Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ What's next for Canada after the chaos in Ottawa？

00:00:00.000 Hello, my friends. Boy, I'm still digesting what happened in Parliament. What a move

00:00:04.560 by Chrystia Freeland. I despise her and Trudeau in equal measure, but she sure knifed him in the 1.00

00:00:10.300 back. Just incredible. What a pleasure to see. I want to tell you what I think is going to happen 0.94

00:00:15.420 over the next few weeks and months. By the way, spoiler alert, I don't think Trudeau is going

00:00:20.060 anywhere until he's thrown out by voters months from now. But let me invite you to get the video

00:00:25.640 version of this report by going to rebelnewsplus.com and clicking subscribe. It's eight

00:00:30.320 bucks a month, which might not sound like a lot of money to you, but boy, that sure adds up for us.

00:00:35.860 One more thing before you get to the podcast. Do you ever feel like you need a translator

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00:01:11.900 rocklink.com. That's Rocklink with a C, info at rocklink.com. All right, here's today's podcast.

00:01:22.540 After yesterday's detonation by Chrystia Freeland, how exactly are things going to play out?

00:01:40.240 I'll give you my predictions. It's December 17th. This is the Ezra LeVant Show.

00:01:44.200 You fighting for freedom! Shame on you, you censorious bug!

00:01:52.540 Just incredible, Justin Trudeau being given a body blow by his own right-hand woman. Sort of 0.97

00:02:06.320 incredible to see. And the scheming behind it was just delicious that she waited until the morning

00:02:12.920 of the budget update to make the announcement. But really, the chutzpah of Trudeau did tell her on

00:02:17.680 Friday, you're going to deliver the worst budget in history, and then I'm going to immediately fire

00:02:23.300 you and give you some token job. Basically, go out and wear this atrocious budget, and then I'll demote

00:02:31.140 you. What did he think was going to happen? Anyhow, it's sort of interesting to watch. So what did Justin

00:02:36.880 Trudeau do? Well, yesterday he dodged question period. And he dodged it again today. I mean,

00:02:43.000 why would you think he would go to answer such impertinent questions, first of all, from the

00:02:48.340 opposition, and second of all, from the media? But he has his priorities. Last night, he gave a

00:02:54.340 fundraising speech. Imagine being the kind of person that donates more than $1,000 these days to hang

00:03:01.120 out with Justin Trudeau. I mean, really, unless you're part of the liberal Hamas caucus, some lobbyist 0.74

00:03:07.160 or someone with a contract with the government. Who would do that? Here's Trudeau with his favorite

00:03:12.660 people, those making him rich. Thank you all for being here tonight. It's obviously been an eventful

00:03:19.600 day, and it has not been an easy day. But I wanted to come here tonight and speak with you, dedicated,

00:03:27.500 devoted members of the Liberal Party, because you, not me or any other politician,

00:03:34.500 are the beating heart of this movement. You are the ones that never shy away from knocking on doors,

00:03:42.340 from making phone calls. Pierre Polyev is uninterested in building more homes, delivering vital supports,

00:03:52.740 creating good jobs, or even as we saw with his opposition to our GST tax break, he's opposed to even

00:04:01.780 cutting taxes. That's a given with the Conservative Party. But what makes Polyev different,

00:04:09.620 is that he's willing to actively bet against Canadians and Canada. He says Canada is broken,

00:04:18.180 while actually trying his damnedest to break it. See, we're not living in simple times. The world is

00:04:26.740 increasingly complex, unstable, and dangerous. And in this new global reality, we must all pull together.

00:04:37.860 I love this country. I really do.

00:04:44.420 I trust Canadians. There is no place I'd rather be than Canada, and it is the absolute privilege of my

00:04:53.700 life to serve as your Prime Minister.

00:05:02.500 Now, Canada is the best country on earth, but it's not perfect. That's why I wake up every single day,

00:05:12.900 thinking about how to make this nation work better for all Canadians. That mission to consistently put in

00:05:21.300 the works so that we're living up to our ideals and values. That's at the core of what makes us

00:05:28.980 liberals. And it's why you show up here, even on the toughest days, as a party.

