Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Why do governments around the world always attack farmers？

00:00:00.280 Hello, my friends. Oh, boy, there was a protest in London by the farmers. The farmers were angry. And boy, I love farmers protests. You know that when the farmers are protesting, taking their tractors into the city center, that things have gone wrong. And we used to cover the Dutch farmer rebellion. So I got a few things to say about this British farm rebellion.

00:00:21.760 But before I show you that, I really want you to see it, not just hear it. So can you do me a favor and get the video version of this podcast? Just go to rebelnewsplus.com. Click subscribe. It's eight bucks a month, which gives you unlimited video content from us. But more importantly, from our point of view, not only do you get the good stuff, but pays the bills here because we take no government money and it shows. That's rebelnewsplus.com.

00:00:51.760 Tonight, why do governments around the world always attack farmers? It's November 26th, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.

00:01:09.640 Shame on you, you censorious bug.

00:01:21.760 I find farmer protests very interesting. How about you? In the past, Rebel News has covered the farmer rebellion in the Netherlands. I think we sent reporters there three different times to cover that fight. I learned a fair bit about farming in the Netherlands. Don't laugh. It's actually very interesting and very surprising.

00:01:42.560 Let me start with this fact. Did you know this? The Netherlands, which is a pretty small country geographically and doesn't even have 20 million people, it's the third largest exporter of food in the world, behind only the United States and Brazil. Are you surprised by that?

00:02:01.100 I was. I mean, you've got to admit that it's surprising, that it's such a huge producer. Huge, especially in dairy and eggs. And you probably know that. There's all sorts of Dutch cheeses like Gouda.

00:02:12.680 They're huge in meat. And they lead the world in flowers, which is part of agriculture, even though we typically don't eat flowers.

00:02:21.160 It's such a huge industry for a physically small country. But then again, we sometimes forget that the Netherlands was once a global empire. Amsterdam was their mighty shipgoing city. There was colonies, Dutch colonies around the world. I don't know if you remember the Dutch East India Company, the Dutch and South Africa. To this day, there's still boar farmers there who speak a kind of Dutch called Afrikaans.

00:02:47.380 In the Caribbean, Dutch Guiana, even in Japan and Taiwan, in Indonesia. If you ever sailed on Holland America, you'll see there's Dutch captains and Indonesian staff. That's a legacy of the Dutch Empire. Even New York City. You know what it was called first? New Amsterdam, not New York. Very interesting place. Anyways, don't underestimate the Dutch, I'll tell you that. And don't mess with their farmers. 0.93

00:03:13.240 I still don't quite understand the war on Dutch farmers. But from what I could glean from our reporters and just my own reading, it was driven in part by environmental extremism.

00:03:24.880 The same way Canada is obsessed with the element on the periodic table called carbon, you know, the sixth element on the periodic table.

00:03:33.060 Well, the Dutch, at least some of them, are obsessed with nitrogen. That's the seventh element on the periodic table. I know that sounds crazy. It would be, well, I think a lot about hydrogen. Oh, me, I'm a helium guy. I mean, what are you doing? Those are basic building blocks of the universe.

00:03:48.300 I was curious. I was curious. So I checked and, you know, nitrogen and carbon were officially discovered as elements in the same year, 1772. What's what a coincidence that is. That's almost exactly 250 years ago, by the way.

00:04:04.680 And if you had told any scientists over the past 250 years, until maybe 20 years ago, that we would literally try to, I'm laughing saying it, decarbonize the world or denitrogenize the world. 0.55

00:04:22.000 They would have said you were absolutely crazy. And you certainly were not a man of science. You were maybe some sort of a witch or something. I mean, carbon is the stuff of life. You think about the word carbohydrate. That's what we eat.

00:04:36.160 Every single living thing is made from carbon. You're made from carbon. Everything we eat, every plant, every animal, our breath that you exhale is carbon dioxide.

00:04:44.960 It's crazy to think we're going to get rid of carbon. Nitrogen, too. It's literally in our DNA. Without those two basic elements, all life on Earth would immediately cease.

