trudeau, it's still continued to increase. So it's not having any

00:30:02.840 impact on public safety, but it is costing phenomenal sums of money. By the end of this year,

00:30:08.440 with the amount of money that the government has dedicated to it, and the previous spending,

00:30:12.120 it'll be somewhere around $830 million. Now, I just did some quick math. If you say that they've

00:30:18.600 bought back 12,000 weapons, and if we're going to use the $500 million figure, and maybe the figure's

00:30:25.880 bigger now, that works out to about $4,000 per gun. Now, I'm just looking behind you there on the wall,

00:30:32.520 are a number of rifles. Are those the kind of guns, and I can't tell,

00:30:38.040 I think there's some rifles there. I don't know if you have a shotgun there. I can't quite tell.

00:30:41.720 I'm not an expert. Spending $4,000 a gun to buy them back, that seems a little stiff. I mean,

00:30:49.240 those firearms behind you, how much would those cost if you went to a store and bought them?

00:30:53.800 Well, they vary. Probably anywhere between, you know, a few hundred bucks,

00:30:57.640 two more than I would want to admit to my wife. But they've also got, you know, $25,000 rifles.

00:31:03.480 They've got rifles that they're paying six figures for. They're very rare African hunting rifles.

00:31:08.840 It's all over the map. And moreover, the amount of money that's been spent, a lot of people are

00:31:12.840 saying, well, it's because of the setup costs and whatnot. You know, for example, they budgeted

00:31:18.200 $100 million in operating expenses with public safety for this year to oversee phase two,

00:31:23.080 the component that involves individuals. But last year, they budgeted $30 million for businesses.

00:31:27.800 And if they targeted, you know, we bring it back to the 12,000 guns they bought from businesses,

00:31:32.600 that's actually more guns than they thought they were going to get. They estimated there were only

00:31:36.760 9,000 guns impacted at businesses. They got 135% compliance, which is obviously impossible.

00:31:44.200 So their estimates on the individual numbers are likely incorrect as well. And they've now recognized

00:31:49.720 that actually saying that they have a 13 year gap in the data, so it likely isn't accurate.

00:31:54.600 So the numbers that we're talking about already are, they're going to go up. The amount that's

00:31:59.320 budgeted this year with public safety alone is basically $460 million. That's not going to cover

00:32:04.600 the procedural costs that they're looking at. And again, it's not that this program is going to fail

00:32:10.360 because a lack of compliance or anything else like that. It's going to fail because the people who

00:32:14.040 they are taking guns from are literally the ones who are least likely to use a firearm in the commission

00:32:19.160 of a crime. Licensed gun owners account for like less than 2% of all violent crime

00:32:24.280 involving a firearm. So it's, it's, it's specifically targeting a population of people

00:32:29.000 who aren't, aren't contributing to the public safety issue Canada's facing. And Bill Blair even

00:32:35.000 admitted this earlier in the program where he said, we won't be buying guns from criminals

00:32:38.440 unless you have a firearms license. The government isn't going to give you a check for your gun.

00:32:43.160 You know, the whole thing about these, I think in the States, they use the word a gun amnesty.

00:32:46.920 They don't ask you where it got, where you got it from. They just want the gun off the street.

00:32:51.560 If you're literally saying you have to show you have a license to sell to us,

00:32:56.280 by definition, you're not going to get a single illegal gun. By definition, by, by virtue of the

00:33:02.520 engineering of this plan, you cannot get illegal guns off the streets if you require a license.

00:33:08.040 That seems like the opposite of what they should be doing.

00:33:11.560 Oh, it is. And, and your comparison to the arrive can app, it's very, uh, timely for current stuff.

00:33:17.400 But for those that have longer memories, remembering the long gun registrates,

00:33:20.920 this is a program doomed to fail because the targeted population is in country in crime.

00:33:24.920 But unlike the arrive can app, it also can't end because the amnesty that currently exists for gun

00:33:29.800 owners, like right now, if you own these firearms, you just have to keep them and store them away.

