SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ Alexa Lavoie on Cuba, Caracas and Quebec conservatives
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Summary
Rebel News sent two journalists to Cuba to talk to Cubans about how they feel about what happened in Venezuela, the situation in Cuba, and the opposition to the Trump administration. Joining me today is Alexa Lavoie, one of the journalists we sent, and she shares her thoughts and gives us some sneak peeks into her long-form journalism about the struggles and strife in Cuba.
Transcript
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Today we're discussing our super secret trip to Cuba. I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and
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Cuba is a failing nation and you have to feel badly for Cuba.
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Rebel News sent two journalists to Cuba to talk to Cubans about how they feel about what
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happened in Venezuela, what they feel about communism, and how they feel about the American
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president and especially Marco Rubio. Joining me today is Alexa Lavoie, one of the journalists
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we sent, and she shares her thoughts and gives us some sneak peeks into her long-form journalism
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about the struggles and strife in Cuba. Take a listen.
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So joining me now is my friend and colleague Alexa Lavoie. And a couple of weeks ago, maybe
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two weeks ago, she was on a very secret mission that we didn't tell anybody about. In fact,
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most of us at the company didn't know what was going on. She went to Cuba. Alexa, tell us
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about your trip, why you went, and then we'll get into some of the details of what you learned
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Yeah, it was following what happened in Venezuela when Donald Trump and the military captured
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Nicolás Maduro. We knew that this will impact directly Cuba because of the oil. And we knew
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that Donald Trump was looking into Cuba because Cuba is the place where most of the dictators
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have actually learned about how communism works. And Maduro, Chavez, they all went to Cuba to be
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teached about how to implement communism. And so when we went to Miami, there were a lot of people
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talking about how they would love Cuba to be the next domino. So it's why we kind of talked about it,
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but we also talked about the consequences that we could face going over there. We knew that some
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YouTuber in the past have been jailed, detained, and also deported with all their camera and equipment
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seized by the regime for just trying to talk and expose what the regime was doing to their own
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people. So we were really careful. We went over there with no communication from the world. I had a
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very old iPhone. I didn't have any social media on this. We were warned as well that in the hotel,
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they had some microphone. So they were actually listening if someone were talking against the
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regime. We went over there because we wanted to give a voice to the people. And also, we wanted to learn
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if they wanted a U.S. intervention, if they actually like Donald Trump or Marco Rubio. And we wanted also
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to see like in which kind of condition they live under. It's how we went over there. It was really hard
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when we actually landed. It took almost an hour and a half to just pass through custom.
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We can see that everything is not working well. They have power outage happening many times during
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the day. We can see that they are not collecting the garbage. If you walk into the street, it's just
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pile of garbage. It's just piling up. And there's mice, there's like all kinds of flies, and it smells not
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really great. And you can see like you go into the shop, pharmacy, grocery. It's all empty shelves. And if you
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see a grocery where there's food, the people were actually telling us that this is not grocery for them.
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They can't afford that. It's only for people who actually work in hotels or the people who work for the regime
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or for the government, work jobs. So you can see that for them, it's peanuts. They have almost nothing.
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They have like literally a booklet where they have like the rations that they can actually get when
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they go to the grocery. They have the rights to have a certain amount of rice, certain amount of oil,
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cooking oil. And when you actually walk through those buildings, those buildings are crumbling down.
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And you can see the crack concrete. I was kind of worried. I was like, those buildings will collapse
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soon. It's really dangerous, but they have no choice. They live all together. There is like
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a family of like five, six living in one bedroom, all sleeping in the same bed. You go into the kitchen
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and what I was able to see is like a mother of five cooking a soup, but only with water, bones and
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spice, nothing else. Also, they don't use any salt because they say that they can't actually get sick.
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So they all watch what they are eating because if they get sick, they go to the hospital. They have a
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coupon for having medication, but the pharmacy is empty. They can't actually buy the prescription
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that the hospital is giving them. So it's really sad to see, but it's really revealing what we were
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able to get from the people because they didn't know we were filming them. Most of them, we hit their
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faces because we don't want them to go into prison. It's five to 10 years in prison. And you can also
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result to 20 years in prison because the last protest that they had in 2021 about the COVID
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protest, almost all of them have been sent to jail. They say that there is many, many jail
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in the island and most of them is political prisoner. Yeah. Now, you know, it's funny that
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you talk about the conditions there because the Canadian left, they love Cuba. They love going there
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and spending their money there and propping up this evil regime. That's why it was easier for you
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as a Canadian to go there and be an undercover journalist. You'll probably never be allowed back.
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I wouldn't send you there. Um, then an American because the Americans have an embargo against Cuba,
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but Canadian tourists go down there all the time and spend their money there and keep this evil regime
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afloat. And the Canadian left will brag about the universal healthcare in Cuba. But you're telling me
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that the residents there are too scared to consume salt, which is not bad for you, by the way,
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because they're scared of getting sick because really there is no healthcare whatsoever.