00:05:35.300 You know that the only thing that ultimately matters is fighting like hell every single day to make life

00:05:50.100 better for Canadians. And that's what you do. Well, Parliament is about to rise for the Christmas

00:05:57.060 season. Expect a very long break from them. And during that break, lucky for Trudeau, there is no

00:06:03.220 way to have a non-confidence vote to vote for the fall of the government. And frankly, even if there was

00:06:09.620 such an opportunity, I would bet he would win it. I mean, Jagmeet Singh and other pension grabbers,

00:06:18.020 they want to make sure the election doesn't come before they are fully vested. I just want to play it

00:06:23.220 again. Here's Jagmeet Singh the other day being asked repeatedly, will you vote no confidence? He

00:06:28.180 kept saying Trudeau should resign, but he's not going to do anything about it. This was one of my

00:06:32.980 favorite scrums of all time. People realizing, I don't know, is Jagmeet Singh this dumb or is the media 0.99

00:06:39.620 dumb for letting him get away with it for years? Remember this? Right now, Canadians are struggling 0.99

00:06:44.740 with the cost of living. I hear it everywhere I go. People cannot find a home that they can afford.

00:06:49.780 They can't buy their groceries. And on top of that, we have Trump threatening tariffs at 25%,

00:06:55.700 which put hundreds and thousands of Canadian jobs at risk. And instead of focusing on these issues,

00:07:03.300 Justin Trudeau and the Liberals are focused on themselves. They're fighting themselves

00:07:06.980 instead of fighting for Canadians. And for that reason, today, I'm calling on Justin Trudeau to resign.

00:07:12.180 He has to go. Will you declare no confidence in the Liberal government as soon as possible?

00:07:16.740 All tools, all options are on the table. People are hurting, people are struggling,

00:07:23.460 and so all options are on the table. Just to clarify, you're calling for him to resign,

00:07:28.180 but you are not willing to vote no confidence in his government? How do those two things connect?

00:07:33.540 All options are on the table. All options.

00:07:36.660 What does this mean for your support with the Liberals, though? How can you say he needs to resign,

00:07:42.020 but then you're not telling us what you're going to do for non-confidence?

00:07:44.820 I'm telling you that all options are on the table.

00:07:49.380 Will you support the Fez? And also, are you willing to continue to support the Liberals

00:07:52.660 if there is a different leader aside from Trudeau?

00:07:55.380 Right now, that's not in front of us. There's no votes in front of us. But we will take each vote.

00:07:59.620 And right now, literally, everything's on the table.

00:08:03.300 Mr. Singh, that all options are on the table. So why are you holding out the option to still

00:08:08.340 support this government? I understand that you're saying that you might, you know, trigger a

00:08:12.740 confidence vote, but why are you still holding out the option? What is the glimmer of hope that

00:08:17.140 you're seeing to possibly support the Fez or possibly support this government in some other way?

00:08:21.460 Depends on the votes. And so I want to make it very clear. Justin Trudeau has to go. He has to

00:08:26.420 resign. And because of that, all options are on the table. And we'll look at each vote and we'll

00:08:31.780 make a decision. But now, all options are on the table. Paul Wells. Go ahead, Paul. Go ahead, Paul.

00:08:37.380 The room behind you, sir, that room behind you is a parliament. The government continues to govern

00:08:43.220 as long as MPs continue to have confidence in the government. You have no say over who the leader of

00:08:49.700 the Liberal Party is. Will you support the government or are you withdrawing your support

00:08:56.580 from the government? With respect to that, I've said that all options are on the table.

00:09:02.100 That means everything is possible. But what is clear, given what we have seen,

00:09:07.300 Justin Trudeau and a Liberal government that are focused on themselves, they are infighting at a time

00:09:11.700 when people cannot even do their groceries. They can't even find homes that are affordable. And we've

00:09:17.140 got the threat of Donald Trump and 25 percent tariffs that mean hundreds of thousands of jobs

00:09:23.300 are at risk. Because of that, I'm saying very clearly that Justin Trudeau has to resign all

00:09:29.060 options on the table. But look, even if Jagmeet Singh suddenly thought that an election was in his

00:09:34.420 interest, because that's the thing, he'll probably get wiped out too. Even if a majority of MPs objected

00:09:39.860 to Trudeau now, there's no instrument. There's no way to get it done. And if you think that Trudeau is

00:09:46.740 going to resign out of some sense of duty, I think you misunderstand him. He is impervious to peer

00:09:53.780 pressure because he doesn't think he has peers. Justin Trudeau thinks he is morally and cosmically

00:10:01.860 superior to the rest of us. He looks at his fellow MPs not as allies who are in the trenches with him,

00:10:07.940 but people he has blessed with his sanction to run for the liberals. He looks at every single person

00:10:13.860 in his government and he says, you're there because of me. Your power is because of me. You're fame is

00:10:18.420 because of me. Your riches are because of me. You don't even deserve me. The idea of peer pressure

00:10:24.900 doesn't work on a guy who thinks he's superior to you. He disrespects the media even worse.

