Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ While Alberta embraces data centres, New York’s moratorium hands China the advantage

00:00:00.000 Hello, my friends. Today, I'm going to try and make the case for AI data centers. And I know

00:00:04.920 that's a risky thing to do, because it's easy to dislike big tech titans. And I have my healthy

00:00:11.120 skepticism of them too, especially Facebook, which has engaged in censorship for a decade.

00:00:16.340 But I have some questions I want to put to you about the opposition to AI data centers. And

00:00:22.980 is that opposition really a Canadian opposition? Or is it more, oh, I don't know, a Chinese 0.71

00:00:29.140 opposition. I'll take you through it. But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to

00:00:33.540 Rebel News Plus. It's the video version of this podcast. Just go to rebelnewsplus.com.

00:00:43.900 You're listening to Rebel News Podcast.

00:00:46.340 tonight the case for data centers it's july 14th and this is the ezra levant show

00:01:00.540 Shame on you, you censorious bug.

00:01:15.140 Today, the governor of New York put a moratorium on new data centers, a ban for at least a year.

00:01:21.860 Here's her announcement. 0.97

00:01:22.720 These hyperscale AI data centers consume enormous amounts of power, 0.95

00:01:27.440 truly threatening to outpace

00:01:30.280 our grid's capacity

00:01:32.320 and they drive up

00:01:34.480 costs for local rate payers

00:01:36.160 and I refuse

00:01:38.080 to let those costs be passed on

00:01:40.400 to New Yorkers who already

00:01:42.400 paid too much for their utility bills

00:01:44.340 these data centers 0.75

00:01:46.340 require millions of gallons

00:01:48.580 of water straining the

00:01:50.460 local supplies

00:01:51.600 and when powered by fossil fuels

00:01:54.200 they drive up our

00:01:56.340 carbon footprint. They occupy massive amounts of land, potentially displacing agricultural

00:02:04.400 space and open spaces. The bottom line is progress shouldn't arrive with a higher utility

00:02:10.360 bill, deleted water supply, or noise pollution. So we have no choice but to address these challenges

00:02:19.400 created by these massive facilities.

00:02:22.620 That is why today I'll be signing

00:02:25.760 the nation's first ever statewide moratorium

00:02:29.640 on hyperscale data centers.

00:02:32.320 A data center is basically a giant computer center,

00:02:35.680 kind of a factory really with thousands of processors

00:02:39.020 handling the computer demands of everyone

00:02:41.240 with a cell phone or a Netflix account.

00:02:43.740 If you're watching this video now,

00:02:45.480 it's through a data center.

00:02:47.220 So New York needs data centers

00:02:49.320 because New Yorkers use data. You might not think about it, but you use data centers every day

00:02:55.880 for ordinary activities like streaming a movie or listening to a song on Spotify.

00:03:00.540 If you save anything to the cloud, like the photos on your phone, for browsing the internet,

00:03:06.440 for social media, for online gaming, online banking, Zoom calls, all of that stuff needs

00:03:12.840 computing power. And imagine what a big company would use. Think about eBay or Amazon. Think

00:03:19.160 about government agencies or any company that uses big databases from a hospital to the tax

00:03:24.960 department. Basically, everything that runs on a computer, your laptop or your cell phone or your

00:03:30.840 smartwatch, doesn't have the capacity to do all that. That part's handled by the data centers.

00:03:37.320 Then there's the big news. Artificial intelligence is going to need an enormous amount of computing

00:03:42.980 power. So back to Kathy Hochul's ban. She may be stopping new data centers from being built in New 0.99

00:03:49.980 York. It's true, but it would pretty much be impossible to stop New Yorkers from using data

00:03:54.940 and the data centers that comes from everything you do that involves technology, uses them.

00:04:01.340 They're this generation's equivalent to the steam engine during the Industrial Revolution.

00:04:06.160 As soon as New York announced its ban, other left-wing politicians got on the bandwagon.

00:04:12.980 Here is left-wing Senator Bernie Sanders.

00:04:16.200 He wants you to know that even though Governor Hochul actually banned them,

00:04:20.200 he thought of the idea months ago.

00:04:22.720 Months ago, my AI data center moratorium bill was called a radical idea.

00:04:26.880 Today, New York became the first state to enact a moratorium,

00:04:30.220 and a majority of voters nationwide support it.

00:04:33.260 AI must benefit all of humanity, not just a handful of big tech billionaires.

