We have another Rebel Roundtable, this time featuring Wyatt Claypool from the National Telegraph and Viva Fry of the Can't Miss Podcast of the same name. We talk about the recent fire ban in Nova Scotia, and the controversy surrounding it. Plus, we read fan mail and hate mail.
00:00:30.000Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Rebel News live stream panel.
00:00:43.300On this, a Friday, August 8th, 2025, I'm David Menzies, and my co-host out in Vancouver, that would be Drea Humphrey.
00:00:54.100And, well, it's another crazy Friday, Drea.
00:00:57.420By the way, since it's 0808, anyone who's playing pick three or pick four lottery numbers, if you're picking all eights, it's already oversubscribed.
00:01:15.000I'm not much of a gambler, and whenever my husband gets those, like, peony house things to gamble on, I actually throw it away.
00:01:22.680He gets so mad at me, but I'm doing good.
00:01:24.860Thank God it's Friday, and we have another Rebel Roundtable, which means we have a panel today, in case some of you are not aware of it.
00:01:35.240So it's an exciting show, and you guys can be a part of it, too, which is always my favorite part.
00:01:41.000I love that we added the panel to sort of add more to the discussion.
00:01:44.720But if you guys want to be a part of that or even ask questions to our panelists, you can do so on YouTube through our YouTube chat option.
00:01:54.680Or if you're watching this after and you want to say something, you can leave us a YouTube.
00:03:01.680What in the world do you make of this?
00:03:03.960I mean, I thought we're not supposed to be into profiling when it comes to law enforcement.
00:03:09.580Why does it seem that the government in Nova Scotia has this idea that if you're going into the forest,
00:03:16.020you're obviously there to start a forest fire.
00:03:20.080This is kind of like COVID craziness, no?
00:03:22.720Well, it is, it's the, what's the successor to COVID craziness because they go into COVID.
00:03:29.240So why not do it again, declare an emergency and prohibit people from accessing public grounds, outdoor forests?
00:03:37.480I mean, I've been covering it for Florida.
00:03:39.420And it's like the American side of my audience cannot possibly understand how bat poop crazy Canada has gone.
00:03:46.340And so, I mean, the funny thing is, like, I dig into Tim Houston a little bit and you just put in the word someone, you know, liberal, conservative, politician, whatever, and scandal.
00:03:53.500And you'll find that it already has a shady past, a shady history, some questionable feelings, some questionable feelings with his neighbors in terms of granting government contracts.
00:04:04.940And set all that aside, but it's great that they put the spotlight on themselves.
00:04:09.460It's abject insanity that this guy comes out in his nice, polite Canadian accent.
00:04:14.340He's like, ooh, yeah, if you have property, we implore you not to go in on your own property.
00:04:18.860It's insanity that could only be tolerated in a country like Canada, maybe Australia, where it seems that people are just content letting the government govern them so hard that they govern them into their houses during the summer.
00:04:30.840You know, well said, Viva, and I think, Wyatt, what I find stunning is that Premier Houston is allegedly a conservative.
00:04:41.920He's about as conservative a premier as, oh, I don't know, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, which is to say he's not anywhere near a conservative when it comes up holding conservative values.
00:04:54.300That's one thing I'd like to focus on.
00:04:56.580Why is a conservative premier acting, well, like a Marxist, if you will?
00:05:02.000And secondly, in the big picture, is this constitutional?
00:05:07.900Well, it seems like Tim Houston and Doug Ford are in a running gun battle to see who is the worst conservative in Canada.
00:05:14.480They really just need to drop the conservative label from the party.
00:05:34.200You wonder why they even bother getting involved in politics.
00:05:36.580But Tim Houston didn't seem satisfied with his housing plan that went up like a lead balloon, where he was going to have Nova Scotians live in what looked like theme park concession stands.
00:05:47.240And so now you're going to have to go and now you're going to get arrested because you maybe want to get away from Tim Houston and take a short walk through the woods.
00:05:55.780You can't even go on to your own private land and hike.
00:05:59.340You can't even go on to a friend's private land and have a campsite.