00:10:31.300 There's this CBC host. I love the fact that I can never remember his name. That's how it ought to be.

00:10:36.500 He's so unimportant in the big scheme of things. I first noticed him, I think his name is Cochran

00:10:42.100 or something, in one of the campaigns where Trudeau was giving freebies to journalists.

00:10:48.020 And some journalists declined to take it because you don't take a free handout

00:10:51.380 from a politician you're covering. Well, not this guy. He took the free poutine from Justin Trudeau.

00:10:56.660 And watching Justin Trudeau just sort of relish that moment of you are so easily bought off

00:11:01.540 with something I'll never forget. Take a look.

00:11:07.140 It's for you, David. It's for you. No, no, no, no, no.

00:11:12.740 You know what I mean? Hey, the party always supports the CBC.

00:11:18.020 Oh, who's gonna taste it? Who's that? We want to slow him down.

00:11:22.740 Yeah, well, that guy got a promotion, obviously. And you can see why the other day,

00:11:27.460 uh, before Christian Freeland detonated, this same liberal government journalist,

00:11:33.940 the same guy who took the free poutine, he was mad that Pierre Polyev, the leader of the opposition,

00:11:40.100 was daring to oppose Trudeau. That he wasn't, you know, repeating Trudeau's message track.

00:11:45.380 Just incredible. Do you remember this?

00:11:46.580 So, Kate, on that, like all the national leaders get together in the cabinet room. That's where

00:11:50.340 they met, apparently. And, and they were all asked to not say things like the border is broken. And

00:11:54.420 in about 45 seconds, Pierre Polyev says the border is broken. And then he leads off question period

00:11:58.980 about the broken border. Right.

00:12:00.420 This is exactly the sort of thing they're all being asked not to do because it, it, it helps

00:12:05.540 the U.S. news cycle and helps the president-elect's argument.

00:12:08.100 Uh, you know what? The worst of all, are, you know, that phrase is a lovely phrase. I think it's a British 1.00

00:12:13.380 phrase, a barroom Napoleon. Have you ever heard that? You know what a barroom Napoleon is?

00:12:18.420 You can probably imagine that. It's someone at the pub who's opining very loudly. And the more

00:12:23.780 he drinks, the louder he gets and the stronger his views are. And I'll do this and I should do

00:12:28.500 this. And he's just a barroom Napoleon. He's, he's not actually a fighter in the world. He's

00:12:33.060 just someone who likes to hold court and, and say things very loudly and very passionately, but

00:12:37.940 nothing ever comes from it. The liberal party is full of ballroom, barroom Napoleon, barroom,

00:12:44.260 not ballroom, barroom Napoleons. I mean, a number of them have tweeted or signed a letter,

00:12:50.900 but you don't see any of them actually quitting the liberal party. Even Chrystia Freeland

00:12:54.820 has not quit the liberal party. In fact, she said she's going to run again. She wants to be the leader.

00:13:00.740 So you have these barroom Napoleons talking tough about quitting, but they won't.

00:13:05.620 You don't even have a mechanism for them to call a question, to put the question.

00:13:11.620 It's just not going to happen. The governor general will not act just because there's gossip out there.

00:13:18.260 Justin Trudeau has the confidence of the House of Commons. Prove me wrong, you can't.

00:13:23.860 So Parliament's about to go on a very long break. They always get longer holidays than the rest of us.

00:13:28.660 They get huge summer holidays. They get, they always get weeks off where you and I get days off.

00:13:33.540 So they're about to break for a month, maybe a month and a half.

00:13:38.260 We will be back in January. And by the way, you might recall, that's the deadline

00:13:42.900 for Donald Trump to say Canada has to get its house in order. That's when the tariff deadline is.

00:13:48.340 Donald Trump's inauguration will be on January 20th.

00:13:53.060 And he said he expects the border problem to be resolved by then. Mexico said,

00:13:56.660 no problem. They got on it right away. Trudeau. Well, that's the whole point here is Donald Trump's

00:14:03.220 tweet saying that border better being fixed was sort of the first domino in a series of dominoes

00:14:08.340 that actually led to the crisis yesterday. Isn't that funny? Donald tweets are so,

00:14:12.660 Donald Trump's tweets are so powerful.