00:04:38.380 you know bernie sanders is himself a multi-millionaire with three homes but he wants

00:04:44.060 to make this a class envy thing except for the obvious point no one needs to do all the things

00:04:49.400 i just listed from watching a netflix show to doing a google search you can still use a paper

00:04:54.780 map instead of using gps on your phone you can still hail a cab on the street rather than ordering

00:05:01.080 an uber it's just that many people choose to do these things and the data centers are there to

00:05:05.820 provide that. Everyone is free to go off the grid. It would be tough to do, but it's still possible.

00:05:11.680 I think another senator made a good point. This isn't really about whether or not we're all going

00:05:17.220 to use computers. It's about who is going to provide that computing power to you, America or

00:05:23.780 China. Here's the last sane Democrat, John Fetterman, looking at the New York ban and saying,

00:05:29.620 China wins. I think people are worried about artificial intelligence. I am. How can you not

00:05:36.800 be? How can it not be terrifying to think of machines that are stronger and smarter than us

00:05:42.400 and that increasingly resemble us? What will happen when driverless taxis are cheaper and safer

00:05:49.160 than taxis with drivers? Well, we're starting to see that. Here's one man physically beating up

00:05:54.940 a driverless taxi i don't think that's going to stop it but you can tell he's stressed by them

00:06:01.200 imagine a world where trucks are driven by ai not truck drivers what will those drivers do

00:06:08.280 those are real questions that we have to answer what do we do with the millions of workers

00:06:12.380 who will be replaced it's a question the horse and carriage industry had to deal with

00:06:16.960 when the car was invented it's a question that countless craftsmen had to deal with

00:06:22.420 when the steam engine was invented. I mean, here's an optimist answer. 250 years ago,

00:06:28.820 90% of people in North America worked on a farm. It took that many people to feed everyone. Now,

00:06:36.080 it's around 2% who are in farming, fishing, forestry. The other, I don't know, 88% of the

00:06:43.140 90% who were on a farm, they went on to do other things that weren't even imaginable at the time.

00:06:49.280 so you've got to be a techno optimist i mean even if you're worried even if you want to make sure

00:06:55.580 that you're not being spied on by companies and governments and the reason for that i think

00:07:01.040 is uh john fetterman's point we will have smartphones whether or not you like it they're

00:07:07.840 going to be everywhere the question is will you have an american-made iphone or a chinese-made

00:07:12.400 huawei we will have ai whether you like it or not the question is whether we'll have ai run by

00:07:19.220 Chad GPT or Grok or run by the People's Liberation Army. What's your choice?

00:07:26.660 I look at the world's tech giants right now and they're overwhelmingly American, from

00:07:30.020 NVIDIA to Apple to SpaceX. Would you rather those be Chinese companies? How about high-tech weapons

00:07:37.540 like drones? I don't think you can put that genie back in the bottle. So who do you want

00:07:42.200 dominating that, Iran and China or America. This is an American debate because that's the center

00:07:50.120 of the world's tech. But just last week, Meta, which owns Facebook, announced that it's building

00:07:56.020 its first enormous data center outside the U.S. in Alberta. They have some elsewhere in the world,

00:08:01.660 but it's their first in Canada. Today, we are thrilled to announce that Sturgeon County,

00:08:06.280 Alberta will be home to Meta's newest data center, our first in Canada and our largest outside the

00:08:12.880 U.S. This 2.9 million square foot facility will represent an investment of more than 13 billion

00:08:20.800 Canadian dollars. We are also making strategic network infrastructure improvements

00:08:35.800 to ensure the region can accommodate future large-scale developments.

00:08:40.460 And this fall, we will launch our annual Data Center Community Action Grants program,

00:08:45.220 which provides direct funding for local nonprofits that support the community.

00:08:50.180 Like all of our data centers, we're proud that the Sturgeon Data Center's electricity use

00:08:54.860 will be matched with 100% clean and renewable energy.

00:08:59.000 In other words, we'll add enough clean energy to the grid

00:09:02.000 to cover the entire data center's electricity consumption.

00:09:05.800 Importantly, META pays the full cost of our data center's energy use, so those costs are

00:09:12.460 not passed on to consumers.

00:09:14.860 Here in Alberta, we are fully funding new generation and grid infrastructure to support

00:09:20.000 our data center, which will improve reliability across the entire Alberta grid and benefit

00:09:25.680 all consumers.

00:09:26.680 Now, what's interesting is who wasn't there?

00:09:29.320 Mark Carney's AI cabinet minister, Evan Solomon.