00:08:02.720And last I checked, there isn't people just, you know, combusting inside of the forest because they're on a hike, walking their dog or fishing.
00:08:21.420But again, even if you compare this year to 2023 or you look at 2024 in Nova Scotia, 2024 was actually their best year in so long for fires.
00:08:33.900And the conspiracy theorists are just right again when we talk about, oh, you know, they're going to find ways to lock us down with climate change.
00:08:41.260Well, here's a good example of how that can go down.
00:09:24.220And as far as tactics go for protests, that might be the less good of the tactics.
00:09:30.3405,000 people or thousands of people gathering together.
00:09:33.140Someone's going to do something stupid if only to the government's position.
00:09:38.540No, first of all, appreciate the insanity that you pay taxes and now they're depriving you from accessing the public lands of which you pay.
00:09:45.960They're asking you to not go on private land on which you pay tax, but they're still going to collect your tax.
00:09:55.720The protest is go out there and get a ticket, I guess, if you want to do it and contest it.
00:09:59.760But the problem is you're going to get stuck with that ticket the way a lot of the COVID protesters are stuck with their tickets down.
00:10:05.520But it is, it's what's insanity about it is that the fires from 2023, at least the biggest ones in Nova Scotia, were arson.
00:10:12.320But, and, you think, arsonists are not going to go out because they have to stay home?
00:10:18.440And, importantly, if they're going to prevent non-arsonists from going out there, they're actually just sort of making it easier for arsonists to do what they want to do.
00:10:45.920If you had families camping and couples going for a hike and they're doing everything ethically sound, they're not littering, they're not setting even a campfire, wouldn't those act as so many smoky bears looking at the bad actors and going, hey, wait a minute.
00:11:04.480Don't walk away from these burning embers.
00:11:20.580He's saying how, you know, he supports the lockdown because he was at a party and someone's wife put out a cigarette in a fire pit and 10 minutes later, the fire pit was on fire.
00:11:28.780He didn't specify whether or not they were using the fire pit.
00:11:38.340And if you don't laugh, there's nothing left to do with climate.
00:11:40.960At least we can say that Tim Houston is an equal opportunity civil liberties violator.
00:11:47.300At least he will put his knee in everyone's back if you try and go hiking, where at least it's not like British Columbia, where depending on your race, you can go into a park or not.
00:11:58.120You know, that's a great point, Wyatt.
00:11:59.960And, you know, I want to get I want to throw off your backs for some feedback in terms of what the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedom said, quote, governments never take away your rights and freedoms without offering a nice sounding pretext, safety being the most popular.
00:12:20.440And, Wyatt, we see the misuse of that word safety endlessly.
00:12:26.940Oh, we can't have a Christian musician come into a public park.
00:12:32.640There might be some bad people that show up and cause harm.
00:12:36.940So, for safety, we'll just eclipse your freedom of speech rights.
00:12:42.640Is this a really distressing trend we see in our dominion right now, the use of the word safety?
00:12:49.160When I hear people saying it's an unsafe situation, I go, what, is there a downed hydro wire?
00:12:54.760But, no, the way they're using it is to effectively take away our freedoms with a bogus reason.
00:13:03.860And also, they're also trying to it's also an excuse to make you less safe because these governments are derelict in actually doing proper forest management.
00:13:12.960So rather than doing proper forest management, they're just not going to let anyone go into the forest.
00:13:18.520And let's keep a good score scorecard going here.
00:13:21.680So in Nova Scotia, you can't go on a hike, you can't have a picnic with pre-made sandwiches.
00:13:28.660And in Toronto, they can't get rid of bike lanes because it is human right to have a bike lane because something could happen.
00:13:36.040The thing is that these courts have proven that they can literally justify practically anything because it's just leftist activists.
00:13:45.200And this is where conservatives across the country have to stop being scared of being labeled like an American Republican, and they have to take court appointments more seriously.
00:13:55.400They're supposedly nonpartisan in Canada.
00:14:45.020So let's see what Poliev has to say about something so many Canadians are talking about and getting upset about, including people who have immigrated to Canada in recent years.