00:14:14.260 But like I say, Justin Trudeau probably likes the idea of a trade war with the United States

00:14:23.860 because that way he can run against Trump instead of running against Polyev.

00:14:27.700 That way he can blame Trump's tariffs instead of his own economic mismanagement.

00:14:32.740 I think it's going to be a disaster. I think it's going to make everything worse in the country.

00:14:35.780 And I do not think he will actually win for Trudeau. But I think that's his strategy.

00:14:40.580 So back to these liberal barroom Napoleons and the ones too afraid to say anything. I think if

00:14:47.380 you're a liberal, unless you are in the ultimate liberal heartland of downtown Montreal and downtown

00:14:53.140 Toronto, you're going to get blown away. If you are a liberal MP, you know it's lights up. Like I say,

00:15:01.620 on Monday night, they had a 60%, 6% in the by-election in BC, the conservative candidate got 66%.

00:15:10.580 That's such an astonishingly high number. Granted, it's a by-election, but what a good temperature

00:15:15.700 taking. Remember, BC, Trudeau used to claim that was his home away from home. They hate him out

00:15:20.980 there. You know, if you're a liberal MP, it's lights out. I saw a new poll by David Coletto,

00:15:26.260 my favorite pollster, because he leans liberal. 11% approval in the latest poll, just absolutely

00:15:32.980 falling off a cliff. 11% of Canadians. You have to gather nine Canadians before you find the ninth 0.92

00:15:40.100 one who says, yeah, I approve of Trudeau. So do you want to end your lovely career now or in six

00:15:46.100 months? That's the real question. If you're a liberal MP, if you go to the polls now, if you

00:15:50.980 get all tough with Trudeau and say you got to leave, and if you vote non-confidence, all right,

00:15:54.980 you're in a vote in 35 days, really. That's how long the campaign is. Do you really want to do that

00:16:00.020 now over Christmas time because Chrystia Freeland chose this time? Or do you, instead of having a 0.82

00:16:04.420 random start to the campaign, do you want the timing of your own choosing? Now look, you're still going

00:16:08.020 to lose. But at least if it's later, you get your pension vested. And Trudeau and his friends in the

00:16:15.060 poutine media will help him with his campaign. They will see spending and other astonishing promises

00:16:21.620 more than you have ever seen in your life. If Trudeau can rack up a 62 billion dollar deficit

00:16:28.020 this year, imagine what he would do in a campaign. Why wouldn't he announce a hundred billion dollars?

00:16:34.820 Why not? Why not say it? I mean, either he keeps a promise or he doesn't, but he'll say whatever he

00:16:39.380 needs to say. And that's just on the money side. I don't know how he can wring anything more out of

00:16:44.980 abortion or guns or transgenderism or some forced crisis, but whatever button, panic button there is,

00:16:52.260 he'll push them all. Now it's funny because Chrystia Freeland, who I think is really the only

00:16:58.340 possible contender for leadership, even though she is a personal disaster, she is so unlikable. 1.00

00:17:05.540 She was the woman who ordered the bank account seized under the Emergencies Act. She's the one 0.88

00:17:10.180 who's on the Board of Governors of the World Economic Forum. She has been the right-hand woman for

00:17:14.660 every disastrous decision Trudeau made. There is no difference between the two of them. Just like Kamala

00:17:20.580 Harris could not say how she's different in any way from Joe Biden. Well, in the case of Chrystia

00:17:25.460 Freeland, that's 10 years of saying ditto and me too. To pretend that they had some last-minute

00:17:30.980 disagreement is a bit of a joke. Now, I don't know if you saw this book online. I hadn't heard of it

00:17:36.500 until yesterday. A new book called simply Chrystia, like Hillary or Kamala. A loving biography was set

00:17:44.820 to be released in February. Now, the publisher is speeding that up. They're releasing it now.

00:17:50.100 What a loving biography. That's her campaign book. She was planning on pulling that trigger in February. 0.91

00:17:58.820 Now, I really think they are going to drag it out a little bit. I mean,

00:18:02.020 not just there's no pressure on Trudeau to do the right thing, but he loves being prime minister. Not

00:18:09.700 the actual work of governing, but the accoutrements, the perks. He loved going to that Taylor Swift

00:18:15.140 concert. He loved hanging out with teenage girls. They're his favorite. Trading friendship bracelets.

