Rebel News Podcast - SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ Alexa Lavoie on Cuba, Caracas and Quebec conservatives

00:00:00.000 Today we're discussing our super secret trip to Cuba. I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and

00:00:21.900 you're watching The Gun Show.

00:00:30.000 Cuba is a failing nation and you have to feel badly for Cuba.

00:00:56.000 Rebel News sent two journalists to Cuba to talk to Cubans about how they feel about what

00:01:14.380 happened in Venezuela, what they feel about communism, and how they feel about the American

00:01:21.240 president and especially Marco Rubio. Joining me today is Alexa Lavoie, one of the journalists

00:01:28.860 we sent, and she shares her thoughts and gives us some sneak peeks into her long-form journalism

00:01:38.960 about the struggles and strife in Cuba. Take a listen.

00:01:50.020 So joining me now is my friend and colleague Alexa Lavoie. And a couple of weeks ago, maybe

00:01:57.060 two weeks ago, she was on a very secret mission that we didn't tell anybody about. In fact,

00:02:03.880 most of us at the company didn't know what was going on. She went to Cuba. Alexa, tell us

00:02:11.440 about your trip, why you went, and then we'll get into some of the details of what you learned

00:02:17.580 on the ground.

00:02:19.160 Yeah, it was following what happened in Venezuela when Donald Trump and the military captured

00:02:25.500 Nicolás Maduro. We knew that this will impact directly Cuba because of the oil. And we knew

00:02:34.300 that Donald Trump was looking into Cuba because Cuba is the place where most of the dictators

00:02:40.400 have actually learned about how communism works. And Maduro, Chavez, they all went to Cuba to be

00:02:52.480 teached about how to implement communism. And so when we went to Miami, there were a lot of people

00:03:02.080 talking about how they would love Cuba to be the next domino. So it's why we kind of talked about it,

00:03:10.260 but we also talked about the consequences that we could face going over there. We knew that some

00:03:20.780 YouTuber in the past have been jailed, detained, and also deported with all their camera and equipment

00:03:28.640 seized by the regime for just trying to talk and expose what the regime was doing to their own

00:03:36.660 people. So we were really careful. We went over there with no communication from the world. I had a

00:03:46.200 very old iPhone. I didn't have any social media on this. We were warned as well that in the hotel,

00:03:56.880 they had some microphone. So they were actually listening if someone were talking against the

00:04:05.200 regime. We went over there because we wanted to give a voice to the people. And also, we wanted to learn

00:04:12.520 if they wanted a U.S. intervention, if they actually like Donald Trump or Marco Rubio. And we wanted also

00:04:22.160 to see like in which kind of condition they live under. It's how we went over there. It was really hard

00:04:30.120 when we actually landed. It took almost an hour and a half to just pass through custom.

00:04:36.200 We can see that everything is not working well. They have power outage happening many times during

00:04:45.440 the day. We can see that they are not collecting the garbage. If you walk into the street, it's just

00:04:53.020 pile of garbage. It's just piling up. And there's mice, there's like all kinds of flies, and it smells not

00:05:00.740 really great. And you can see like you go into the shop, pharmacy, grocery. It's all empty shelves. And if you

00:05:10.620 see a grocery where there's food, the people were actually telling us that this is not grocery for them.

00:05:18.640 They can't afford that. It's only for people who actually work in hotels or the people who work for the regime

00:05:26.120 or for the government, work jobs. So you can see that for them, it's peanuts. They have almost nothing.

00:05:34.580 They have like literally a booklet where they have like the rations that they can actually get when

00:05:40.920 they go to the grocery. They have the rights to have a certain amount of rice, certain amount of oil,

00:05:47.320 cooking oil. And when you actually walk through those buildings, those buildings are crumbling down.