00:14:58.020Thanks for taking my question, Kian, with Juno News.
00:15:32.320Well, anyone who has been deemed inadmissible needs to leave and they need to be deported.
00:15:39.160Anyone who commits a crime while they're in Canada, they need to be immediately detained.
00:15:45.260And when their detention is complete, they need to be deported from the country.
00:15:49.240We need to track down the roughly 600 criminals that the liberals have lost track of.
00:15:53.480That means using all our security agencies to find out where they are, to locate them, arrest them, put them on planes, get them out of Canada.
00:16:03.180We need to make it clear that anyone who commits a hate crime or an act of violence against an identifiable group
00:16:10.420that is not a citizen and not a permanent resident needs to be deported from this country.
00:16:16.300We need to get rid of the incentives for people to come here that are not real refugees.
00:16:25.260So we need a review of all the benefits that go to people who come as asylum claimants
00:16:32.460to make sure they're not getting more benefits than Canadian taxpayers get.
00:16:37.160And those that arrive last, their cases should be treated first so that they know that they'll be leaving quickly.
00:16:42.660That will get the message back to the country of origin that if you come to Canada and you're not a real refugee,
00:16:47.900your case will be heard in a few weeks and you'll be back in your own country.
00:16:50.980That would, right now, there's the opposite incentive.
00:16:54.080People who are not real refugees come to Canada and they say, well, even if I'm rejected,
00:16:59.980I'll have seven or eight years of appeal during which time they get all kinds of benefits.
00:17:04.340If we was very clear that the benefits wouldn't be there, that they would be sent back within a couple of weeks,
00:17:11.060they wouldn't come in the first place.
00:17:12.660We need to secure our borders to stop the crossings.
00:17:16.380And more broadly on immigration, we need to bring way down the numbers of international students,
00:17:21.980of temporary foreign workers that are flooding our markets with low-wage labour.
00:17:27.500The big corporations love it because they can drive down wages for Canadian youth
00:17:31.240who are facing unprecedented unemployment.
00:17:33.640The temporary foreign worker program was not meant to drive down wages.
00:17:38.420It was meant to fill jobs that Canadians could not or would not do, particularly in agriculture.
00:17:45.220Now it's just become a full-purpose thing that Starbucks or anyone else can use to drive wages down.
00:17:50.700If they're having a hard time getting Canadian youth working, what they need to do is raise wages.
00:17:55.920So we need to cut back on the temporary foreign worker program.
00:17:59.220And finally, the overall number needs to go down.
00:18:01.200Over the next several years, we actually need more people leaving than coming.
00:20:58.740Again, I want to throw to something that I consider to be in Canada the most overlooked, underreported story.
00:21:06.140And it came out last April, right during a federal election campaign.
00:21:09.820I think Pierre Polyev was the only one with guts to address it.
00:21:13.540It was that Privy Council report showing that Canada in 2040, less than 15 years away, is going to be this dystopian environment in which you see the rich who have either left Canada or living in gated communities with security guards.
00:21:34.600The rest of us, we're forced to fish, hunt illegally, and forage just to stay alive.
00:21:42.440And again, I ask, if that's what the Privy Council is predicting, and I'll tell you, you go to many cities and towns in Canada, and it looks like 2040 is already here when you look at the homeless encampments.
00:21:53.880Where is the logic in importing the world's poor?
00:21:59.660And the thing to note about that Privy Council briefing memo is that it's not like this was a bunch of secret crypto conservatives created it to make the liberals look bad.
00:22:11.140These are liberals writing a report that was only for the eyes of the prime minister's office, and then it got leaked out.
00:22:17.760This was them being as honest as possible, assuming nobody was going to read it, and this really does demonstrate, like, when this stuff is real, this is when the conservatives, and I'm saying this not just because it's the principal thing to do, it's the effective thing to do.
00:22:33.320They need to be running on a very big vision on what they're going to do with the country.
00:22:37.980Saying, they're saying 350,000 immigrant cap a year, I'm saying 250,000.
00:22:42.860It has to be saying, I'm going to cut it 80%.