00:09:32.640 wasn't there and i haven't seen him say a peep about this online a 13 billion dollar investment

00:09:38.740 huge but because carney can't take the credit for it because there's no tax dollars involved

00:09:45.000 the liberals haven't said a word about it not congratulations or wow or this is a great day

00:09:50.600 for canada say only like ai when they get to stand at the podium and announce a government

00:09:55.600 investment where the payoff goes to their connected cronies really wouldn't surprise me if alberta

00:10:01.680 starts getting a lot more of these data centers if Carney comes out against them and applies

00:10:07.260 some sort of tax to them just because Alberta would be excelling again. What a difference

00:10:12.880 between Alberta and the welfare province of Manitoba. Here's Manitoba's premier, Wob

00:10:19.760 Canu, announcing just out of the blue, this was an ambush, I understand, announcing he's

00:10:24.900 scrapping a proposed data center for his province. We're not going to move ahead with the data

00:10:29.640 center in El Le Chien because there's a big threat to the environment and not much benefit

00:10:34.300 to the economy. I reject the idea that we have to be slaves to surveillance capitalism in order

00:10:42.600 to participate in the modern economy. And so the message to any company out there should be,

00:10:50.420 if you want to have a thoughtful, human-centered approach to technology, come to Manitoba because

00:10:56.540 that's what we're interested in total surprise to the company that was planning to build a huge

00:11:00.800 data center there and so weird and conspiratorial a data center itself was somehow going to spy on

00:11:07.380 people i mean it's true computers can certainly spy on you when you're you know going to a website

00:11:12.460 there are cookies that track you when you upload a photo to instagram you sign an agreement to let

00:11:17.660 instagram use your photo for all sorts of their own purposes every website is like that it's called

00:11:22.660 the terms of service. Same with everything you do online. Shutting down a data center, which is just

00:11:27.760 a place where the processors are, isn't going to change any of that. If you're worried about

00:11:32.340 privacy, for example, solve that problem. Blaming the processors in a factory would be like blaming

00:11:39.400 a farm because the steak you ordered at a restaurant was undercooked. That said, I'm glad

00:11:45.840 Wob Canu is coming around on surveillance. You know, he was Manitoba's opposition leader during

00:11:50.560 COVID lockdowns, and he kept pressing the government of the day to go harder against

00:11:55.100 citizens, to enforce the lockdowns, to spy on people. It's a bit weird to hear him suddenly

00:12:00.860 come out against surveillance capitalism, but not about surveillance government, which he supports.

00:12:07.700 Now, I mentioned before that you could just opt out of high tech if you really wanted to, but that's

00:12:12.140 not quite true, is it, when the government is involved? I mean,

00:12:15.240 if you didn't download the arrive can app during covid for example you got a five thousand dollar

00:12:21.600 fine every time you returned to canada but back to the criticisms of data centers there are some

00:12:26.100 real concerns as there would be with any industrial project like a like a car factory or a steel mill

00:12:31.860 you wouldn't want to put one right next to a school or your house because of noise for example but

00:12:37.820 that's easily handled with zoning laws this new metadata center is not going in the heart of the

00:12:43.140 city and here's where the criticism fall apart here here's where you can see why wab canoe had

00:12:49.080 to throw in a conspiracy theory about ai data center spying on you because what's the case

00:12:54.540 against them otherwise well mostly it's just the same as any opposition to large industry

00:13:01.280 except they're not really as noisy as say a regular factory right they're not really smelly

00:13:07.320 like a giant pig farm might be i'm just coming up with examples of other things in our modern life

00:13:12.960 I mean, they don't need a ton of parking like an office tower won't, that would, because they don't cause traffic jams.

00:13:20.360 The construction of the Alberta metadata center will employ about 3,000 workers, it's true.

00:13:26.100 And it'll have permanent workforce of about 300.

00:13:28.760 And you better believe those workers are going to be making a pretty penny building this thing.

00:13:33.100 I mean, $13 billion just to make it.

00:13:35.320 I mean, sure, a lot of that is the computer chips they're buying, but just imagine all the electrical.

00:13:41.000 i mean these things do generate heat as many factories do so how to cool them is an issue

00:13:46.680 water is how we cool most hot things it's how many mines deal with tailings pretty much every

00:13:53.480 factory every power plant every facility uses water they're often built by a lake or a river

00:13:59.400 i mean welcome to industrial life for the last 250 years by the way meta says it has a newer

00:14:06.860 high-tech cooling system that will not require it to use as much water as others it's a closed

00:14:11.780 loop they say another criticism of data centers again the same as you'd hear about say a steel

00:14:17.840 smelter is that it uses energy i mean you're right and again this data center will be building its

00:14:24.320 own natural gas fire power plant to give it electricity so it's not going to tap into the

00:14:29.240 existing system uh with as it would without that and what a great customer for alberta natural gas

00:14:35.680 I mean, if Mark Carney and before him Justin Trudeau and the environmentalists won't let Canada export our fossil fuels, remember that fool Trudeau saying there was no market for our natural gas?