00:04:55.720 Imagine being a kook who says, we have to get rid of carbon. Well, can you imagine those kooks on the carbon side? Because we know them. We've been fighting with them in Canada for 20 years. 1.00

00:05:07.780 But in the Netherlands, they've been going after farmers for using fertilizer that includes nitrogen, that very basic element. I'm serious. It's a war against farmers.

00:05:19.040 The farmers fought back, though, with these rebellions I'm telling you about and did something incredible that the Dutch parliamentary system allows.

00:05:28.060 The Dutch farmers started a political party. And in the Dutch system, which is a little bit confusing, but it has an important form of proportional representation.

00:05:38.540 You know what that is, right? You get a certain percentage. You get seats. It's not like a constituency system.

00:05:45.100 Anyways, look at what happened. And I'm reading from the BBC here.

00:05:50.320 Farmers protest party wins shock Dutch vote victory.

00:05:55.560 They immediately became the biggest party in the Dutch Senate.

00:06:01.620 Let me read a bit because it's just such a pleasure to read this.

00:06:05.020 A farmers party has stunned Dutch politics and is set to be the biggest party in the upper house of parliament after provincial elections.

00:06:12.420 The farmer citizen movement, BBB, was only set up in 2019 in the wake of widespread farmers protests.

00:06:18.780 But with most votes counted, they are due to win 15 of the Senate seats with almost 20 percent of the vote.

00:06:24.820 I think in the end they actually got 16.

00:06:27.260 This isn't normal, but actually it is.

00:06:30.040 It's all normal citizens who voted, said leader Caroline Vander Plast.

00:06:34.320 That's a that's a wonderful little quote, isn't it?

00:06:36.660 The BBB aims to fight government plans to slash nitrogen emissions harmful to biodiversity. 0.95

00:06:43.980 Oh, shut up, BBC.

00:06:45.580 By dramatically reducing livestock numbers and buying out thousands of farms. 0.98

00:06:53.020 Look at that for a moment, eh?

00:06:55.080 Shutting down farms, getting rid of animals.

00:06:58.840 Does that ring a bell anywhere? I'll come back to that.

00:07:00.700 The government was trying to order farmers to reduce the size of their herds in the name of environmentalism.

00:07:07.340 Sounds like the ostrich farm.

00:07:08.840 Now, it's a great story. 0.96

00:07:09.900 The Dutch farmers, all the more great because I was just reading from the BBC there and they hate farmers and nitrogen and carbon and they're all sorts of crazy. 0.61

00:07:19.920 And the Farmers Party is the most normal people in the entire world.

00:07:22.940 I really like that quote from their leader there.

00:07:24.840 Anyways, the Dutch farmers have been at it for a while.

00:07:27.240 You can see the party was started in 2019, but the farmers really started to fight back a few years later, including in 2022 when they had a ton of protests.

00:07:37.900 And that's when they told us that they were inspired in part by the Canadian truckers.

00:07:44.760 And you can see the similarity.

00:07:46.320 Get the big rigs on the road and, you know, people respect truckers.

00:07:49.920 They respect farmers.

00:07:50.840 I think maybe even more.

00:07:52.380 What a wonderful thing to hear from them.

00:07:55.420 Don't mess with farmers.

00:07:56.580 But I pointed out the anti-farm, anti-meat agenda of the Dutch government, right?

00:08:01.560 I think the idea of culling enormous numbers of animals for no good reason when you, you know, re-look at the ostriches, there are reasons to put down animals on a farm.

00:08:14.220 I get it.

00:08:14.660 Every farmer knows that.

00:08:15.740 And doing that humanely is part of being a farmer.

00:08:18.580 But what outraged so many people about the ostrich situation is that the birds were all healthy by the time they were being killed.

00:08:25.900 Had the Canadian Food Inspection Agency been there when the animals were actually sick a year ago, I think they would have perhaps had less opposition.

00:08:34.560 But by the time they got their bureaucrats act together, the animals were all healthy.

00:08:39.500 They had all gotten better from the avian flu.

00:08:41.260 And in fact, they had herd immunity. 0.99

00:08:43.500 Imagine insisting on killing every one of them nonetheless. 0.73

00:08:47.600 It really does echo what they were trying to do in the Netherlands, doesn't it? 0.98

00:08:50.540 You saw that BBC story.

00:08:52.180 They want to kill the animals to save the environment, which is crazy because obviously the animals are part of the environment when you think about it.