00:05:54.780 And you can see the crack concrete. I was kind of worried. I was like, those buildings will collapse

00:06:02.800 soon. It's really dangerous, but they have no choice. They live all together. There is like

00:06:09.640 a family of like five, six living in one bedroom, all sleeping in the same bed. You go into the kitchen

00:06:17.500 and what I was able to see is like a mother of five cooking a soup, but only with water, bones and

00:06:25.680 spice, nothing else. Also, they don't use any salt because they say that they can't actually get sick.

00:06:33.520 So they all watch what they are eating because if they get sick, they go to the hospital. They have a

00:06:41.020 coupon for having medication, but the pharmacy is empty. They can't actually buy the prescription

00:06:47.400 that the hospital is giving them. So it's really sad to see, but it's really revealing what we were

00:06:58.400 able to get from the people because they didn't know we were filming them. Most of them, we hit their

00:07:06.620 faces because we don't want them to go into prison. It's five to 10 years in prison. And you can also 0.79

00:07:13.580 result to 20 years in prison because the last protest that they had in 2021 about the COVID

00:07:20.060 protest, almost all of them have been sent to jail. They say that there is many, many jail

00:07:27.620 in the island and most of them is political prisoner. Yeah. Now, you know, it's funny that

00:07:36.420 you talk about the conditions there because the Canadian left, they love Cuba. They love going there

00:07:41.940 and spending their money there and propping up this evil regime. That's why it was easier for you

00:07:47.200 as a Canadian to go there and be an undercover journalist. You'll probably never be allowed back.

00:07:52.980 I wouldn't send you there. Um, then an American because the Americans have an embargo against Cuba,

00:07:58.900 but Canadian tourists go down there all the time and spend their money there and keep this evil regime

00:08:07.720 afloat. And the Canadian left will brag about the universal healthcare in Cuba. But you're telling me

00:08:13.760 that the residents there are too scared to consume salt, which is not bad for you, by the way,

00:08:20.300 because they're scared of getting sick because really there is no healthcare whatsoever.

00:08:28.220 Yeah, exactly. What they are saying is, uh, if they get sick, it's almost the end because first of all,

00:08:36.080 uh, they go to the hospital, but there is no medication. There is no medicine. Uh, I went to

00:08:41.280 many, many different pharmacists, uh, drugstore, and, uh, it's all empty, empty shelves. And it's all run by

00:08:49.480 the government. And also you have a prescription. So you have like a piece of paper that say that you

00:08:56.220 can have the amount of pills, uh, but you need to buy it. It's not free. So some of them, they don't

00:09:03.920 have the money to buy the prescription. So it's like an infinite, just, you know, loop that you don't

00:09:12.960 have money, but you can't purchase, you, you dig into the garbages. So they are roaming into the

00:09:21.560 garbages to try to find some stuff that it can reuse at home. And I'm telling you, um, I passed by

00:09:29.640 those garbages. Um, I was horrified and I, I find like really, really sad because, you know, um,

00:09:38.700 I look at all the people and they are so tiny. It's, it's, it's, it's not fat people. Huh? They,

00:09:46.840 they, they, they look like all skeleton walking into the street. Like they, they know they are aware

00:09:53.800 that something is wrong. Why? Because before the regime was controlling and is still controlling,

00:10:00.920 uh, media and advertisement, uh, education. But the thing when social media came, it opened a whole

00:10:11.160 door, uh, for these people to see outside what was happening and another narrative. It's why in Cuba 0.92

00:10:20.260 using social media, it's really dangerous because, uh, if the regime actually see that you are using

00:10:27.840 social media, they can actually jail you. Uh, it's why they all do this like, uh, discreetly.