00:14:50.000 He was lying, but fine.

00:14:51.800 So maybe Alberta can use its natural gas itself to make cheap, clean energy to power this new industrial revolution.

00:15:00.520 I've read Meta's plans for the data center.

00:15:03.260 You can find them online.

00:15:04.300 they say they plan to spend quote 60 million dollars in local infrastructure improvements

00:15:09.220 that will benefit the local community and provide grants and funding to local non-profits i'm sure

00:15:14.740 they will they say they'll provide their own energy they'll be net zero on water as a company

00:15:19.720 they'll do all sorts of social benefits but you know what stood out for me from their website

00:15:25.880 announcing the alberta deal the fact that they have 33 of these data centers around the world

00:15:31.380 this is the first in canada and on that same website you could see links to other stories just

00:15:37.740 just a few months ago they announced they're building a new one in indiana and just a few

00:15:43.880 months before that they announced one in texas they've done 33 of these because you if you use

00:15:54.100 instagram or facebook or whatsapp those are all owned by meta you are using a meta data center

00:16:00.040 Do you want the money spent in Indiana and Texas or in Canada?

00:16:05.720 Your choice, I suppose.

00:16:08.020 They have an artist's sketch on their page of what the plant will look like when it's done,

00:16:12.220 and it'll take up some space for sure.

00:16:14.520 And some locals claim to be upset by that.

00:16:16.500 They want a pristine environment, they say.

00:16:18.580 Yeah, sure they do.

00:16:19.460 The same environmentalists who want to blight the landscape with thousands of wind turbines

00:16:23.920 or massive solar panel installations.

00:16:27.040 suddenly they don't like factories like this a fraction of the size i've read the objections to

00:16:33.280 this data center i think they fall into three categories first i think there are the anti

00:16:39.640 everything people they're anti-oil they're anti-pipeline anti-natural gas anti-development

00:16:45.000 they oppose any industry just like they've always blocked pipelines and oil science tankers

00:16:50.320 luckily alberta didn't need ottawa's permission to make this data center happen so let's call

00:16:56.720 this first group the Stephen Gilbeaus, the Greenpeace kooks. They'll be against anything.

00:17:03.300 Just ignore them. The second group are people who are a little bit nervous, wary, skeptical.

00:17:09.360 They're wary, frankly, of Facebook itself, a company that has had a mixed record when it comes

00:17:14.880 to community relations, when it comes to privacy. They were part of the big government propaganda

00:17:21.500 campaign during COVID. There's censors to this day meddling with political speech. Bernie Sanders

00:17:27.400 is counting on this. The essential scariness of a company worth nearly $2 trillion commanded by a

00:17:34.380 billionaire tech bro. It's easy to hate Facebook and any negative feeling you've ever had about

00:17:40.200 Facebook or about Mark Zuckerberg. It's easy to lean into that. I mean, opposing their data center

00:17:46.040 is a rare opportunity to punch back at them.

00:17:49.220 How could you ever get even with them in any other way?

00:17:53.820 But I call this second group, I call them natural skeptics

00:17:56.840 who are worried that a big company will get its way

00:18:00.840 and run roughshod over other concerns.

00:18:03.080 And frankly, even if they don't fully believe Wob Canoe,

00:18:08.380 they'll hear extremists like him talk about surveillance capitalism

00:18:11.940 and wonder if there's not something else going on here.

00:18:15.340 there might be something to it i mean what's really going on in that factory the second group

00:18:21.100 needs to be answered needs to have their questions dealt with straight up more transparency not less

00:18:27.120 answering the questions even kooky questions you know it reminds me of the questions that

00:18:31.940 mcdonald's restaurant gets sometimes i love the series of mcdonald's youtube videos answering the

00:18:38.460 most insane conspiracy theories about mcdonald's and if you watch one of these through it will

00:18:44.080 absolutely cure you of your wab canoeism. Here's one they did on pink goop. What are legitimately

00:18:51.900 in McNuggets? Is there pink goop? Armad, I'm guessing this is the image that you're referring

00:18:56.220 to. It's an image that often gets associated with McDonald's, and it's a question that we get a lot.

00:19:00.860 We don't know what it is or where it came from, but it has nothing to do with our chicken McNuggets.

00:19:05.000 But I want you to see for yourself. So that's why we're here today at Cargill, Canada, to see how

00:19:09.220 our chicken McNuggets are made. With me, I've got Jen, who's a product development scientist,

00:19:14.080 for Cargill Canada, and she's going to walk us through the process.

00:19:17.200 That's right, let's start in the deboning department.

00:19:20.240 And as you can see, the process starts with whole chicken.

00:19:23.280 We separate all of the chicken cuts and set aside the chicken breast meat for Chicken McNuggets.