00:09:00.060 All of which is to say, look at London today.

00:09:02.260 London, England.

00:09:03.480 Wow.

00:09:04.200 When I think of London, I do not think of farmers.

00:09:06.400 It's such a huge metropolis.

00:09:09.280 But an enormous protest happened today against the Labour Party.

00:09:13.140 That's the government there and their anti-farm budget today with farmers from around the UK driving into the heart of London with their rigs.

00:09:22.200 What an amazing sight.

00:09:24.600 I mean, London is so iconic with the Parliament buildings and Trafalgar Square.

00:09:28.920 To see these tractors there.

00:09:31.160 Oh, I tell you, you know, I like to go over there.

00:09:33.200 I wish I was there to see it.

00:09:34.740 Lots of Union Jacks being flown by these farmers.

00:09:37.180 Yeah, not a single Hamas flag.

00:09:39.780 Isn't that surprising?

00:09:41.480 Farmers are the best people in the world.

00:09:44.240 I mean, is there a more honest breed? 0.90

00:09:46.640 Self-sufficient and so sufficient that one of them can feed a hundred of us, maybe a thousand of us.

00:09:52.860 All of the qualities that make someone a great farmer also make them a great citizen.

00:09:58.020 Patience, planning, thinking about the future, problem solving, harmony with the cycles of life, thinking long term, caring for life, especially life that's weaker than us.

00:10:08.620 Feeding people no matter their politics.

00:10:11.160 Custodians of the land and water.

00:10:12.740 I mean, I could go on.

00:10:13.560 I suppose statistically, I'm sure a dishonest farmer does exist.

00:10:18.560 Mathematically, I'm sure it happens.

00:10:19.880 But I've never met a dishonest farmer in my life.

00:10:22.800 Have you?

00:10:23.440 Oh, and other things.

00:10:24.820 They use equipment like tractors that need fuel.

00:10:28.700 They protect themselves in their herds and flocks with firearms.

00:10:32.100 Well, I guess not in the UK anymore, but in the rest of the world.

00:10:34.920 But still, every quality and characteristic about farmers, you can see why left-wing governments hate them, right?

00:10:43.180 I don't know any farmers who are on welfare.

00:10:46.640 Do you?

00:10:48.060 Now, the farmers in the UK are motivated by a number of things.

00:10:50.560 But the biggest one, if I am reading it right, is a new plan hatched by the labor government in the UK that family farms would now have to pay a 20% tax on assets if they were to be passed down from father to son.

00:11:05.440 So, basically, it would destroy family farms to the advantage of corporate farms.

00:11:12.440 Because say a farm is nominally worth a million pounds.

00:11:17.220 Okay, that's on paper.

00:11:18.380 Obviously, that's the land and the equipment and the farmhouse and the cattle.

00:11:22.840 It's not cash sitting around.

00:11:24.920 How on earth could a family with a farm just scrape together 200,000 pounds to pay a tax to the government to allow the farm to continue to operate in the family?

00:11:37.620 Why are they doing that?

00:11:40.480 Well, the same reason the Canadian government and the Dutch government used.

00:11:44.500 They probably wouldn't admit it, but they sort of hate farmers.

00:11:48.120 They won't deny that they hate farming.

00:11:50.500 Environmental reasons, cultural reasons, globalist reasons, the elites want expensive energy and expensive food.

00:11:59.800 They'd rather have cloned meat or machine, you know, printed meat, gross, diabolical things like that.

00:12:08.020 They don't want farmers in touch with nature.

00:12:09.920 They want you to be poor, by the way, expensive energy, expensive food.

00:12:14.700 You know the World Economic Forum slogan, you'll own nothing and be happy.

00:12:19.080 Now, Donald Trump's strategy is the opposite on those two key measures.

00:12:24.100 He wants cheaper food and cheaper gas, and he talks about that a fair bit.

00:12:28.140 And he's actually accomplished those things in less than a year.

00:12:31.900 The price of food and fuel is coming down.

00:12:35.000 You know, that's not just a blessing to all Americans.

00:12:36.920 That disproportionately helps low-income people.

00:12:40.980 But just look at those protesters in the UK, orderly, polite, patriotic.