00:10:35.060 They don't actually show to anybody, uh, that they are using this. And by the way, also there is not

00:10:41.940 many religious freedom. What I was actually about to see, I was talking with someone in Quebec who is

00:10:48.680 Cuban himself, and he was talking to me about concentration camp. Obviously it's not concentration

00:10:54.960 camp, but it was a forced working camp. And I actually, um, did some research on this and yes,

00:11:02.240 under Fidel Castro, they were forced camp where they were sending, uh, homosexual, uh, religious people, 0.93

00:11:09.460 uh, to force them to work and to convert them, to remove them from their religious freedom,

00:11:15.980 to, uh, to, uh, to try to convert them if they were homosexual, to try to, to, uh, uh, turn them into 0.89

00:11:23.320 being straight. Um, and because it was a threat for the, the regime, uh, being religious, you, you believe

00:11:31.900 on your faith and you're not believing on the, the regime as well as for the homosexual. They didn't 0.97

00:11:38.440 believe that it was a rights, uh, and it was an unnormal for them. So yes, that existed under Fidel Castro,

00:11:45.900 um, today is not, I don't think it exists anymore, but this regime is an oppressive, repressive regime

00:11:54.000 and everybody was scared to talk and everybody actually mentioned that they can risk prison and

00:12:00.460 they were always doing that to us. But the vast majority are for the American to come and intervene.

00:12:09.780 Why? Because they say that if they are not coming and they are not intervening, nothing will change

00:12:17.520 because they can't rise up. They can't do anything. And the, the fact that there is now power outage,

00:12:24.740 they are scared that now when dark comes, there will be violence and people will actually rise

00:12:32.880 during the dark times. So, um, there is a lot of uncertainties over there. And, um, as I say, they hope,

00:12:42.820 they hope for something happening over there because they can't actually survive like that.

00:12:48.680 Now, I don't want to give too much away because you are working on, uh, I, I think it's probably,

00:12:54.760 well, it is documentary length, very long, uh, full of information video over the coming days on this.

00:13:03.020 You've been working on it in the background for weeks now. Um, but just give us a sneak peek

00:13:08.340 about what you heard from the people about what they think about president Trump, what happened in

00:13:15.580 Venezuela, Marco Rubio, who is of Cuban descent. Tell us what they say about this.

00:13:23.040 Yeah. Some people say that the hope that Marco Rubio will be their next president. They would love

00:13:31.360 to see him to be the next president. Why? Because his family is from Cuba. Right. Obviously he is born

00:13:38.980 in the U S but his whole family live under the communist regime. The, and he knows what he's talking

00:13:47.020 about. So a lot of people love Marco Rubio. A lot of people love Donald Trump. Some of them say,

00:13:52.820 you know, he's not God is not a stupid person, but you know, when he's talking about Cuba, he knows, 0.99

00:14:00.480 uh, what is all the ramification of Cuba in Latin America with terrorism. They talked about also 0.99

00:14:09.460 some secret about drugs, dealing the drugs being hidden in Cuba, uh, for the Venezuela regime. Um,

00:14:20.380 they talk also about, um, the cooperation with, um, Venezuela and Cuba. They talked about so many

00:14:28.620 different things. They talk about also how life is really hard for them. They actually opened their

00:14:34.320 door to their home, to where they live to show us. And they, they actually begged us, please show the

00:14:42.760 world, show the world, show the world, our condition, show what actually tourists don't see, because this

00:14:50.400 is true. When you go into the tourist places, it's clean. And when you rent a car, you know, those

00:14:57.720 beautiful vintage cars, they don't bring you where the garbages are. They don't bring you where the real

00:15:06.400 people lived. They will bring you at the tourist spot. So you can actually see the beautiful Havana,

00:15:12.560 the beautiful Cuba, but this is not reality. It's actually just certain places that are being kept

00:15:19.520 clean, but the rest is just collapsing. It's just falling apart. And we wanted to see the real Cuba. 0.97

00:15:29.280 And when we mentioned, we want to see the reality, your reality, we want to see the truth. You, you could

00:15:37.240 see their face saying, you really want to see the reality. You really want to see it. And I, we were like,

00:15:45.000 yes. And they were like right away, like come with us. And they open up like right away. And also the fact

00:15:51.320 that me and Efron, we actually can speak Spanish, it helped a lot because those people cannot speak 1.00

00:16:00.320 another language in Spanish. So they were more open to share their thoughts with us.

