Rebel News Podcast - With Trump gone, China flexes its muscles — and Canada bows down low!

00:00:00.000 Hello, my Rebels. Today, I'm going to tell you four little China stories, all in the same theme,

00:00:06.140 and two of them involving Canada groveling before China. It's not pretty, but you got to see it.

00:00:12.240 Hey, can I invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus? It's only eight bucks a month,

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00:00:44.640 because we don't take a dime from Trudeau, and it shows. All right, here's today's podcast.

00:00:55.780 Tonight, with Trump out of the way, China flexes its muscles, and Canada bows down low.

00:01:11.520 It's February 9th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.

00:01:16.400 Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?

00:01:19.900 There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.

00:01:24.220 The only thing I have to say to the government of a wire publisher is because it's my bloody right to do so.

00:01:34.780 You know, I criticize the media party, but I have to acknowledge that the Globe and Mail does an

00:01:39.980 outstanding job on covering China's bad behavior. They just do. They're always alert to it. They speak 0.99

00:01:46.220 truth to power. The Globe is the official newspaper of the Canadian establishment,

00:01:50.540 including the business establishment that is totally hooked on China, so it surely

00:01:54.920 is not an easy thing for them to antagonize that part of their audience. It's not like us or the

00:02:01.400 good folks of the Epoch Times who specifically speak to Chinese dissonance or critics. The Globe does 0.98

00:02:08.000 it to their cost. Anyways, credit where credit is due. And take a look at this story.

00:02:13.120 Canada's visa application center in Beijing, run by Chinese police? How's that even possible?

00:02:24.540 How's that not a satirical joke by a comedy website like The Onion or The Babylon Bee? Except there's

00:02:30.920 a difference between something being absurd and something being funny. Let me read from the great

00:02:36.280 story. Chinese police own a company that collects details of people applying for visas to Canada.

00:02:42.760 and numerous other countries, giving Beijing security services a direct stake in the processing of

00:02:48.580 private information provided by people planning travel outside China. Beijing Shuangxiong Foreign Service

00:02:57.000 Company, which operates the Canadian visa application center in the Chinese capital, is owned by the

00:03:03.740 Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau. A Globe and Mail investigation has found,

00:03:08.340 and at least some of the people working inside the center are members of the Communist Party,

00:03:13.080 recruited from a school that trains the next generation of party elite.

00:03:19.320 So Justin Trudeau is literally outsourcing our immigration and diplomacy consular business

00:03:27.720 to Chinese Communist Party secret police. I really would like to say I can't believe it,

00:03:34.840 but I can believe it, and it's not like he didn't warn us.

00:03:39.580 There's a level of admiration I actually have for China, because their basic dictatorship is allowing

00:03:50.560 them to actually turn their economy around on a dime. Yeah, well, that basic dictatorship now knows

00:03:56.240 the names and details of everyone and anyone in China who wants to come to Canada, and it controls 0.88

00:04:02.040 that information. Knowledge of what happens inside a visa center could have high-level intelligence value.

00:04:07.700 If you can see who is getting declined and who is getting approved, it gives you a better chance

00:04:12.120 of getting your agent through, Mr. Potter said. Mr. Potter is a security consultant in the Globe

00:04:17.540 interview. It could also be used to bar people from leaving China. For some people, like the country's

00:04:23.900 Muslims, even applying for a visa to get out of China is enough to get flagged as a terrorist, he said.

00:04:29.960 If you're a Uyghur and you're applying for a visa to Canada on humanitarian grounds,

00:04:34.220 giving that information to the security service is really dangerous.

00:04:39.040 I wonder if Trudeau also put the Chinese police in charge of negotiating with the Chinese police

00:04:45.860 to end the Chinese police detention of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig,

00:04:50.820 kidnapped by the Chinese police. I mean, why not just outsource the whole thing to the Chinese police?

00:04:55.920 But rather than ripping up that contract with the Chinese police, or I don't know,

00:05:00.800 issuing a statement saying they're investigating Trudeau, this week issued a strongly worded apology.

00:05:09.580 I'm not even kidding. Someone somewhere made a t-shirt that said Wuhan Klan instead of Wu-Tang Klan.

00:05:17.340 Now, if you're over 50, you might not know the Wu-Tang Klan. It was a rap group in the U.S.