00:33:33.800 You can't take them to the range. You can't sell them. You can't transfer them. You just have to keep

00:33:36.760 them. And we've been told by the RCMP to wait for the program to launch so that you can get them

00:33:41.320 sent off and destroyed. Uh, that amnesty is likely going to be around in perpetuity because

00:33:46.840 the crown is not terribly interested in charging people with possession of a prohibited firearm.

00:33:51.800 If you have a license and you didn't even know that it was illegal, because in a lot of cases

00:33:55.320 you're dealing with people that live, like you said, in rural areas there, they may own a firearm,

00:33:59.720 but they are not gun nuts. So to speak, they don't read about it. They don't

00:34:03.800 bother interfacing with a lot of news sources. And because they have banned

00:34:07.800 at this point, tens of thousands of varieties of firearm, there's plenty of people out there who

00:34:12.200 own these guns and are still using them and have no idea that they're prohibited whatsoever.

00:34:16.200 And those are the sorts of people the crown does not want to charge. So this amnesty is going to be

00:34:20.120 around forever, just like the long gun registry amnesty was, which means that the program is going

00:34:24.200 to have to remain funded for just as long. There's, there's no point because these,

00:34:28.920 most of these guns are non-restricted, non-restricted and thus not registered.

00:34:32.920 The government doesn't know where they are, how many there are. So there's no way for the government

00:34:37.240 to a provide an actual compliance number because they don't know. And B say, we're done now.

00:34:43.080 We got to a hundred percent. We're good to go. Um, so they're just going to have to keep putting

00:34:47.240 money into this, like the long gun registry. So as we are now knocking on a billion dollars by the end

00:34:53.160 of this by March, um, that number will just continue to keep snowballing and, you know,

00:34:59.640 potentially we'll see the same thing happen that we saw with the long gun registry. Eventually that

00:35:03.080 number becomes big enough. The average person sort of recognizes they're not getting value for it and

00:35:07.480 they'll just scrap the whole thing. Uh, cause it's, it can't meet its stated goal, but it will certainly

00:35:12.280 cost a lot of money. Uh, hopefully that's sooner rather than later. Yeah. Well, it'd be interesting to

00:35:17.080 see how aggressive and interested, uh, Mark Carney is on this file. Um, but he's a winner. I mean,

00:35:23.880 he just won and he wants to win. And I mean, I'd have to look at the electoral map, but I don't

00:35:29.480 think he has any, um, significant rural MPs. I'm not saying he has zero, but it's got to be close to

00:35:36.280 zero. He doesn't care. I learned, you know, the one factor I learned in our conversation today that

00:35:41.000 I think I'm going to repeat a hundred times is that the gun buyback literally makes it impossible to

00:35:46.920 get an illegal gun off the street because you got to go in with clean hands as they say. And the

00:35:53.000 whole point of the gun is to get the dirty hands guns. That's just unbelievable. It's a perfect,

00:35:59.640 uh, encapsulation of the modern liberal party, complete, complete virtue signaling, uh, not

00:36:06.760 actually accomplishing a policy objective, spending as much money as possible as imaginable and, um,

00:36:15.000 no, no, no, no sunset on their new office. And, you know, there'll be people getting pensions. 0.79

00:36:22.360 There'll be, this could be a government office that's open for a hundred years. I, I, uh, I,

00:36:28.120 I guess what I'm hearing from you, Dan is liberal business as usual. Last word to you.

00:36:34.280 Yeah, I think it is. And I think it's interesting to think about how this will probably shape up because

00:36:40.120 the way that I've seen, you know, in the 14 years that I've been covering this stuff now is that

00:36:43.720 the attitudes have shifted quite a lot. And although the regulations definitely impact more

00:36:48.520 rural people and gun owners, um, we're, we're obviously not in a solid economic position. 1.00

00:36:54.120 A lot of Canadians are feeling the squeeze, so to speak. And I think that no matter where you live,

00:36:58.680 whether or not you have a gun owner or you own guns, that, that the cost of this program is starting,

00:37:03.480 it will probably have an impact on the credibility of Mark Carney as a fiscal manager, which is

00:37:09.240 obviously a huge component of his image, because if people are looking at services getting cut,

00:37:14.200 because we have to make, you know, NATO commitments and stuff like that, uh, we aren't made of money.