00:12:46.580 But look at this.

00:12:48.340 Just in the last day, London's atrocious police announced that all farm vehicles were suddenly going to be banned from the center of the city.

00:12:58.400 Just spraying that condition on the farmers.

00:13:01.040 An ambush.

00:13:02.600 But they ignored it.

00:13:03.600 And to their peril, though, here's one farmer being arrested for daring to bring his tractor with him.

00:13:09.700 Being arrested just by Trafalgar Square is absolutely outrageous.

00:13:15.920 This is the place of the public, the public and farmers being arrested on the section 14 dispersal because the police the day before decides to say that they're not going to be allowed in the process.

00:13:29.340 Say, if you've been following us, you know that there are constant, huge, pro-Hamas protests in London that shut down the downtown of the city, the city center.

00:13:44.260 I've covered some of these protests.

00:13:45.840 So has Alexa LaVoie.

00:13:46.820 There have been other protests in London, too, including a major one just a couple of days ago, targeting a Jewish synagogue.

00:13:53.900 Seriously, just pro-Hamas protesters swarming an individual synagogue and any Jews going.

00:14:02.700 There's got nothing to do with the Israeli embassy or with it's just ordinary Jews in their residential area.

00:14:08.520 That same metropolitan police force, let that protest against the Jews happen, no problem. 0.59

00:14:16.300 But if you're a farmer with a tractor, peaceful, patriotic, it's illegal to bring your vehicle to parliament, say the police, even though parliament is actually the proper place to protest the government, don't you think?

00:14:30.080 Yeah, I don't know about you, but I'm on the side of the farmers.

00:14:34.780 Stay with us for more.

00:14:38.520 It sure feels like there's more and more people in the cart as opposed to those who are outside the cart pushing it.

00:14:52.220 And if it feels that way, it's because that is a fact.

00:14:54.800 According to a study by the Fraser Institute, since Justin Trudeau took office in 2015 until now under Mark Carney,

00:15:02.660 basically a decade of liberal rule, 950,000 new government jobs have been created, that is, have been plowed with taxpayers' money and have taken root.

00:15:18.720 Now, not all of those are federal jobs.

00:15:20.560 That includes provincial governments too.

00:15:22.760 But it's just a staggering number.

00:15:25.180 And here to talk to us about it is our friend Chris Sims, the Alberta Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

00:15:30.200 Chris, how are you doing?

00:15:30.760 Wonderful, Ezra.

00:15:32.320 Thanks so much for the invite.

00:15:33.820 It's such a huge number.

00:15:36.020 I'm almost, just, just a shade under a million people.

00:15:39.920 And, you know, the growth of the population doesn't warrant it.

00:15:44.800 The, yeah, I just, there's no excuse for it other than it's, I don't know, it feels like it's a kind of, I don't know, gestating monster like in the movie Aliens, where you have a creature inside you feeding off of you.

00:16:01.240 I'm not trying to dehumanize these bureaucrats.

00:16:03.160 I'm just saying they so clearly live off the avails of the productive class.

00:16:08.040 I just find this such a frustrating story.

00:16:10.740 Tell me what the Fraser Institute has reported.

00:16:13.600 Yeah.

00:16:13.840 Ayn Rand would have called it the looters versus the producers.

00:16:19.000 Franco calls it the makers versus the takers.

00:16:21.620 Right.

00:16:21.860 And what this is, is basically far too many people have now joined the ranks of government. 0.98

00:16:28.940 Charlie Kirk said it best when he said big government sucks. 0.99

00:16:33.260 It does. 0.99

00:16:34.560 And one of the reasons why it sucks is because it sucks money out of our wallets. 0.81

00:16:38.620 This report was hard to read, frankly, by the Fraser Institute.

00:16:43.220 I don't know if you saw, Ezra, how much it's grown, the percentage of people who are working for various levels of government between 2015 up until now.

00:16:54.240 In 2015, it was around 17-ish percent.

00:16:59.440 Now it's well over 21 percent, almost 22 percent.

00:17:03.260 What that means, folks, is that nearly a quarter of Canadians are working for government.

00:17:09.860 They're employed by the government.

00:17:12.020 This isn't just about the cost because the cost is astonishing to taxpayers.