00:16:06.920 So I know you're still working on it. It's still not finished. Um, but, uh, I think that what you've

00:16:19.300 done is I've, I've seen what you've worked on already. I think it's such an important piece of

00:16:25.160 journalist journalism that could only be done by rebel news because you're Canadian and because you believe

00:16:33.660 in freedom. So I, I can't wait for people to see what comes out of your work because, uh, it was very

00:16:40.780 secretive and you did put yourself at, at great risk to tell the stories of the people on the ground

00:16:49.180 that the Canadian tourists look away from. So I'm, I'm just so proud of the work that you and Efron did

00:16:56.560 down there. Um, moving on from that, um, over the weekend, last weekend, I was at the federal

00:17:05.820 conservative party convention in Calgary. You were at the Quebec conservative party convention. Um,

00:17:13.080 and I think we were all talking about the same things, you know, freedom, firearms, rights,

00:17:19.500 government overreach being left alone. Um, it just in brief, cause well, you know, we've got about

00:17:28.180 five or six minutes left. Uh, tell us what the key points, the key themes of the conservative party

00:17:36.260 convention in Quebec. Yeah. The, by the way, the conservative party of Quebec did their, uh, convention

00:17:45.080 in like in the same time that the federal one, but they didn't know, they didn't know that they

00:17:51.940 weren't like, they weren't like Doug Ford. Yeah, exactly. They didn't know because I asked

00:17:57.980 and they say, uh, if we knew we would probably like do it another time, but they didn't know.

00:18:04.320 But the key team were mainly economy, uh, housing, education. Um, they were a part on nationalism,

00:18:14.180 uh, being proud of our heritage. Uh, they bring back also the question about crucifix and all,

00:18:22.120 uh, the Christian heritage that they want to keep and not removed. Um, they also talked about

00:18:29.440 the justice system and also the public safety. Um, we talked about also like, uh, some stats

00:18:39.320 about incarceration, uh, the jail time and recidivists. Um, they also spoke about, um,

00:18:49.100 I'm trying to remember everything. Um, they didn't actually really touch more, um, a lot about

00:18:56.320 immigration. I was kind of surprised and I actually, uh, ask a question about it and what they say to us,

00:19:04.100 is they say that they don't want to fall into talking about numbers or how many immigrants we

00:19:10.140 want per year. They want to table, um, bill that will actually mention the needs of the region,

00:19:20.040 uh, in terms of immigrant and that will come later. So it's why they didn't actually include

00:19:27.840 too much of, um, immigration on this portion, but mainly how to extract our natural resources.

00:19:35.240 They also talked about the federal buyback program and the confiscation of the firearm. Uh, they are

00:19:43.920 all against it. Uh, they, they, they believe on, um, the, uh, autonomy of a province that the federal

00:19:51.060 should not actually teach and tell us how, uh, uh, to deal with their firearm or with their natural

00:19:58.840 resources. Um, they believe on, uh, the full autonomy of, uh, province. And, uh, that was actually,

00:20:05.640 uh, really interesting, uh, to, to see. And they were the, so at this moment, probably people are aware

00:20:13.180 that, uh, our premier have resigned. Now they are searching for someone to replace,

00:20:19.560 but they were one of the minister who actually resigned. Now she sitting as an independent,

00:20:26.780 but she was there during the, um, conservative convention. She actually spoke about, uh, the,

00:20:34.060 the need of the region and the autonomy of the region. So they are, they will actually him and

00:20:41.760 the four, the minister who sit as an independent, they will table a project of law, a bill together

00:20:49.340 about, uh, immigration and the region, the need of the region. So that was a, another interesting

00:20:56.000 part, um, about 300 people, uh, were, were there. They actually discussed so many propositions.

00:21:03.720 Some were adopted. Most of them were adopted and some of them, uh, got rejected, obviously.

00:21:10.340 Well, it sounds like a very Alberta style convention.