00:18:21.380 He loves going on private jets, including to beach holidays. Hey, where do you think he's going this

00:18:26.100 Christmas? He loves that luxury lifestyle. He's not taking Sophie around anymore, but he's taking his

00:18:31.540 kids on private jets. Who wouldn't want to? He loves the perks and he lives for the authoritarianism,

00:18:38.420 for the self-congratulations, for the adulation, for the power. That's why he went to the donor dinner

00:18:43.700 last night. He loved it. He'll let Dominic LeBlanc try and do the hard work. I don't know what work

00:18:49.860 he could possibly do. Everything's falling apart in the country. But I think this will all end soon,

00:18:55.940 and it'll end after a campaign where the only people for Trudeau are the CBC, other bailout media,

00:19:03.940 lobbyists, and Islamists. I mean, tell me another demographic group who would support Trudeau.

00:19:10.100 I think Pierre Polyev will have a huge win, perhaps too huge a win. What do I mean by that?

00:19:17.780 Sometimes a coalition can be too big. You have too many disparate groups within a coalition.

00:19:24.100 You'll get differences of opinion that might paralyze you. Sometimes it's good to have a majority,

00:19:28.660 but not a huge majority, because you need to be able to make decisions that won't offend,

00:19:33.700 that will offend sometimes someone. And look, if Pierre Polyev wins, even with a huge majority,

00:19:40.260 his problems will be huge as well. Not just the deficit and the taxes and the trade war with the

00:19:46.500 United States, but the other issues, housing, inflation, groceries, etc., the price of energy.

00:19:52.340 4.9 million illegals. There are 4.9 million people in Canada today who must, by law,

00:19:59.940 leave within the next 12 months and two weeks. That's not going to happen on its own.

00:20:05.780 How's Pierre Polyev going to deal with that? And through what systems? The systems are rigged.

00:20:11.460 The Senate is dominated by liberals and they don't care. They can't be subject to election. They'll 0.73

00:20:16.980 block for Trudeau. The courts will do much of the same. Civil servants will do much of the same. 0.95

00:20:21.860 There's other interest groups like immigration scammers, not just the lawyers, but the colleges.

00:20:26.820 But a huge mandate, I don't know, maybe Polyev is up to it. He needs to be bold,

00:20:32.580 like Donald Trump, Canadian style, but he needs to take a hatchet to things, not just a scalpel.

00:20:38.900 I mean, if it doesn't happen in the first year, if Pierre Polyev doesn't make the big changes in the

00:20:42.580 first year, it likely will never happen. He's going to have to spend some of that huge political

00:20:48.340 capital. He'll have a ton. He'll have the biggest election result in Canadian history, I predict.

00:20:55.300 And he's going to need it for the hard work ahead.

00:20:58.980 Stay with us. An interview with our friend Franco Teresano, next.

00:21:02.180 Yesterday, Ottawa was the center of attention for the whole country,

00:21:16.660 as the deputy prime minister and finance minister detonated herself just hours before the fall

00:21:23.460 economic update, sort of a mini budget, an update on the budget. Her political machinations stole the 1.00

00:21:30.580 spotlight and led to cabinet shuffles and even a comment by Donald Trump, who seems to side with

00:21:37.860 Justin Trudeau ahead of Christian Freeland, who he called toxic. I think he's just poking around with

00:21:44.260 what he calls Governor Justin Trudeau. The whole country was talking about politics and will Trudeau

00:21:49.940 resign? Will Jagmeet Singh continue to support him? But lost in the shuffle was the budget update itself,

00:21:58.180 an astonishing $62 billion deficit. What else is in there? Who's minding the store? Why the liberals

00:22:05.220 fight amongst themselves? Joining us now to talk about this is, you know who, our trustworthy friends

00:22:11.380 because they don't take any government money. I'm talking about the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

00:22:16.500 and their outstanding leader, Franco Teresano. Franco, great to see you. I know, like all of us,

00:22:21.140 you were focused on the political intrigues, but you also looked at the actual budgetary documents

00:22:27.460 themselves. Tell us that story, because we already heard the politics. What's in the numbers?

00:22:33.540 Well, just when you think Justin Trudeau's budget couldn't get any worse, he proves you wrong.

00:22:41.060 And I'm glad we're actually talking about the numbers, the dollars and cents, because

00:22:45.060 this budget update was a disaster. So all year you had Trudeau and companies saying they won't

00:22:52.980 exceed their fiscal guardrail of $40 billion deficit. In and of itself, that's insane,

00:22:59.620 a $40 billion deficit. Then what do we learn from the budget update? We learned that Trudeau drove

00:23:06.180 through his own fiscal guardrail by more than $20 billion. So he ran a $62 billion deficit last year,

00:23:17.700 which is nuts. How? How did he do it? I mean, I can guess, but you tell me,

00:23:23.220 was it like, what did he spend it on? I guess is what I'm saying.