00:17:17.180 I think last year, federally alone, Ezra, we spent $70 billion just on the federal bureaucracy.

00:17:27.160 But it's also, and I think more spiritually to your show, it's such a drain for all those people that go and join the ranks of the faceless government.

00:17:37.840 That's an entrepreneur gone.

00:17:39.700 That's a business person gone.

00:17:41.560 That's an inventor gone, a creator.

00:17:44.200 The person that actually generates wealth in this country has now just joined the cogs, and it's really upsetting.

00:17:51.200 You know, when I was young and naive, I would laugh at certain disciplines in university, women's studies, conflict studies, peace studies, vegetarian studies.

00:18:01.640 I'm making up some of those, but not many.

00:18:03.920 And I would think, you're never going to get a job with that, said I.

00:18:07.780 Well, was I ever wrong?

00:18:09.400 All of those people are getting the great jobs, the HR jobs, the DEI jobs, the wackier, the better.

00:18:16.620 They're getting all the people with degrees in sustainable this and that.

00:18:20.340 You would think, where on earth is there a natural demand for that?

00:18:23.480 Well, there isn't, but they're all, and by the way, a lot of these jobs are six-figure jobs.

00:18:30.180 I mean, there's some jurisdictions where you have what's called the sunshine list, where you can actually see it.

00:18:35.760 And, yeah, you know, I think the average income for a federal civil servant has got to be more than $100,000.

00:18:43.100 When that $100,000 was chosen, it was, oh, that's so high.

00:18:46.680 There'll be very few people.

00:18:47.760 Now it's almost everybody, including, I don't know, it's just, you start to feel like a sucker if you try and make it, make a go of it on your own, I think.

00:18:57.660 You do.

00:18:58.600 And this is what, remember when Mark Stein, back in the day of Sun News Network, was warning about young kids in France wanting to grow up to become a bureaucrat?

00:19:08.180 Yeah.

00:19:08.420 You're sitting there laying awake at night dreaming about becoming some government employee.

00:19:12.760 Well, unfortunately, we're kind of going there right now in Canada.

00:19:16.900 And to your point exactly, Ezra, yes, the average salary for federal bureaucrats is now well over $100,000.

00:19:26.640 Also, if you take a look at the stats that the Fraser Institute put out here, is that you could try to, you know, at least I try to comfort myself saying, oh, well, you know, we need really courageous men and women in the Coast Guard out there saving people who fall off of boats.

00:19:41.920 But no, the bulk of the growth, unfortunately, has been an administrative government.

00:19:48.640 It's not the ones out there saving your life.

00:19:51.220 It is administrative government growth that seems to be the fastest growing and the biggest problem.

00:19:56.920 Yeah.

00:19:57.240 Now, of course, the population has grown since 2015, but that doesn't explain it.

00:20:02.320 I mean, one of the, you mentioned the percent of Canadians who work for the public sector.

00:20:08.100 It was 19.7%.

00:20:10.420 It is now 21.5%.

00:20:12.600 What that means is even as a proportion to population, it has grown faster than population growth.

00:20:19.780 That's the real giveaway.

00:20:20.700 Because if Canada had doubled in size but had only gone up a fraction of that in civil service, you could say, oh, that's actually quite economical.

00:20:29.220 But it's the opposite.

00:20:30.900 The growth of government has far outpaced the growth of population.

00:20:35.500 I find it frustrating.

00:20:37.680 But it's not just the feds.

00:20:39.620 And we like to poke fun at the feds.

00:20:41.640 But, you know, I'm looking at the graph here.

00:20:44.800 It's British Columbia, I think, if I'm not mistaken, is actually the single worst in terms of the growth of the government class.

00:20:54.440 Is that correct?

00:20:55.440 That BC is the worst?

00:20:56.720 Correct.

00:20:57.980 BC is the worst. 0.99

00:20:59.560 And if you go take a look at British Columbia's debt level and how much its spending has gone crazy and out of control, it's enough to make you sick, Ezra.

00:21:07.920 Because British Columbia, I'm a British Columbian originally, it has no business going into debt.

00:21:13.620 It has no business blowing money on hiring a ton of big bureaucrats. 0.98

00:21:17.080 It's literally sitting on a gold mine.