00:19:29.360 So on this part of the line, the chicken breast that's been separated

00:19:33.200 is being collected into this bin.

00:19:35.280 And this is the chicken breast that we use in the Chicken McNuggets.

00:19:38.880 So next to the bin of chicken breast meats are pushed to the blending room,

00:19:43.120 and we're lifting it up and dumping it into the grinder and adding the ground chicken breast

00:19:47.520 meat to the blender with some seasonings and some chicken skin and then we'll take

00:19:52.400 the mixed chicken meat out of the blender so we can see here here's what it is refer back to the

00:19:58.000 image for armand here's the piku image and here's what we actually we have so it's very different

00:20:03.200 i'm not going to play all those videos for you all the way through but you get my meaning they

00:20:06.320 take on these wab canoe style conspiracy theories and they just answer them completely straight up

00:20:12.320 and i think they did a heck of a job obviously millions of people have watched them i think

00:20:16.640 facebook ought to answer the most insane questions and not let the wop canoes and the bernie sanders

00:20:22.200 of the world get away unchecked but the third group is the worst these are people who oppose

00:20:29.340 meta's data center as senator fennerman pointed out because they're against the west they're

00:20:37.640 against America, they're against Canada. We know that China and Iran and other foreign countries

00:20:42.720 have an information operation going on in Canada right now. CSIS has confirmed it multiple times.

00:20:51.280 Money and messages, activists, spies even, even have some of that in parliament. They're not

00:20:58.980 against AI. They're not against high tech. They just don't want America to be the leaders of AI.

00:21:05.120 They're against Palantir, but not against the Chinese version of Palantir.

00:21:10.160 They're against social media apps.

00:21:12.380 They want them censored, but only American ones.

00:21:16.300 It's like we've seen for years, the opposition to Canadian ethical oil,

00:21:19.800 but not a peep from Greenpeace about OPEC conflict oil.

00:21:24.820 This last group is the whole point to me.

00:21:28.320 My friends, I often wish for the simpler days before cell phones were around.

00:21:32.460 most teenagers i know today wish they were born in an earlier era before cell phones before

00:21:38.780 everything they said and did was recorded forever before everyone was distracted when people

00:21:44.380 were real back in the day and got out of the house and were social creatures

00:21:48.540 listen i wish for that too but wishing won't make it happen the real question is

00:21:53.020 if you're going to have a phone is it iphone or huawei i mean if you want to stop using a cell

00:21:58.800 phone or stop using ai i commend you i really do take back control of your life but trying to stop

00:22:05.320 a data center in canada don't make the chinese embassies day i'm going to look into this issue

00:22:11.900 a lot more in the months ahead i'm setting up a website if you agree with me and if you disagree

00:22:16.200 with me put your points there too are you disagreeing with me because of group a you're just

00:22:21.400 against big industry all right well then say so are you against data centers because you're

00:22:26.780 genuinely worried and people like wab canoe and vernie sanders are exacerbating your worries okay

00:22:31.800 well let's deal with it or you against these data centers because really you want the west to fall 0.68

00:22:37.280 behind places like china let me know and go to our website don't let china win dot com

00:22:44.300 sometimes i think we're winning the war for freedom of speech 0.56

00:22:56.560 That's mainly due to Elon Musk and his liberalization of Twitter and ending the thought police who used to dominate that shop.

00:23:05.300 And I see that it has had a knock-on effect to other U.S.-based social media platforms.

00:23:11.600 Part of this is because the U.S. government, in particular the State Department, has decided to raise censorship issues around the world.

00:23:19.880 Whenever foreign companies try to censor American companies, Canada is making that decision right now.

00:23:26.160 I hope that when the State Department smacks back, it doesn't hurt our country too hard.

00:23:32.080 But at the same time, in the real world, I think wokeness has become acceptable in too many institutions.

00:23:40.440 Over the last few weeks, we've watched astonishingly as the small town of Tabor, Alberta,

00:23:47.540 theoretically the most conservative place in the world,

00:23:49.880 has had a war against anyone who puts up a pro-independence political lawn sign,

00:23:56.720 even though there's a campaign afoot. I'm familiar with other cases in small town Alberta

00:24:02.980 that are just shocking. And it tells me that the cohort of people who have marched through

00:24:07.760 the universities and have learned censorship and learned wokeness are in fact populating every

00:24:14.180 institution in society. It may be that the mighty social media platforms are free for now, but that

00:24:21.200 doesn't mean that there aren't millions of little bureaucrats entering into institutions around the 0.88

00:24:26.340 world. They're going to have their own little domain of censorship. One such censorious place 1.00