00:05:22.280 Actually, it's about 20 years old. They had a bit of a sense of humor. I mean, this guy's rap name

00:05:27.760 is O.D.B., which is more polite than his full name, Old Dirty Bastard. I think it might be a stage

00:05:34.540 name. I think there's a chance that maybe his mama did not, in fact, give him that name. Here's O.D.B.

00:05:41.060 Baby, baby, come on. Baby, come on. Baby, come on. 0.97

00:05:45.060 Yeah, so there's nothing remotely Chinese about the Wu-Tang Klan except their funny name, 0.98

00:05:49.580 and they were sort of funny rappers, and someone thought it was funny to make a shirt saying

00:05:54.420 Wuhan Klan instead of Wu-Tang Klan. So they made some shirts, and that is the end of the story.

00:06:01.500 It's not racist. It's not mean. It's replacing Wu-Tang with Wu-Han, and that's about it, really.

00:06:09.620 But look at this. This is a statement from the Embassy of Canada.

00:06:14.080 The Embassy of Canada wishes to convey our sincere regret that the private production

00:06:19.540 of T-shirts for Embassy staff featuring Wu-Han and the logo of a popular hip-hop group

00:06:24.860 has offended public sentiments in China. These T-shirts were not produced to make any statements,

00:06:30.280 political or otherwise, and we regret the offense they have caused.

00:06:34.880 I'm serious. They apologized in a groveling apology.

00:06:37.680 China has had the two Michaels in captivity for 792 days. 792 days. And we're apologizing to them 0.79

00:06:48.000 for a goofy T-shirt that someone made riffing on the word Wu-Tang Klan? Oh, and that's not enough.

00:06:55.660 Here's a Chinese English language propaganda newspaper called Global Times. It's the mouthpiece

00:07:01.380 for the Communist Party of China for foreign affairs matters published in English. It's not for

00:07:06.260 Chinese people to read. It's for the world's diplomats to read. And their headline is,

00:07:10.980 Canada should take diplomats' Wu-Han bat T-shirt incident as a warning Chinese foreign minister. 0.52

00:07:18.000 Now, I'm going to read this entire story to you. It takes about two minutes to read.

00:07:23.100 But I want to show you how insane the Chinese Communist Party is, how obsessed they are with 0.99

00:07:28.900 saving face, how hypersensitive and brittle they are, how fake their outrage is, and how they're so

00:07:35.500 obviously complaining in bad faith. But finally, how they are spying on everyone in the Canadian

00:07:41.540 embassy who ought to know better, really. I mean, every single word you say in China or write or

00:07:46.840 text or surf on the web is being read in real time by Chinese spies. Let me read this article.

00:07:54.220 Canada should take its diplomats' Wu-Han bat T-shirt incident as a warning to ensure similar things do not 0.83

00:07:59.880 happen again, the Chinese foreign ministry said, after the Canadian embassy in Beijing admitted the

00:08:04.820 T-shirt had caused offense to the Chinese people. Chad Hensler, a staff member of the Canadian

00:08:11.500 embassy in China, placed an order for T-shirts emblazoned with a bat-like image around the words

00:08:17.520 Wu-Han in May 2020, which sparked outrage among Chinese netizens when the incident was disclosed

00:08:24.680 recently. The Canadian embassy on Sunday issued a statement saying that the embassy wanted to

00:08:30.820 convey sincere regret that the innocent, the incident offended public sentiment in China.

00:08:36.720 These T-shirts were not produced to make any statement, political or otherwise,

00:08:40.260 we regret the events they may have caused, the statement said. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson

00:08:46.000 Wang Wenbin said at Monday's media briefing that China has noted that the Canadian embassy in China

00:08:52.060 admitted the Canadian diplomats' behavior offended the Chinese people. Canada should take it as a 1.00

00:08:58.500 warning to ensure that such incidents won't happen again, Wang said. A spokesperson for Canada's

00:09:05.260 foreign service last week called the incident a misunderstanding, but Wang did not buy it,

00:09:10.440 saying the excuse was unconvincing and Canada should provide a clear explanation to China as soon as

00:09:15.100 possible. A source close to the matter, gee, I wonder who that is, told the Global Times exclusively,

00:09:22.060 that the Canadian diplomat involved had deceived the Chinese T-shirt maker and deliberately planned

00:09:28.320 to conceal his ill-intentioned motive since May 2020 when he placed the order. He had sought companies

00:09:35.140 that produce T-shirts with cultural symbols as early as in May. And after he contacted one Chinese e-commerce

00:09:42.720 firm, he had hesitated to provide the image to be printed on the T-shirts. It was only in July when the

00:09:48.880 Chinese company urged him to provide the image for printing that he did so, the source said.