00:21:15.720 Well, actually they spoke about the Alberta and how we, we should actually take Alberta as a model,

00:21:22.940 uh, how to be more autonomous and how to extract our natural resources and how we should decentralize

00:21:32.560 everything to give more power to the region because in Quebec, everything is, it's, it's, it's run by the

00:21:43.100 government in Quebec. And it's why we are seeing so many problems. And they talk about how the healthcare

00:21:51.760 system need also to be decentralized and how we need to add private sector with the public sector,

00:21:59.220 because in Quebec, unfortunately, it's all about the public and the union is pressuring the government

00:22:06.440 to remove completely the private sector. That would be terrible for Quebec.

00:22:13.060 Right. Um, yeah, it is true. I mean, I mean, we talk about resource extraction, but Quebec has its own

00:22:19.120 natural gas fields, but you've banned fracking there for some reason. And so your premier, your newly

00:22:26.120 resigned premier, he's against fracking, but he's perfectly fine to take the money generated by fracking

00:22:34.220 out here in Alberta and, uh, take it by way of equalization payment. So he's not against fracking. He's

00:22:41.640 just against fracking jobs in Quebec.

00:22:44.100 No, our premier is like, like that as, uh, Eric Duhem say, he is actually governing with the wave of the wind.

00:22:55.100 So if people are against something is just following everything because François Legault wrote a book

00:23:03.400 about how to extract our natural resources. And he was not against fracking. It was actually to,

00:23:10.660 how to, we will actually, uh, get equalization payment to zero, how to be prosperous and look at

00:23:19.700 what he did. He actually betrayed all of his promise. He did none of it, but he wrote a book

00:23:27.640 about it. Well, that's good. Good for him. Uh, Alexa, thanks so much for coming on the show today,

00:23:33.560 giving us an update on your important work in Cuba and giving a voice to conservatives in Quebec,

00:23:38.920 because sometimes it feels like, uh, we forget they exist in the rest of the country. And I think

00:23:43.840 on certain issues, there's a lot more that unites us than divides us. We both have very busy days.

00:23:50.160 You've got to get back to your Cuba work. Um, because I think it's such important work. People

00:23:55.580 need to see it. Um, I'm just so proud of all the things that you do at rebel news. And I have to

00:24:00.960 tell you at the conservative party convention in Calgary, uh, I heard constantly, where's Alexa?

00:24:10.220 We love her work. Where's Alexa? We love her work. Um, and so I just wanted to pass along, uh, those

00:24:16.680 regards because, um, you've got fans all across this country. Yeah. And thank you very much. I,

00:24:22.760 it's very touching. And, uh, I would say, uh, I love my fellow, uh, Albertan. Uh, I think we are

00:24:29.620 more in common, Quebec and Alberta. I think we are really, um, different in a way, but really similar

00:24:37.760 in another day. For sure. I'm learning that more every day. Alexa, let's both get back to work.

00:24:44.340 I'll talk to you later. Bye-bye.

00:24:52.940 Well, the last segment of the show always belongs to you, our beloved viewer, because without you,

00:24:57.960 there's just no rebel news. We don't take any money from the government. And how could we,

00:25:03.700 if we plan to hold the government to account, we certainly can't be on the government dole.

00:25:11.560 Even if we were able to fully maintain our journalistic independence, the perception of

00:25:18.520 contamination by government money would always be there. You'd have some doubts. Heck, I'd have some

00:25:24.120 doubts. So, uh, that's why we rely on your support. And because we rely on your support,

00:25:32.780 we let you have your say. So if you want to write me an email about the show today,

00:25:37.040 Sheila at rebel news.com, put gun show letters in the subject line. So I know exactly why you're 1.00

00:25:42.580 emailing me, uh, or leave comments on YouTube on rumble on any of the clips of the show or on any of

00:25:50.820 our content. I do go looking at those comments, not just on my own work, but on all the work that

00:25:56.660 we do here at rebel news, it's part of my job is to take the temperature of the viewer feedback.