00:24:32.580 is the Ontario Ministry of Transportation. They saw the following billboard and ordered it taken

00:24:39.780 down take a look at it here it's rather homemade and it says it has pictures of different politicians

00:24:47.160 you can probably recognize anthony fauci in the middle he's an american uh he was actually he

00:24:54.120 presided over some of the virus research in wuhan if you can believe him there's justin trudeau

00:24:59.420 doug ford um christia freeland there they knowingly lie about safety and stop stopping

00:25:07.900 transmission. If you saw this when you were driving on a highway, you might have a reaction

00:25:13.820 to it. You might say that's true. You might say that's not true. You might say that's

00:25:19.060 an unacceptable opinion. But can the government itself order that taken down because they don't

00:25:28.560 like it? Well, the answer until about five minutes ago was yes, they can and they would.

00:25:33.480 But when they did, the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms got involved, and they became the advocates for George Katterberg, taking the Ministry of Transportation to court.

00:25:44.160 And I am so delighted to tell you that the result is the policy has been struck down as unconstitutional and illegal.

00:25:51.300 Joining us now to talk about it, it's one of the lawyers on that case.

00:25:54.480 It's a pleasure to have you on the show.

00:25:55.880 Thanks very much, and congratulations to you.

00:25:58.220 Darren, tell us about how this story came about, because it actually had a lot of twists and turns. The advertiser, George Catterberg, tried repeatedly to come into compliance with the government's ever-changing rules. Tell me a little bit about the saga that preceded this case.

00:26:17.220 Sure. Thanks for having me on, Ezra.

00:26:19.540 Yeah, so as you alluded to, my client, he originally put up that sign which you showed your viewers.

00:26:25.940 He put that up around two years ago, almost in 2024.

00:26:29.520 And originally, the Ministry of Transportation raised an issue with the logo at the center of his sign there.

00:26:35.760 They're two crossed hammers.

00:26:36.880 So my client's a big Pink Floyd fan.

00:26:39.860 If you know anything about Pink Floyd, the two crossed hammers are from the album The Wall.

00:26:44.520 And my client says that that relates to the oppression of government and what he viewed as the oppressive policies during COVID.

00:26:52.800 So that's why he wanted to put that as part of his logo.

00:26:56.260 So originally, the ministry said that that was a symbol of white supremacy.

00:27:00.380 My client has no idea, and I have no idea, how that could be related to white supremacy.

00:27:05.360 but the the ministry of transportation bureaucrats told us that it was some obscure 1980s ban from

00:27:12.700 texas that used it sounds like they're really reaching here let's put that on the screen just

00:27:16.480 for a second again to show people what you're talking about i don't i don't even see it oh

00:27:21.420 those two that those two hammers there at the top uh you know to to claim that that's a racist symbol

00:27:28.100 is is laughable and it sounds like your client had no idea what they were talking about darren

00:27:33.700 So what did your client do when some bureaucrat says, I found some obscure reference to this symbol in Texas, and therefore we're going to restrict your freedoms here in Ontario?

00:27:44.720 What did your client do?

00:27:46.400 Well, my client thought the message was much more important than just fighting about a symbol.

00:27:50.860 So he agreed, OK, we'll just take down the symbol.

00:27:52.960 He doesn't agree that it's a white supremacy symbol.

00:27:56.000 That was never the intention.

00:27:57.400 Like I said, it's a very obscure symbol, obscure reference to suggest it's white supremacy.

00:28:02.300 But anyways, my client thought the message was much more important.

00:28:05.660 So he thought, well, the ministry takes issue with the crossed hammers.

00:28:08.640 I'll just change the sign to just have a cropped Canadian flag there and put up the same sign.

00:28:13.920 So he submitted to the ministry that, you know, we'll just have the sign without the symbol on it.

00:28:19.740 And then the ministry came back and said that, well, now this promotes hatred or contempt towards these individuals on the board there.

00:28:27.980 And as you can imagine, if that's the standard, showing contempt to individuals, then no political sign could ever be posted anywhere, on government property at least, as most political signs do show some level of contempt towards certain politicians or government policies.