00:09:54.580 Look at that detail there. They're spying on him, obviously. They're spying on every single person in

00:09:59.540 the embassy, obviously. Spying on every phone call he makes, every email he sends, every website he goes

00:10:03.840 to, obviously. Look at that. And that doesn't get a word of objection from our embassy. Maybe Trudeau

00:10:10.140 will apologize to China again. Here's the Chinese embassy in Ottawa now. So this is Chinese diplomats 0.97

00:10:16.620 in Canada now condemning the National Post for daring to criticize their genocide in Xinjiang

00:10:22.540 province. The spokesperson of the Chinese embassy in Canada sent a letter to the National Post refuting

00:10:30.220 the unwarranted comments on Xinjiang-related issues. Recently, the National Post published an article

00:10:35.120 entitled, Why China's Actions in Xinjiang are Being Called Genocide, which ignores the facts,

00:10:40.920 unscrupulously concocts and hypes up lies such as genocide and forced labor, and seriously misleads

00:10:47.280 the public. China firmly opposes this. I would like to make the following points, blah, blah, blah, blah,

00:10:52.640 blah. I'm not going to go through it all. You can find it on the propaganda page if you're curious.

00:10:56.760 I think they're wrong. I think they're not telling the truth. I think they're lying, in fact. But

00:11:00.880 look, reasonable people can disagree and debate any policy issue. It's probably legitimate

00:11:06.260 diplomacy for the embassy of China to try to rebut a criticism of China made in a national

00:11:12.340 newspaper in Canada. Sure, marshal your facts and arguments. It's something China isn't usually good 0.99

00:11:17.700 at since they're not used to a free press back in China. But yeah, have at it. That's fair enough.

00:11:23.140 But at the bottom, they say this. We call on relevant Canadian media to abide by professional

00:11:30.960 ethics, respect facts, distinguish right from wrong, and do more to promote China-Canadian 0.95

00:11:36.840 friendship and mutual understanding between the two peoples, instead of being used by anti-China

00:11:42.240 forces as a platform for disseminating disinformation, attacking and slandering China.

00:11:48.420 Now, I wouldn't call that a real threat. A threat usually ends with an or else. I'm sure

00:11:54.840 the National Post has been completely hacked by China. I'm sure every word they say is being 0.98

00:12:00.480 read in real time by the Chinese army. I wouldn't call that a threat. I'd say it's more of a command

00:12:06.860 and instruction. They're instructing Canadian journalists to be more submissive and more obedient,

00:12:13.160 maybe a bit more like Justin Trudeau himself. Or maybe a bit more like Joe Biden.

00:12:18.580 I probably spent more time with Xi Jinping, I'm told, than any world leader has because I

00:12:23.580 had 24, 25 hours of private meetings with him when I was vice president, traveled 17,000 miles with him

00:12:30.420 and know him pretty well. There's a lot to talk about.

00:12:33.720 A lot to talk about. A whole lot to talk about. And he's very bright. He's very tough.

00:12:40.180 He doesn't have, and I don't mean as a criticism, just a reality, he doesn't have a democratic small

00:12:46.140 deep bone in his body.

00:12:47.720 Yeah. Yeah. Holy cow. That U.S. election. Some people dispute that Donald Trump lost it.

00:12:54.620 But no one can dispute that China's Xi Jinping won it. Stay with us for more.

00:13:10.180 Welcome back. Well, I think the best premier in Canada, in terms of smarts and ideological compass

00:13:20.200 and work ethic, is Jason Kenney, the UCP premier of Alberta. But I think the province that has the

00:13:29.920 most challenges, the most problems, many of them quite unfair, is also Alberta. Alberta, which was

00:13:37.600 once the prize of the country economically and in so many other ways, has for some years now had

00:13:44.000 every devil be devil it, including a war on oil and pipelines, first from Rachel Notley and then by

00:13:50.920 Justin Trudeau. Compounded with everything from wildfires to now a hostile U.S. president,

00:13:59.200 it is tough going there. Joining us now via Skype from Edmonton to talk about the challenges faced

00:14:06.020 by Jason Kenney, both external and the odd own goal, is our friend Lauren Gunter, senior columnist

00:14:13.540 at the Edmonton Sun. Great to see you again, Lauren. Thank you very much for being here. You and I have

00:14:19.480 both known Jason Kenney for quite a while. I used to be from Alberta myself. I think he's got the brain

00:14:25.060 power and the horsepower to be the best premier, but my God, he's got a tough job, doesn't he? Tougher

00:14:30.100 than any other premier, I put it. Yeah. No question on both of those counts. He is,

00:14:36.340 as near as I can tell, the smartest politician leading a government in the country at the moment,

00:14:43.780 and he has the government that's facing the most problems. And a lot of the problems

00:14:48.580 are beyond their control. You know, there's only so much you can do about COVID. There's only

00:14:54.420 so much that you can do about the pandemic and the costs that it's inflicted on the economy.