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Yeah, exactly. What they are saying is, uh, if they get sick, it's almost the end because first of all,
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uh, they go to the hospital, but there is no medication. There is no medicine. Uh, I went to
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many, many different pharmacists, uh, drugstore, and, uh, it's all empty, empty shelves. And it's all run by
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the government. And also you have a prescription. So you have like a piece of paper that say that you
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can have the amount of pills, uh, but you need to buy it. It's not free. So some of them, they don't
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have the money to buy the prescription. So it's like an infinite, just, you know, loop that you don't
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have money, but you can't purchase, you, you dig into the garbages. So they are roaming into the
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garbages to try to find some stuff that it can reuse at home. And I'm telling you, um, I passed by
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those garbages. Um, I was horrified and I, I find like really, really sad because, you know, um,
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I look at all the people and they are so tiny. It's, it's, it's, it's not fat people. Huh? They,
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they, they, they look like all skeleton walking into the street. Like they, they know they are aware
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that something is wrong. Why? Because before the regime was controlling and is still controlling,
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uh, media and advertisement, uh, education. But the thing when social media came, it opened a whole
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door, uh, for these people to see outside what was happening and another narrative. It's why in Cuba
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using social media, it's really dangerous because, uh, if the regime actually see that you are using
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social media, they can actually jail you. Uh, it's why they all do this like, uh, discreetly.
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They don't actually show to anybody, uh, that they are using this. And by the way, also there is not
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many religious freedom. What I was actually about to see, I was talking with someone in Quebec who is
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Cuban himself, and he was talking to me about concentration camp. Obviously it's not concentration
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camp, but it was a forced working camp. And I actually, um, did some research on this and yes,
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under Fidel Castro, they were forced camp where they were sending, uh, homosexual, uh, religious people,
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uh, to force them to work and to convert them, to remove them from their religious freedom,
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to, uh, to, uh, to try to convert them if they were homosexual, to try to, to, uh, uh, turn them into
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being straight. Um, and because it was a threat for the, the regime, uh, being religious, you, you believe
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on your faith and you're not believing on the, the regime as well as for the homosexual. They didn't
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believe that it was a rights, uh, and it was an unnormal for them. So yes, that existed under Fidel Castro,
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um, today is not, I don't think it exists anymore, but this regime is an oppressive, repressive regime
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and everybody was scared to talk and everybody actually mentioned that they can risk prison and
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they were always doing that to us. But the vast majority are for the American to come and intervene.
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Why? Because they say that if they are not coming and they are not intervening, nothing will change
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because they can't rise up. They can't do anything. And the, the fact that there is now power outage,
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they are scared that now when dark comes, there will be violence and people will actually rise
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during the dark times. So, um, there is a lot of uncertainties over there. And, um, as I say, they hope,
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they hope for something happening over there because they can't actually survive like that.
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Now, I don't want to give too much away because you are working on, uh, I, I think it's probably,
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well, it is documentary length, very long, uh, full of information video over the coming days on this.
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You've been working on it in the background for weeks now. Um, but just give us a sneak peek
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about what you heard from the people about what they think about president Trump, what happened in
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Venezuela, Marco Rubio, who is of Cuban descent. Tell us what they say about this.
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Yeah. Some people say that the hope that Marco Rubio will be their next president. They would love
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to see him to be the next president. Why? Because his family is from Cuba. Right. Obviously he is born
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in the U S but his whole family live under the communist regime. The, and he knows what he's talking
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about. So a lot of people love Marco Rubio. A lot of people love Donald Trump. Some of them say,
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you know, he's not God is not a stupid person, but you know, when he's talking about Cuba, he knows,
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uh, what is all the ramification of Cuba in Latin America with terrorism. They talked about also
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some secret about drugs, dealing the drugs being hidden in Cuba, uh, for the Venezuela regime. Um,
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they talk also about, um, the cooperation with, um, Venezuela and Cuba. They talked about so many
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different things. They talk about also how life is really hard for them. They actually opened their
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door to their home, to where they live to show us. And they, they actually begged us, please show the
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world, show the world, show the world, our condition, show what actually tourists don't see, because this
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is true. When you go into the tourist places, it's clean. And when you rent a car, you know, those
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beautiful vintage cars, they don't bring you where the garbages are. They don't bring you where the real
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people lived. They will bring you at the tourist spot. So you can actually see the beautiful Havana,
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the beautiful Cuba, but this is not reality. It's actually just certain places that are being kept
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clean, but the rest is just collapsing. It's just falling apart. And we wanted to see the real Cuba.
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And when we mentioned, we want to see the reality, your reality, we want to see the truth. You, you could
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see their face saying, you really want to see the reality. You really want to see it. And I, we were like,
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yes. And they were like right away, like come with us. And they open up like right away. And also the fact
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that me and Efron, we actually can speak Spanish, it helped a lot because those people cannot speak
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another language in Spanish. So they were more open to share their thoughts with us.