00:22:45.440We are going to go as little as possible with some room so that we can bring in engineers and computer scientists and whatnot.
00:22:53.000And the thing is, you wonder why the youth vote is actually moving right in Canada, as well as a lot of other countries around the Western world.
00:23:02.040It's because so many of these policies, when it comes to immigration, have utterly destroyed people's ability to get a job or find decent housing.
00:23:09.920And then the liberals ended up getting back in off of the back of people who bought their homes 20 years ago, frankly.
00:23:15.920You know, not all of them, but, you know, for voters who are above the age of 55, it tends to be more true that you live in the part of town where there's no crime.
00:24:05.580These two markets have the highest priced average housing in all of North America.
00:24:11.960Pierre Polyev made mention of that several times during the campaign.
00:24:16.980It was always tough to get into the market.
00:24:18.800I would argue, to Wyatt's point, that for young people, the Canadian promise, as Pierre Polyev calls it, in certain markets, like the places where we live, it's now impossible.
00:24:30.360In fact, my sons, four years ago, moved out of the GTA to Windsor because they saw that there's just no way of getting into this market.
00:24:39.680And again, how with the strain on housing, with this bubble that never seems to burst, and in your neck of the woods, you know, in June, I passed by East Hastings Street.
00:24:53.080I'm not trying to be funny or, you know, critical.
00:24:57.500But it looked like the set for a zombie apocalypse film.
00:25:02.260So, again, not putting any governors on immigration.
00:25:07.300And where do most immigrants tend to go?
00:25:21.240One of the polls that came out last year showed that people, around 72%, are saying this is out of hand and they want to see less of it.
00:25:30.200So, I do like what Polyev said, but I would have liked to hear it before.
00:25:34.340In particular, I like what he said about going after the incentives so that people can't just, you know, I don't know, hold a pride flag and then come on over and tackling the newest applicants first.
00:28:02.820And yet, if Carney wanted to do something in his power to get Canada rolling again, he could repeal Bill C-69, the anti-pipeline legislation.
00:28:17.740And I think it's Bill C-48 that would allow B.C. to export liquefied natural gas and oil.
00:28:27.020But no, but let's see in Polyev's own words what he has to say here.
00:30:02.200The Wilhelm Schaben Germany project that was announced, this is an import terminal for LNG, announced in March 2022, completed in December 2022.
00:30:14.300This is how things get done everywhere else in the world.
00:30:17.420Here in Canada, nothing gets done because Liberals ban things from getting done.
00:30:21.160We're proposing to legalize fast energy production, construction and exportation.
00:32:32.300They have always been ones to punish the byway of energy policy, the Alberta, while stealing their resources to redistribute among the other provinces.
00:32:42.420What drives me nuts about listening to this now is it sounds like a more polite Canadian version of a drill, baby, drill.
00:32:49.500Where the heck was it during the election?
00:32:52.020And I'm going to harp on this because I took a lot of flack for making constructive criticism throughout the election.
00:32:58.060These were election issues, energy independence, especially for Alberta.
00:33:02.420But it's only after the election now that Pierre is finding his Canadian version of Trump-ish policies, which were logical policies to begin with.
00:33:12.500Secure the border, kick out illegal aliens, tighten up on the fentanyl, and become energy independent.
00:33:20.320Where the heck was the lapse during the election?
00:33:22.260Viva, with all due respect, I'll challenge you on the pipeline point.
00:33:25.880I covered so many rallies, so many pressers during the election campaign, and I thought Mr. Polyev was very loud and clear where he stood on pipelines, avoiding the phrase, drill, baby, drill, because you can't use that kind of language in Canada.
00:33:43.560But he was a true champion for the oil sands, I think.
00:33:50.860I know that he said certain things, and that was the report that I got.
00:33:53.640No, Viva, he said this here and he said this there.
00:33:56.180On election, you've got to get everywhere and say it and put it on blast, not just nationally, but internationally.
00:34:00.760And these are policies that ought to have been known, put on blast, and make their way past the soft censorship of centralized media that the CBC is not going to put these things on blast and not to find ways of getting around that.