00:28:44.780 There's a phrase in law to incite hatred or contempt towards someone based on their certain characteristics, like based on the fact that they're black or Muslim or Christian. 0.83

00:28:55.620 Christian there are some human rights laws that talk about stirring up hatred but just but it has 0.97

00:29:03.540 to be attached to some characteristic like I hate black people and having pictures of black people 0.97

00:29:10.420 that could be considered hatred but just I hate these politicians by the way he doesn't even say 0.98

00:29:16.160 that it sounds like a real stretch by the bureaucrats what did your client say in response

00:29:21.880 uh well my client my client didn't really get a chance to say anything in response because he

00:29:28.640 was simply the sign was simply rejected so um he retained us and we filed a judicial review against

00:29:34.540 the ministry's decision so that's kind of what happened uh after the second sign was rejected

00:29:39.620 by the ministry so let me jump in for a second who's who owned the sign i mentioned a moment

00:29:46.240 ago that in Tabor Alberta um there was some long signs and then there was a billboard so it was

00:29:52.580 there are some outdoor advertising companies that have hundreds or even thousands of billboards up

00:29:58.300 around the country and you rent space from them uh and in this case in Tabor they were threatening

00:30:04.020 the billboard company who exactly owned the platform that Mr. Katterberg was using because

00:30:10.900 it looked sort of homemade there it looked like it might have been him himself who like who did

00:30:17.080 they who did the ministry of transportation lean on who did they threaten or pressure well they

00:30:24.280 they leaned on my client specifically saying that he had to remove the sign but the sign was owned by

00:30:28.980 a another individual near the town he he he owns a permit from the ministry to put up that sign and

00:30:35.720 he rents it to people so as you can imagine there are many advertising companies that he said along

00:30:40.420 the highway that owns billboards and you can rent them for a pretty uh pretty modest fee right so

00:30:45.580 that's kind of how how that sign came about but the the land itself is actually owned by the

00:30:51.600 ministry of transportation so the ministry licenses people to put up billboards along the highway

00:30:56.680 in this particular case because um it's in northern ontario so they are called bush highways

00:31:02.820 they're um there's not enough setback from the the roadway because of all the trees and bushes

00:31:08.220 up in northern Ontario. So in order to have billboards, the ministry has created this

00:31:14.060 licensing system where you can purchase a permit to put up a billboard along the side of the highway.

00:31:19.200 Got it. And that's something I just read the Justice Center's press release on that.

00:31:26.400 The government changed the policy to, like they kept changing the reason why Mr. Katterberg

00:31:33.800 couldn't have the sign up and one of them and correct me if i'm misstating it is that they said

00:31:40.140 that the political signs weren't allowed but commercial signs were am i getting that right

00:31:45.860 so they were they were saying they were basically going to weigh the actual content to the message

00:31:50.560 did i get that yeah that's correct because originally they said that his sign was hateful

00:31:55.680 and then eventually the ministry backed down on that when we sued them the first time because we

00:32:00.660 As you recall, we originally filed a judicial review last year on the initial sign that we submitted to the ministry.

00:32:08.280 So the ministry, they took a look at our lawsuit, and they realized that they were probably going to lose on that front

00:32:14.980 because my client's sign clearly does not promote hatred towards an identifiable group.

00:32:20.240 Perhaps it promotes a disdain towards politicians, but that's not pain.

00:32:23.880 They deserve it, let's be honest.

00:32:25.100 i'm joking around as you correctly point out we have the right to have feelings of contempt for

00:32:33.040 our politicians that's actually a right you have in a free society you don't have to love

00:32:37.060 um you know it's not like north korea where everyone has to love you know kim jong-un we can

00:32:43.140 have contempt for our leaders we don't we don't believe in violence we don't believe in threats

00:32:47.740 but we're allowed to criticize and condemn our our leaders that's what makes us free

00:32:52.180 absolutely absolutely so uh so after the ministry uh uh real that went back to the drawing board

00:32:59.220 and then as you alluded to ezra they um they sent us a second decision and then they said that they

00:33:05.760 created the manual they edited the manual guiding the ministry on how to issue permits they said

00:33:12.580 that um political advertisements are not allowed on any of these billboards so they tried to make

00:33:17.600 it looked like it wasn't uh it was a content neutral in the sense that nobody could put up

00:33:21.740 any political billboards but um that that we argue that that's unconstitutional because the

00:33:28.240 government can't just decide that you know commercial advertisement is okay but um political

00:33:33.340 ones are not and obviously you were correct because the court agreed with us yeah well i'm

00:33:38.100 really glad to hear it so what exactly did the court do besides allowing mr katterberg to continue

00:33:44.220 Did it strike down this new policy? Did it order the Ministry of Transportation to change its rulebook?

00:33:51.940 Yeah, so the impugned measures inside the manual, the government's highway management manual, that was struck down.

00:33:59.920 But there was only one provision, actually, of the manual that was struck down, the provision that said that there's no political advertisements allowed.

00:34:06.060 Now, under that section, there is other categories such as not promoting, I think it says promoting disdain or towards certain people, and it must be in accordance with the added standards.

00:34:19.180 So the court decision was that the ministry has to take another stab at it and reconsider the decision again.