00:37:18.360 There is no tree in Ottawa that it just falls off of, unfortunately. So, uh, we are going to have

00:37:22.920 to cut things and people will start to look at programs like this and go, well, why isn't this

00:37:26.600 being cut? Why, why can't I get a doctor for three weeks or six months or however long it takes,

00:37:30.760 wherever you live, but we're going to spend a billion dollars taking guns from people who have

00:37:34.600 licenses that say you've literally not committed a crime. Uh, that doesn't make a lot of sense to

00:37:38.600 anyone. So, um, it might take some time to get there, but I, it might have an actual impact and

00:37:43.640 it'd be interesting to see how guns may elevate into a broader political perspective than being the

00:37:48.280 niche issue it's historically kind of been regarded as. Well, we'll keep our eyes on it. Dan Fritter

00:37:53.960 from caliber magazine. Great to meet you. Thanks for your time with us today. Thanks for having me.

00:37:58.760 Right on. Stay with us. More ahead.

00:38:13.320 Hey, welcome back. Your letters to me.

00:38:16.840 On re-migration, Sherry Hinton says, I love what president Trump is doing. I live in Arizona,

00:38:21.800 border state. It's time action is taken. I hardly can afford food, let alone have non-citizens take 1.00

00:38:27.640 my children's food. Bravo to our president. Yeah. I, I think Arizona, Texas, uh, places like that.

00:38:34.360 I mean, Trump is sending home the Haitians. He has had tens of thousands of Haitians that are there on

00:38:40.120 sort of a special pass because things have been so awful in Haiti. It's not a permanent pass. He's

00:38:45.960 sending them home. Uh, TCZ 7742 says, the problem is Carney will see this as an opportunity and get the

00:38:55.080 re-migration to come up to Canada. You know what? Don't, don't give him any ideas, but it wouldn't

00:39:00.280 surprise me. I mean, my theory is those Swedish Somalis took the payment from Sweden and are moving 0.99

00:39:06.280 to Ireland because they're, they are moving on to green fields, greener pastures. We are so unsavvy

00:39:13.880 in Canada. It makes me sad. One last letter on Glastonbury. That was that music festival in the

00:39:19.640 UK that had all sorts of pro Hamas commentary. Razor says, the saddest part is that he likely won't

00:39:26.120 face any legal repercussions. Tommy Robinson gets in prison for exposing the truth about Islamism, 1.00

00:39:32.280 but this guy walks free like nothing happened. I think you're exactly right. In fact,

00:39:35.080 Tommy made a tweet to that effect. I think it was yesterday. He said, if he had gone on stage and

00:39:40.600 said the insane things like, and it was more than that first initial clip, there was a whole rant

00:39:46.440 he went on about death to him and death to him. Um, Tommy would have been arrested that moment. Yeah.

00:39:53.000 There's two tier justice in the UK, isn't there? Well, that's our show for today until tomorrow.

00:39:58.440 On behalf of all of us here at rebel world headquarters to you at home. Good night and keep fighting for freedom.

00:40:05.080 yeah 0.88

00:40:07.080 dead 0.97

00:40:08.840 it

00:40:09.000 yeah

00:40:09.880 calm

00:40:11.000 you

00:40:17.720 qué

00:40:20.040 absolutely

00:40:20.360 yeah

00:40:20.600 yeah

00:40:23.260 yeah

00:40:25.880 yeah

00:40:27.420 yeah

Rebel News Podcast - July 04, 2025

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' passes, declares war on illegal immigration

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