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So I know you're still working on it. It's still not finished. Um, but, uh, I think that what you've
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done is I've, I've seen what you've worked on already. I think it's such an important piece of
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journalist journalism that could only be done by rebel news because you're Canadian and because you believe
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in freedom. So I, I can't wait for people to see what comes out of your work because, uh, it was very
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secretive and you did put yourself at, at great risk to tell the stories of the people on the ground
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that the Canadian tourists look away from. So I'm, I'm just so proud of the work that you and Efron did
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down there. Um, moving on from that, um, over the weekend, last weekend, I was at the federal
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conservative party convention in Calgary. You were at the Quebec conservative party convention. Um,
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and I think we were all talking about the same things, you know, freedom, firearms, rights,
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government overreach being left alone. Um, it just in brief, cause well, you know, we've got about
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five or six minutes left. Uh, tell us what the key points, the key themes of the conservative party
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convention in Quebec. Yeah. The, by the way, the conservative party of Quebec did their, uh, convention
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in like in the same time that the federal one, but they didn't know, they didn't know that they
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weren't like, they weren't like Doug Ford. Yeah, exactly. They didn't know because I asked
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and they say, uh, if we knew we would probably like do it another time, but they didn't know.
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But the key team were mainly economy, uh, housing, education. Um, they were a part on nationalism,
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uh, being proud of our heritage. Uh, they bring back also the question about crucifix and all,
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uh, the Christian heritage that they want to keep and not removed. Um, they also talked about
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the justice system and also the public safety. Um, we talked about also like, uh, some stats
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about incarceration, uh, the jail time and recidivists. Um, they also spoke about, um,
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I'm trying to remember everything. Um, they didn't actually really touch more, um, a lot about
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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
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want per year. They want to table, um, bill that will actually mention the needs of the region,
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uh, in terms of immigrant and that will come later. So it's why they didn't actually include
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too much of, um, immigration on this portion, but mainly how to extract our natural resources.
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They also talked about the federal buyback program and the confiscation of the firearm. Uh, they are
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all against it. Uh, they, they, they believe on, um, the, uh, autonomy of a province that the federal
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should not actually teach and tell us how, uh, uh, to deal with their firearm or with their natural
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resources. Um, they believe on, uh, the full autonomy of, uh, province. And, uh, that was actually,
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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,
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but they were one of the minister who actually resigned. Now she sitting as an independent,
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but she was there during the, um, conservative convention. She actually spoke about, uh, the,
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the need of the region and the autonomy of the region. So they are, they will actually him and
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the four, the minister who sit as an independent, they will table a project of law, a bill together
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about, uh, immigration and the region, the need of the region. So that was a, another interesting
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part, um, about 300 people, uh, were, were there. They actually discussed so many propositions.
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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.
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Well, actually they spoke about the Alberta and how we, we should actually take Alberta as a model,
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uh, how to be more autonomous and how to extract our natural resources and how we should decentralize
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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
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system need also to be decentralized and how we need to add private sector with the public sector,
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because in Quebec, unfortunately, it's all about the public and the union is pressuring the government
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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
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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
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out here in Alberta and, uh, take it by way of equalization payment. So he's not against fracking. He's
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No, our premier is like, like that as, uh, Eric Duhem say, he is actually governing with the wave of the wind.
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So if people are against something is just following everything because François Legault wrote a book
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about how to extract our natural resources. And he was not against fracking. It was actually to,
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how to, we will actually, uh, get equalization payment to zero, how to be prosperous and look at
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what he did. He actually betrayed all of his promise. He did none of it, but he wrote a book
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about it. Well, that's good. Good for him. Uh, Alexa, thanks so much for coming on the show today,
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giving us an update on your important work in Cuba and giving a voice to conservatives in Quebec,
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because sometimes it feels like, uh, we forget they exist in the rest of the country. And I think
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on certain issues, there's a lot more that unites us than divides us. We both have very busy days.
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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
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regards because, um, you've got fans all across this country. Yeah. And thank you very much. I,
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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.
00:24:52.940
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
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,
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many more people will send in money. The other thing you can do is set up a structure to receive
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the donations like the rebel news foundation or something like that. You need a friendly lawyer
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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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created during COVID, um, to help people fight their fines. We used to have an initiative called
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fight the fines. If you got a fine for having Christmas or protesting or, uh, opening your
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restaurant or opening your church, you could rely on the democracy fund, which is a CRA compliant
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Canadian charity to help you with that. And any donations to the democracy fund are charitable
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donations, which will provide you with the tax receipt. And rebel news covers the journalistic
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side of that. We tell those stories, um, and then you donate to the democracy fund. Rebel news cannot
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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
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liked, but maybe didn't work quite as hard on the liberals as we are. That even though you're on a
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charity, you could issue a tax receipt and the subscribers then could claim that on their taxes
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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.