00:34:26.420 So who knows, we might be back in court again next year arguing another section of the provisions.

00:34:32.820 So stay tuned.

00:34:34.020 yeah i sure will hey i got one last question for you do we know where the complaint originated was

00:34:40.860 it some officious intermeddler some busy body was it someone in the ministry was was there someone

00:34:47.900 or was it a professional complaining group of which there are many who was on the other side

00:34:53.660 of this um we're we're not sure the initial decision for the first sign the order to take

00:35:00.580 down the first sign came from a ministry official in Sault Ste. Marie so my client lives between

00:35:05.560 Sudbury and Sault Ste. Marie so that's about an hour's drive from in each direction so it must

00:35:12.100 I highly doubt that the ministry is sending officials back and forth along the highway

00:35:17.720 every day so my suspicion is that some officious busybody did report it to the ministry which

00:35:23.920 decided to take action because um the ministry's uh affiant their representative who was the the

00:35:31.000 manager of the highway corridors department or something like that he basically admitted that

00:35:35.980 he hasn't even really driven up there in the last few years so i don't suspect the bureaucrats are

00:35:41.300 driving along the northern ontario highways on a daily basis inspecting these things well during

00:35:47.980 the lockdowns during the covid mania it became a sort of religion for some people it was a belief

00:35:53.800 system more than a scientific uh theory so i think to have someone call out the different high priests

00:36:01.420 of this you know i'm not going to call it a religion or a cult or a superstition i mean

00:36:07.500 there's people to this day who wear covid masks they they deeply believe in it their lives were

00:36:12.480 changed it wouldn't surprise me if someone saw that sign and actually did feel deeply emotionally

00:36:19.280 troubled by it because covidism became a cult and i have no doubt that there was someone who

00:36:26.840 was a cult believer was shocked by that sign but i'm glad you guys were there i'm glad george

00:36:32.340 katterberg is allowed to have his point of view even if it's sort of in a homemade way and that's

00:36:36.260 what the judge said didn't he the judge said that um the judge wasn't saying this sign was right or

00:36:43.280 wrong the judge was just saying the sign was allowed and that's all we need from the government

00:36:48.500 isn't it absolutely yes because the judge definitely um agreed stated that um the point

00:36:55.600 of this whole case is not about whether or not george's sign was correct or not we're not here

00:37:00.580 to debate these policies we're simply saying that asking the question are we even allowed to have

00:37:05.220 these debates in public. And the court correctly agreed with us that yes, the answer is yes,

00:37:10.840 you can have your political debates on billboards. That's a natural place to have it. So we're very

00:37:15.920 happy with this decision. And obviously, my client's very happy that he'll hopefully get a

00:37:20.600 chance to put up his sign now. Well, that's great. Darren Leung from the Justice Center,

00:37:26.080 thanks so much for taking the time with us. Congratulations again. And if the ministry

00:37:30.080 comes back, I know you guys will be there to stand on guard. So thanks for that.

00:37:33.820 All right. Thanks for having me, Ed, Brian.

00:37:35.520 Right on. Stay with us. Your Letters to Me next.

00:37:47.540 Hey, welcome back. Your Letters to Me about Northern Ireland and those bonfires.

00:37:53.840 Robin Kleinstuber says,

00:37:55.920 Funny how the radical judges will arrest some folks who have displayed a specific degree of hatred,

00:38:01.260 but not arrest others who have absolutely shown a similar degree of hatred and again i'm listen i'm

00:38:08.360 not here to meddle in their traditions in northern ireland i find them fascinating i find them

00:38:13.260 actually visually arresting they're they're staggering these these are as tall as skyscrapers

00:38:19.880 um and i think it's fascinating to burn things in effigy all i'm saying is the catholics take 0.90

00:38:26.760 punches the protestants take punches but a mosque goes up there and the person who made it's arrested

00:38:31.860 that day i don't think that's uh that's right to have a two-tier justice system on the trump

00:38:38.580 administration pushing back against radical environmentalists carl gerhardt says the only

00:38:43.640 reason for mous is to try to trick alberta into not leaving canada i think you're right i think

00:38:50.480 that Mark Carney wants to put the Alberta separatism on ice. He wants to reduce that

00:38:56.500 risk. Sure he does. But he doesn't want to actually solve the systemic problems that are

00:39:01.420 leading to Alberta independence. I think you've got his MOU. I think you understand what's going

00:39:07.060 on there. That's our show for the day. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel

00:39:12.120 World Headquarters, to you at home, good night and keep fighting for freedom.

00:39:20.480 You

Rebel News Podcast - July 14, 2026

EZRA LEVANT ｜ While Alberta embraces data centres, New York’s moratorium hands China the advantage

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