00:21:19.580 I mean, one could argue, oh, if you're a tiny little landlocked province and you don't have any natural resources under your feet, well, you know, government's going to be the biggest game in town.

00:21:27.820 No.

00:21:28.560 BC has got a blessing of riches underneath its feet.

00:21:31.960 And you're right, it saw the fastest and highest amount of government growth, followed closely, I will point out, by Prince Edward Island.

00:21:40.260 And this is a problem.

00:21:42.080 I have family out in Atlantic Canada.

00:21:44.000 I lived out there for a time, okay?

00:21:46.120 This is a problem in Atlantic Canada, to be frank.

00:21:49.680 About one in three, around one-third of people who are employed in Atlantic Canada now are employed by various levels of government.

00:21:58.240 A third.

00:21:59.460 Yeah.

00:21:59.660 And it shows.

00:22:00.880 It does.

00:22:01.420 I'm sorry, but it shows, because then you become complacent.

00:22:05.760 You want to then agree with daddy and mommy government all the time.

00:22:09.440 You don't want to rock the boat.

00:22:10.920 You don't want to, say, cut taxes.

00:22:12.720 You don't want to, say, balance the budget, because that's where your meal is coming from.

00:22:17.580 This is a big problem.

00:22:18.980 Yeah.

00:22:19.540 Yeah, you're right.

00:22:20.420 You know, it's funny you mentioned the Atlantic.

00:22:21.760 I see that Newfoundland, in that 10-year period, actually had a shrinkage of population, which is a bit of a surprise.

00:22:29.400 I thought even immigration had splashed over there.

00:22:32.320 According to the Fraser Institute, in the 10-year period studied, the population of Newfoundland declined, just barely, by 0.2%.

00:22:40.380 But that didn't stop the growth of government by 2.1%.

00:22:44.700 So there are fewer people in Newfoundland than there were 10 years ago, but there are thousands more bureaucrats attending to them.

00:22:53.580 It really, I don't know.

00:22:56.300 And the thing, I think what you just pointed out there is your identity is no longer that of I'm a hardworking private sector person.

00:23:04.800 You become part of the blob, part of the Borg.

00:23:08.660 And you start to think of yourself as a defender of all government things.

00:23:13.160 I would imagine psychologically you start to identify with the government instead of with the people.

00:23:18.100 That's what I think is the attitudinal shift that comes with this.

00:23:22.220 Yeah, big time.

00:23:23.380 And isn't that fascinating where you can see the province, the population of the province go like this, but the population of government workers go like that.

00:23:30.640 It goes up in Newfoundland and Labrador.

00:23:32.440 If I can philosophize for a moment to build on your point, that could be because the young, kickstarter, upstarty type, hardworking people in Newfoundland and Labrador, too many of them moved away.

00:23:46.840 And they probably came to my province, in your home province here in Alberta.

00:23:50.300 They're probably working in something like natural resources, the oil sands specifically.

00:23:54.320 The population of Fort Mac has gained a lot of Newfoundland and Labradorians.

00:23:58.460 But again, when you do that, that means that that person, who is clearly a very hardworking person, is no longer opening that business, innovating that company, starting something new in their home province.

00:24:13.340 And therefore, there are fewer jobs for those younger people.

00:24:17.220 And therefore, what do you do?

00:24:18.740 You go apply for the government job.

00:24:21.040 See, this is a terrible, it's like the War Moroboros, right? 0.96

00:24:24.360 It's the snake eating its own tail.

00:24:25.780 And we're unfortunately paying for it.

00:24:28.920 Ezra, I don't know if you saw just how much we're actually spending at the federal level, because it kind of dovetails.

00:24:35.560 The public accounts came out with their numbers, and Franco went through them.

00:24:40.380 The amount of money, Ezra, on the bureaucracy last year, $70 billion with a B.

00:24:47.240 But with the outsourcing for all their little lobbyists and contractors and all that crap, it's still more than $20 billion.

00:24:56.140 It's close to $100 billion for the blob just at the federal level.

00:25:01.060 And then you dig down into this granular data from the Fraser Institute, which shows basically all levels of government absorbing more and more fellow Canadians, costing us more and more dollars.