00:23:27.940 Well, look, I can tell you what the government claims and let's poke some holes through it, right?

00:23:32.500 The government claims that there is some one-time expenses that nobody could have foresaw,

00:23:37.700 which is why the budget blew through the guardrail of $40 billion to $62 billion. But like,

00:23:45.700 none of that even passes the slightest sniff test. So number one, even without those unexpected

00:23:52.100 expenses, well, they still would have blown past the $40 billion deficit. Number two,

00:23:58.100 this year's deficit is supposed to be about $48 billion. So even without those one-time expenses

00:24:04.900 this year, they're breaking the fiscal guardrail. Number three, Ezra, as you are well aware of,

00:24:10.580 this isn't the first time that Trudeau has blown through a budget target. You'll remember all the

00:24:15.300 way back in 2015, he promised these tiny little baby deficits of less than $10 billion and a balanced

00:24:22.100 budget by 2019. Well, of course, we now know today that Trudeau missed that balanced budget by $20

00:24:28.900 billion in 2019. But more to the point, Ezra, like what happens when a one-time expense comes up for

00:24:35.780 any prudent family or business? Well, you cut back spending elsewhere to deal with that issue,

00:24:40.980 but that's not what's going on with Trudeau. They're spending like drunken sailors on so many different

00:24:46.740 things that they should be able to find savings in every single area of their budget.

00:24:52.820 Can you give me an example of one of these so-called one-time unexpected expenses? I mean,

00:24:58.340 they have entire office buildings full of economists and bureaucrats and people studying

00:25:03.540 and calculating the idea that they just have a whoopsie of $20 billion is unacceptable and unbelievable.

00:25:09.860 But what are they pointing to as an excuse? It sounds like the great train robbery or some sort

00:25:16.580 of heist. Yeah, well, so I have to be upfront. I'm not a lawyer, so this one's a little bit difficult,

00:25:22.900 but the biggest expense, the bulk of it, had to do with some legal issues over indigenous expenses.

00:25:30.180 That was the big ticket item that the budget update pointed to. But even if you take that for granted,

00:25:37.380 we already kind of poked through those holes of the government's claims in the previous Q&A,

00:25:42.820 right? In the sense that even if you remove that big ticket spending expense that they couldn't

00:25:47.780 have foreseen, there's still $48 billion deficit this year.

00:25:53.460 You know, it's madness and I just don't get it. I heard, now let me move into the realm of political

00:26:00.420 gossip because I heard that, of course, Mark Carney, the former Bank of Canada,

00:26:07.140 governor, former Bank of England governor, big shot at the World Economic Forum, big shot at the

00:26:11.700 end, like the ultimate globalist. I heard he was considering taking the position. I know Trudeau

00:26:16.980 made him the special advisor for the economy. From what I heard, he's sort of backing away from this

00:26:23.140 bonfire. I mean, whoever takes over, and it's Dominique LeBlanc, pretty much the only grown up in

00:26:30.180 cabinet, I think we can all say. This is just thrown on top of him, along with, oh, you know,

00:26:35.860 public security for portfolio. He's got about half a dozen things because in her own way,

00:26:40.980 Chrystia Freeland, even though she did a disastrous job, she was sort of the jack of all trades for Trudeau. 1.00

00:26:47.620 So it's all on Dominique LeBlanc. There's no way one person can do this.

00:26:51.540 Who, I don't know if he's, I mean, I suppose they're going to go into an election before too

00:26:57.700 long anyways. But if you were Mark Carney, or if you were someone who was tasked with being

00:27:03.620 the finance minister, put aside politics, how would you even go about getting out of this mess? Like,

00:27:10.100 let's say you were Donald Trump, a corporate turnaround artist, or let's say you were Elon Musk,

00:27:14.980 a get-or-done entrepreneur. What would a radical approach look like to try and fix this insane

00:27:21.140 budget? Because it is unsustainable. It's going to sink us. Well, it is unsustainable, right? Like,

00:27:27.300 right now, interest charges on the debt are costing taxpayers more than a billion dollars every single

00:27:33.220 week, right? I mean, look, like in Canada, you pay a federal sales tax to cover interest charges

00:27:39.380 on Trudeau's government credit card, right? That's how bad things are. And you kind of asked if I was

00:27:44.260 Trump or Elon Musk or whatever, well, you got to kind of look at what Trump and Musk are doing,

00:27:49.220 the Department of Government Efficiency, right? We don't need a newly created government department

00:27:54.180 in Ottawa per se, but the mandate of DOGE in the US should be followed in Canada.