00:26:04.800 Now, today's email doesn't come to us by way of any of our content per se, but it does give me an

00:26:13.120 opportunity to answer a question that I think some of you might have. And this comes to me from

00:26:19.400 a viewer named Scott. And it came in response to one of our fundraising emails that we send out.

00:26:25.940 And it says, Hey, rebel news. First of all, thanks for your work. It is appreciated. Secondly,

00:26:31.940 if you want people to donate, then you should specify on the donation pitch, like the one below

00:26:37.680 that you can provide tax receipts for donations or $50 or more or something like that. If you do this,

00:26:45.280 many more people will send in money. The other thing you can do is set up a structure to receive

00:26:49.920 the donations like the rebel news foundation or something like that. You need a friendly lawyer

00:26:54.140 or accountant to help you with this. All the best Scott. Well, Scott, I'm glad that you sent this

00:26:58.720 email because, um, it allows me the opportunity to explain why we can't do that. Now we do have,

00:27:07.900 uh, uh, uh, a charitable arm, a fully independent charitable arm of rebel news. Uh, and it's not,

00:27:15.280 I should clarify, it's not a rebel news. It's a charity that we work closely with. It was

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00:27:28.680 fight the fines. If you got a fine for having Christmas or protesting or, uh, opening your

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00:28:07.480 issue directly tax receipts for your donations to us because we are not a charity, nor can we do what

00:28:15.940 many other journalistic outlets in this country do. And that is issue a tax receipt. Um, because we were

00:28:25.180 denied the Q C J O that's the acronym for qualified Canadian journalistic organization. That was, uh,

00:28:36.600 a, uh, a tier in the tax code that the liberals created so that if you were a media outlet

00:28:46.220 and they decided that you were a media outlet that they liked, or maybe not even so much that they

00:28:54.780 liked, but maybe didn't work quite as hard on the liberals as we are. That even though you're on a

00:29:03.020 charity, you could issue a tax receipt and the subscribers then could claim that on their taxes

00:29:12.200 as a deduction. We applied for that, not because we need permission from the government to be a

00:29:20.340 qualified Canadian journalistic organization. We are a journalistic organization. We do journalism.

00:29:25.760 Uh, Alexa is doing great journalism. I think her work from Cuba is exceptional journalism. I think her

00:29:34.000 work on the ground from the conservative convention in Quebec is absolutely journalism,

00:29:38.980 but we did not qualify for that. We fought for it. We appealed, we did our best, but we were still

00:29:45.960 denied. And we weren't specifically fighting for that for ourselves because our viewers donate to us

00:29:54.960 anyway. We were fighting for that for you, for our viewers. We were willing to spend the money and

00:30:02.520 hire lawyers to fight for your fair treatment under the tax code. You see, if you choose to subscribe to

00:30:10.720 Rebel News, you are being discriminated against because of your choice of journalistic organization

00:30:19.240 that you support with your money. So if you subscribe to the National Post, you'll get a tax receipt.

00:30:24.740 You can claim the subscription on your taxes. If you subscribe to us, you can't, even though we

00:30:31.500 frequently cover many of the same stories or in some instances, they cover the stories that we broke

00:30:39.560 and yet their subscribers get fair treatment under the tax code and ours don't. So as much as I would

00:30:46.240 love to have us provide to you, the government, because of, I think, how aggressive we are with

00:30:57.400 them, rightfully aggressive, by the way, they deserve every little bit of it. You are the victims of tax

00:31:04.040 code discrimination. I hope that answers your question. If you have any other questions like that,

00:31:09.740 viewers, that are not pertaining to the work, but you would like me to address them on air,

00:31:15.200 send them. Sheila at rebelnews.com. That's the show for today. Thank you so much for tuning in.

00:31:21.240 Thanks to everybody who works behind the scenes at Rebel News to put the show together.

00:31:24.720 And as always, don't let the government tell you that you've had too much to think.

00:31:54.720 Thank you.

Rebel News Podcast - February 05, 2026

SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ Alexa Lavoie on Cuba, Caracas and Quebec conservatives

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