00:34:13.560But no, it was definitely not vocal enough, even on the things he did say.
00:34:25.080I think the tragedy of Canada the past decade has been we literally have trillions of dollars of mineral wealth trapped underground that we cannot or actually will not bring to market.
00:34:41.140I can't think of any other resource-rich jurisdiction in the entire world that operates by this standard.
00:34:51.220And it seems to be for the sake of wokeism.
00:34:54.180It's about our carbon footprint and saving the planet and climate change.
00:35:00.980Well, the problem with Canada is that despite being the second largest country on the planet by landmass, we're an extremely urban country.
00:35:10.500And you start to have that mentality develop that, you know, food comes from the grocery store, that, you know, we don't – it's not the oil and gas industry that is generating the economic prosperity for the country.
00:35:23.720It's people working in downtown Toronto, which they're probably doing good work, but that work does not actually exist if we are not pulling things out of the ground, growing things, or manufacturing.
00:35:35.880But people can very easily divorce themselves from economic realities, and then they wonder why the economy is slowing down after they keep voting for politicians who end up holding up natural resource development.
00:35:46.320A couple of things on what Polyev and the Conservatives are doing.
00:35:50.260One, I just want to take it from the perspective of what Carney's doing and then what the Conservatives is doing.
00:35:54.600I'll actually start with the Conservatives.
00:35:56.040There is a rumor going around insider circles right now that in the fall, despite what Carney has been doing with flip-flopping with pipelines, they are at least going to try and push one through.
00:36:06.380Whether they just do it by word and they don't end up starting on three years, they at least want to rhetorically look like they're not against pipelines.
00:36:12.540And so what Polyev and the Conservatives are doing is trying to preempt them, say, no, no, don't just build up pipeline, build two pipelines, get rid of C-48, get rid of C-69, and clear the way so that we can have full energy independence.
00:36:25.660Basically upping the ante to show that if the Liberals pretend that they're in favor of a pipeline, this is the actual standard of what being in favor of pipelines and oil and gas development is, and this is where they're probably going to come in at.
00:36:38.400But what Carney's been doing, and it's extremely cynical, is he has been outsourcing saying no.
00:36:44.660He doesn't actually want to say no to a pipeline.
00:39:27.780And before we hit an ad break, I don't want to leave you out of the picture in terms of Canada and our pipeline production or rather lack thereof.
00:39:40.180Well, I love that he called out Evie, of course, because I'm trapped in this province.
00:39:44.680So, any opportunity to shine the spotlight on us, please do.
00:39:48.760But this is an issue of red tape and barriers up the wazoo.
00:40:49.340You know, Drea, to be fair to B.C., and you tell me if I'm right or wrong because you've forgotten more about British Columbia than I'm ever going to learn.
00:40:58.440But you take Vancouver and Victoria out of the mix.
00:41:03.380When we look at the hinterland of B.C., we see a lot of people espousing conservative values.
00:41:10.580Maybe that is a conservative province without those two municipalities, kind of like California.
00:41:16.460You take San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco out of the mix.
00:41:21.660There are a lot of conservatives, believe it or not, in the state of California.
00:41:28.600Well, again, our last election, which was October of last year, it was almost, it was a tie for a bit until they did all of those recounts.
00:41:36.600So we saw a rise in conservative voters.
00:41:40.500People have had enough in many different sectors, whether it's the landowners, whether it's the renters, whether it's, you know, people in the energy sector.
00:41:50.120There's just a lot of people switching over.
00:41:52.840And, of course, our drug issue here is huge and not cracking down on crime.
00:41:56.920So people are becoming more conservative.
00:41:58.880Sort of, you know, the left UGs are politically aligning with more conservative views as common sense goes out of the window.
00:42:42.840I'm the editor-in-chief at Rebel News, and I'm the president of the Independent Press Gallery of Canada.
00:42:47.520And I wanted to personally invite you or the young person you know to the Democracy Fund's 2025 Student Journalism Conference and Job Fair happening in Toronto from October 3rd to 5th.
00:43:02.500This year's theme is the free market, not just in economics, but in speech, in ideas, and in media.