00:27:59.940 So number one, start with the little things. I don't know, don't spend millions of dollars on

00:28:05.140 government podcasts that nobody listens to. Don't spend $8 million building a barn. Don't spend more

00:28:11.620 money on food in four days when you go over to Europe than what the average family spends on

00:28:17.140 food in four years. Then you got to do the big thing, right? And the big thing is dismantling

00:28:22.340 the bureaucracy. Trudeau has added 108,000 extra government bureaucrats in less than a decade.

00:28:28.500 He has ballooned the cost of the federal bureaucracy by 73% in less than a decade.

00:28:35.540 You have to cut the number of government employees. Then you have to end corporate welfare.

00:28:41.220 Ezra, cut taxes. Don't hand corporate welfare to multinational corporations. And then you have

00:28:48.180 to do some other stuff too, right? Like getting out of the business of business. Defund the CBC.

00:28:54.100 The government doesn't need a state broadcaster. Privatize the Canada Post, right? Why do we own a

00:29:01.940 postal service? Like it's the year 2024, almost 2025. Sell via rail, right? That crown corporation

00:29:09.700 loses hundreds of millions of dollars every single year. That is just a taste of some of the reforms

00:29:16.340 that we need here in Canada. You know what? We need to adouge a department of governmental efficiency.

00:29:22.900 And I would hope that the next prime minister appoints you, Franco, because you've got a nose for 0.96

00:29:29.220 this stuff for digging around. Can I share with you two contrasting things that happened in the last

00:29:35.220 24 hours? Yeah. Our dollar hit 69 cents briefly. I think it's back above 70 cents. It's around the

00:29:42.740 lowest in years. That's the world sort of giving their appraisal of the health of our entire economy.

00:29:49.140 And at the same time, and I mentioned this the other day, the president of the Japanese

00:29:54.020 huge investment fund called SoftBank goes to Mar-a-Lago, has a handshake with Donald Trump,

00:30:00.020 and announces he's going to invest 100 billion dollars in the American economy with an aim of

00:30:07.060 creating 100,000 jobs. Obviously, he's not interested in the jobs per se. He's interested in the rate of

00:30:12.500 return and the company. None of that is government money, Franco. None of that is a taxpayer grant to some

00:30:19.780 electric battery scheme that Trudeau cooked up. The difference between

00:30:26.260 investment as the way the Canadian government uses it, which means take taxpayers money to give

00:30:31.540 some to some crony versus attracting on your own merits a 100 billion dollar investment. It couldn't

00:30:38.420 be clearer. And I just wish we would choose the path of Trump or Javier Mille, the new president of

00:30:45.220 Argentina. I don't know if you saw, inflation is now completely broken and he turned a surplus for

00:30:51.380 the first time in a generation. If you can turn around Argentina, Franco, you can turn around Canada, 0.65

00:30:58.260 don't you think? Oh yeah, totally. I mean, like the bad news, we don't have to keep reiterating,

00:31:03.140 right? We talk about it all the time and there's so much bad news coming from this government in Ottawa

00:31:07.700 for taxpayers. The good news is that Canada is not too far gone, not even close, right? We're not even

00:31:13.620 close. Like the market is so powerful. Canadians, like let's put this into perspective here. Let's

00:31:18.180 think bigger picture. Canada can and should be the most free and most prosperous country in the world.

00:31:26.100 We have abundant natural resources, diverse natural resources all throughout Canada. We have a very

00:31:33.620 skilled and educated workforce and we are situated right beside the world's largest economy. There is no

00:31:41.380 reason outside of what our governments are doing to us that Canada should not be the freest and most

00:31:47.300 prosperous country in the world. And we can be. All we need to do, and yes, it is this simple,

00:31:53.620 is cut down the size and scope of government. The government regulates too much, it taxes too much,

00:32:01.540 and speaking of inflation, the central bank in Canada, the Bank of Canada, prints way too much.