00:25:11.560 Like, it's a serious problem.

00:25:13.900 Yeah.

00:25:14.340 You know, I'm genuinely worried about the brain drain.

00:25:16.620 For a while, I remember under Stephen Harper's last couple of years, it was quite an interesting story.

00:25:21.440 I think even the New York Times picked it up, that for a moment there, Canada's middle class was, on a per capita basis, wealthier than America's.

00:25:32.060 Like, I almost couldn't believe it, and now that I'm saying it, I think, could that possibly have been true?

00:25:36.980 I remember it was true. 0.92

00:25:38.680 And our economy was strong for all sorts of folks, and the idea of a brain drain was a far-off dream.

00:25:45.820 But then a few things happened.

00:25:47.500 I think Canada's brutal COVID lockdowns shook a lot of people who could move.

00:25:53.180 They went to Florida.

00:25:54.540 And I don't know if a lot of them are coming back.

00:25:56.700 I think we were in a recession on a per capita basis in Canada.

00:26:04.380 I don't know what Trump's tariffs will do in the long term, but I know a lot of people, personally, who say that they have to move some of their operations from Canada to the States to continue selling into that market.

00:26:16.660 That's what Trump wants.

00:26:18.080 I think we could be starting to see a real downward trend.

00:26:22.280 And the thing is, picking up steam.

00:26:23.920 If, by the way, if the federal government continues to block the single best hope of economic growth, namely an oil pipeline, if they continue to spook other investors, like this nutrient potash mill, sorry, port that's now going to be in water.

00:26:43.320 Like, if you start to get a reputation as a not-friendly place, these things will just compound.

00:26:49.580 I hate to say it.

00:26:50.680 There's this amazing company in Canada called Shopify.

00:26:53.880 It's actually the largest tech company in Canada.

00:26:56.560 It's an incredible success.

00:26:58.700 I remember a decade ago, Justin Trudeau liked to hang out with their CEOs and CFOs and stuff.

00:27:06.180 They become spokesmen for the free market.

00:27:09.520 I see Toby Lutke and others from that company.

00:27:13.180 I don't know how long they're going to hang on.

00:27:15.640 If you were the head of a global app, Shopify basically does the store for every website you go to.

00:27:22.940 Why are they even in Canada?

00:27:24.860 Well, for reasons of history and inertia.

00:27:27.540 But I hate to say it.

00:27:29.160 If these trends keep going, it would not surprise me if one day Shopify said, you know what?

00:27:35.260 We love Canada very much, but it just doesn't make sense for business people.

00:27:38.900 We're moving to Florida.

00:27:40.100 We're moving to Austin, Texas.

00:27:41.320 We're going where the others who are going.

00:27:44.600 And we'll let Mark Carney have the managed capitalism, the stakeholder capitalism that he's been talking about at the World Economic Forum for a decade.

00:27:54.380 Yeah.

00:27:54.800 Shopify is super important.

00:27:56.160 I used to talk to Harley quite frequently, one of the guys there at Shopify, when we'd get him on our show there in Ottawa on talk radio.

00:28:04.320 And to your point, I also spoke to Ian Lee.

00:28:07.040 I know that you've spoken with him many times, an economist out of the Carleton University School.

00:28:11.500 And he keeps ringing this alarm bell, Ezra.

00:28:14.080 He keeps saying that Canada is increasingly telling all the investors around the world, don't come here.

00:28:20.020 We don't want your money.

00:28:21.300 Don't put your money here.

00:28:22.300 Don't employ our people. 0.99

00:28:23.420 No, no, no.

00:28:24.120 We've become the country of no. 0.84

00:28:26.480 And to your point, I know this is kind of painful to think about, but under Harper, remember for a time when our dollar was even over par for a little while?

00:28:35.000 Yeah.

00:28:35.180 Wild.

00:28:36.180 And like, I've talked to some of my younger colleagues now, and I sound like, you know, Grandpa Simpson telling stories from days of yore.

00:28:42.700 But it is possible to do this.

00:28:44.500 I wanted to stress, the pipeline is one thing.

00:28:47.200 We absolutely need that.

00:28:48.740 But we also need to get rid of this production cap.