00:43:09.300If that inspires you instead of intimidating you, then this is your moment.
00:43:13.100Over three packed days, successful applicants will get hands-on training in modern journalism with a focus on digital platforms, storytelling, and civil liberties reporting.
00:43:25.920You'll attend interactive sessions, complete with real-time group assignments graded by senior journalists, and compete for a grand prize.
00:43:35.440It's all expenses paid, flights, accommodations, and meals fully covered.
00:43:40.880This is a professional-grade experience for aspiring journalists with guts and grit.
00:43:46.340We're looking for Canadians or permanent residents or work permit holders age 18 to 30 who demonstrate ambition, integrity, and a commitment to free speech and truth-telling.
00:43:56.300You don't need a journalism degree, just the courage to challenge the narrative and the work ethic to back it up.
00:44:02.520Speakers include Ezra Levant, David Menzies, Tamara Ugolini, and yes, I'll be there too.
00:44:07.800Past grads have gone on to work in independent media, including right here at Revel News.
00:44:13.780And for those of you who believe in building an independent media ecosystem, you can help too.
00:44:19.800If you're a business or individual who wants to sponsor this conference, email us at events at thedemocracyfund.ca.
00:44:28.740Okay. Applications close very soon, August 3rd.
00:44:32.580Visit thedemocracyfund.ca to apply or support the next generation of fearless Canadian journalists.
00:44:40.040Let's train reporters who tell the truth, no matter who it offends.
00:44:44.120You know, Drea, I just wish way, way back in 1984 when I graduated at the Ryerson School of Journalism, there was such a thing as the student journalism conference that our company was putting on.
00:44:59.720I remember it was back in the old days, pre-internet, me putting clippings and resumes via snail mail to every small town, weekly imaginable.
00:45:11.080I think the most jarring rejection was from the newspaper that was in Tut-Tayatuk, Northwest Territories.
00:45:18.560Basically, the letter saying, sorry, kid, you're just not Tut-Tayatuk material, right?
00:45:24.200Thank God St. Paul, Alberta finally came through for me, but such is the case.
00:47:32.060So as I alluded to, U.S. Congress Republicans calling for Canada to rescind the Online Streaming Act, calling it a major threat to trade.
00:47:43.200Do you know, Dre, I might be reading too much into this, but what we saw a week and a bit ago with the disgraceful way Sean Foyt, the Christian rocker, was treated in Canada, all six venues cancelling him.
00:49:30.080I'm going to go with no, I don't think so.
00:49:32.460There's been a lot of pushback on this from a nonpartisan pushback already in Canada, and they haven't gone back on it.
00:49:40.040And they seem to be, when it comes to our relationship with the U.S., doing everything that they shouldn't be doing, or at least delaying how long it takes to do it.
00:49:50.280So I don't think they're going to jump on this right away, but they definitely should.
00:49:54.320But you know what, Drea, I would argue if he doesn't back down on this, it's for the wrong reasons.
00:49:59.060I think with Mark Carney, there is a hidden agenda here, and if my critics want to call me a conspiracy theorist, so be it.
00:50:08.360But I go back to eight days ago, just a little over eight days ago, before the August 1st tariff trade deadline, and you saw Carney announcing,
00:50:20.000and he knew full well this would enrage U.S. President Donald Trump, that Canada would push for Palestinian recognition of a full state.
00:50:33.780And people were saying, oh my God, what horrible timing.
00:50:40.060You don't think Mark Carney knew what the timing was like?
00:50:44.580I think, personally, he wanted to absolutely scuttle any kind of trade deal, Drea.
00:50:51.820And I say this because I truly believe the real entity running this country right now is Brookfield Acid Management.
00:51:00.540And Mark Carney himself, all his assets, the line share, are U.S. based.
00:51:08.280Why does he want Canada to succeed at the expense of the U.S.?
00:51:12.840A strong U.S. is very good for Mark Carney and very good for Mark Carney's bank account, and for that matter, Brookfield Asset Management's bottom line.
00:51:24.120So I think on this basis, Carney is conning us.