00:32:08.020 Yeah. You know, there's such an exuberance in industry in the United States. So many things are

00:32:15.460 now being considered possible again. There's no way that $100 billion would have come in under Biden or

00:32:19.940 Harris. Donald Trump's signals to AI and to crypto have given a boost to that sector. His signals to oil

00:32:28.420 and gas. I mean, you could already feel the engines revving up down there. We could do that too. We could.

00:32:36.260 And we could be like Javier Mille. We could be like that president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele.

00:32:45.780 If they just break with the past, in that case, they crack down on crime and also increase prosperity.

00:32:54.020 I don't know if Canada, if our leaders are bold enough, but if we don't do it, we're just,

00:33:00.100 the difference between Canada and the United States is going to continue to grow. I don't know if you

00:33:03.380 remember under Stephen Harper, there was this brief moment where the ordinary Canadian family

00:33:08.100 had a higher income than the ordinary American family. It was just like for about one year,

00:33:11.940 that was the case, largely driven by oil and gas, by the way. Now we're poor compared to them.

00:33:17.860 I don't know, Franco. I just feel like we have to make some bold decisions that are very un-Canadian 1.00

00:33:23.380 by cutting whole departments, privatizing whole industries, or we're going to get lost and

00:33:28.020 left behind as Trump roars back. Well, let me just show you the biggest

00:33:33.540 contrast you can think of and how bad our government's economic policy, if you could

00:33:38.500 even call it that, really is. On the one hand, you have the Trudeau government putting taxpayers on

00:33:44.500 the hook for about $30 billion to multinational corporations like Honda, Volkswagen, Stellantis,

00:33:50.900 and Northvolt, taking money from Canadians and putting taxpayers on the hook for this corporate

00:33:55.860 welfare to multinational corporations. On the other hand, you have the Trudeau government hiking taxes

00:34:02.420 on successful Canadian entrepreneurs, doctors, small businesses through its capital gains tax hike.

00:34:08.900 So hiking taxes on Canadians, giving our money to multinational corporations, that is the exact wrong way

00:34:16.580 to try to grow the economy. Yeah. Wow. We are headed into a very momentous year.

00:34:21.940 This next year will be so strategic in terms of, do we follow the path of prosperity or do we become

00:34:28.500 sort of a European socialist, low growth, failed state? I think the stakes couldn't be higher.

00:34:34.180 Thanks for spending some time with us, Franco. Hey, thank you, Ezra. All right. There he is.

00:34:38.740 Franco Teresano of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, one of the good guys. And I'm not kidding.

00:34:42.660 When I say, Pierre Polyev, if he wanted someone to tackle government waste, you can't look within the

00:34:50.740 system. You don't hire a lobbyist. You don't hire a bureaucrat. You hire Franco. Am I right?

00:34:56.340 I'm going to be making that recommendation when Prime Minister Polyev is invested. We'll talk to you soon.

00:35:13.460 Hello, my friends. Your letters to me is someone named Squish says,

00:35:17.860 Freeland is a Canadian Harris. Yeah, I think that she's more of a doer. I mean,

00:35:24.260 she does have that same word salad, baffle gab talk. But, you know, I disagree with everything

00:35:30.260 she does, but she's got a better work ethic than Kamala Harris. And like, I can't actually tell you 0.99

00:35:36.740 anything Kamala Harris has actually done. I can tell you a ton of terrible things

00:35:41.460 that Christy Freeland has done. Scrammon says, this has given me actual confidence that we can

00:35:47.300 delete this government from Canadian history. When I know Trudeau has left the House of Commons for the

00:35:51.540 last time, then we can begin to heal this battered country. Well, that's what I talked about in my

00:35:56.340 monologue today. There are huge challenges and Pierre Polyev is going to need all his courage.

00:36:00.900 John Harvey says, when she's done, is there any way for accountability or is she immune

00:36:07.220 at that point? Well, you can't really hold someone criminally liable for what they do as

00:36:13.220 a politician, unless it's an actual crime, that is. You can't sue someone for making this policy

00:36:19.380 decision or that policy decision. Now you can sue the government for damages if they committed a wrong

00:36:24.980 against you. I think you'll see some lawsuits against the government for the seizing bank

00:36:29.940 accounts, for example. But I don't think any of that will redound personally to Christy Freeland.

00:36:34.740 I don't think she will be charged with crimes. Well, that's our show for today. Until next time,

00:36:40.740 on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night. Keep fighting for freedom.

00:36:54.980 you

Rebel News Podcast - December 18, 2024

EZRA LEVANT ｜ What's next for Canada after the chaos in Ottawa？

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