00:28:52.240 It's just, it's the stranglehold that Ottawa has stuck over top of our energy sector. 0.55

00:28:58.600 And that means that any one of those companies we just mentioned looks at Canada and says, I'm not putting my money there.

00:29:04.240 We're not doing this.

00:29:05.520 And to your point on lockdowns, I will point out the fiscal element of that, too.

00:29:10.600 Trudeau did two terrible things at the same time there during lockdowns.

00:29:14.380 A, he fired up the money printer.

00:29:16.740 He printed more than $300 billion out of thin air.

00:29:22.480 Click of a keyboard.

00:29:23.660 Poof.

00:29:24.360 There's inflation.

00:29:25.200 At the same time, he locked down the widget-making industries.

00:29:30.840 So we have all this paper money flowing around without the stuff being made to absorb said paper money.

00:29:37.320 And we have an inflation crisis, which is why stuff is unaffordable in Canada.

00:29:41.280 So there's just been 10 years of economic bad decisions being made here, which is, again, I really hope, I truly hope, Ezra, that regular people, including in the mainstream media, read this report from the Fraser Institute.

00:29:55.200 He realizes that we can't afford this, and we're going in the wrong direction.

00:29:59.580 Well, we're going in the wrong direction in a bunch of ways.

00:30:01.640 I think tomorrow is actually a really critical day.

00:30:04.160 It is.

00:30:04.600 Mark Carney has been hinting to Alberta, oh, we'll let you have a pipeline with certain conditions.

00:30:09.360 But he has been saying the opposite to Alberta's enemies, including the premier of BC and environmental extremists, many of whom are in his own cabinet.

00:30:20.160 I think tomorrow is a very fateful day, and we'll see which way it goes.

00:30:24.080 Chris, thanks for joining us today.

00:30:26.020 Thank you, Ezra.

00:30:35.800 Oh, hi, everybody.

00:30:36.840 You know, I'm in Toronto right now.

00:30:38.160 That's where our head office is in our studio.

00:30:40.460 But I'm going to be hopping on a plane tonight to go to Calgary overnight.

00:30:44.180 So I'm there very early in the morning because I understand there may be a joint press conference between the prime minister of Canada, Mark Carney, and the premier of Alberta, Danielle Smith.

00:30:53.300 And the subject, if this does indeed go ahead, could be a sort of agreement between the two of them about an oil pipeline.

00:31:00.180 Now, when I heard this first a few days ago, reported by Rick Bell of Post Media Newspapers, I thought, Rick is pretty accurate about things.

00:31:08.440 And I actually allowed myself for about a moment to be hopeful and think, wow, wouldn't that be amazing if a pipeline was actually approved?

00:31:15.260 From Alberta to the West Coast, sell some oil, not just to new markets like India, Taiwan, Korea, Japan.

00:31:24.540 I know Mark Carney will want to sell to communist China, but there's a lot of other customers out there who are not dictatorships.

00:31:30.700 Not only is it new markets and new sales, but it would allow Canada to get world prices for oil as opposed to the less than world prices we're getting because we have all our sales going to Americans, pretty much.

00:31:44.240 I was excited and I thought maybe Mark Carney is different.

00:31:47.840 But then over the last two days, I see him saying, including in parliament, that it has to get the approval of the premier of BC.

00:31:54.220 And it has to get the approval of Indian bans who apparently Mark Carney thinks of a veto.

00:31:59.940 Our constitution gives a veto neither to Indian bans nor to other provinces.

00:32:05.660 And so I don't understand what's going to happen.

00:32:07.560 That's all the more reason to go tomorrow.

00:32:09.900 So that's where I'm going to be in the day.

00:32:12.220 And hopefully I'll have a chance to put a question to both the premier and the prime minister.

00:32:16.100 I can imagine there's going to be a ton of journalists there.

00:32:18.640 We'll see how it goes.

00:32:19.880 So I'll be on the scene trying to do some on the ground reporting.

00:32:23.400 And that's where I'll be and wish me luck.

00:32:26.140 But more importantly, wish the country luck.

00:32:29.360 That's our show for today.

00:32:31.000 Until next time, on behalf of all of us at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night and keep fighting for freedom.

Rebel News Podcast - November 27, 2025

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Why do governments around the world always attack farmers？

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