00:15:02.260 But there's almost nothing they can do to revive the oil and gas sector in Alberta. They've done

00:15:09.860 everything they can do. But the impediments now are all at the federal level. And there's nothing that

00:15:16.580 that they can do to move the shiny pony, as you used to like to call it, off of off of their

00:15:24.580 anti oil bubble. Prime example is Keystone XL, which the Biden administration, of course,

00:15:32.100 canceled on the first day in office. And Trudeau said, Oh, no, I told him in November, we were still

00:15:39.060 keen on Keystone. And I was going to speak to him about that when he phoned me. And you know,

00:15:44.420 he phoned me first of all the leaders in the world. And, and, you know, full well, Trudeau didn't

00:15:52.260 want Keystone to go ahead and no real interest in Keystone. I'm not even sure he's going to build

00:15:57.140 Trans Mountain, despite the fact his government owns it. Cancelled Energy East, cancelled Northern

00:16:02.660 Gateway. He is the most anti oil leader in a Western country. The Norwegians, which are renowned,

00:16:11.380 you know, who are renowned for their environmentalism, developed far more of their oil than, than Trudeau

00:16:17.220 was allowing Alberta to do. So, you know, Kenny is stuck in this real hard spot, where he he's done

00:16:26.900 everything he can. Oil prices are slowly creeping up. I noticed that, you know, this week, the best

00:16:34.660 quality of oil has crept up over $60 US a barrel, which is great news. But there's nothing we can do

00:16:42.740 about it because we're not being allowed to ship our bitumen or our oil anywhere except by train and

00:16:50.260 sometimes by truck. Yeah. Well, I remember when I first discovered that terrifying word used by

00:16:56.900 foreign based environmental groups, D marketing, marketing with a DE at front D marketing. And they

00:17:04.340 said, Look, if we can't stop them from producing this stuff, we can cut it off from the markets,

00:17:10.100 cut off the pipelines. And it's now a dozen years ago, that that first map by the Rockefeller Brothers

00:17:17.940 and the Tides Foundation and the others showed they were going to cut off and they, they've had perfect

00:17:23.300 success. And all the radicals who produce that document have actually been embedded in the liberal

00:17:31.460 government in ministers offices and the PMO itself. Gerald Butts, of course, being the key architect,

00:17:36.660 he's gone, but he's still involved. I find it very sad for the province that was once the mightiest

00:17:41.780 of all. It's been cut down to sizes you saved through no fault of its own. I want to talk a little

00:17:46.420 bit about your article in the Edmonton sun called parks, coal mining fiascos, an indication of how

00:17:53.540 out of touch UCP is with the rotor base. Now let's talk about that a little bit because I think the

00:17:59.620 lockdown issue, I think Jason Kenney has been the lightest touch when it comes to lockdowns. I mean,

00:18:05.380 Quebec literally has curfews, like parents giving children curfews, they have curfews, 8pm. They treat

00:18:12.820 innocent people like guilty people. It's madness. Ontario and Toronto in particular,

00:18:19.380 perhaps the worst in Canada, other than the curfew lovers in Quebec. Jason Kenney has been the lightest

00:18:27.140 touch, but I don't know. Maybe it's because Albertans are freedom oriented when his own MLAs and

00:18:34.900 cabinet ministers sneaked away for a beach vacation, which I'm not opposed to. But my view is if it,

00:18:41.460 if it's good enough for the rule makers, let the grassroots do it too. I think it was tonally

00:18:46.660 so wrong. So ironically, he's been the lightest touch on the lockdowns, but I think he's faced the

00:18:52.260 biggest blowback for the cheaters. Like Doug Ford's finance minister cheated, but Doug Ford hasn't had

00:18:58.340 the same blowback. Yeah, no, I think that's absolutely right. I think Albertans were very reluctant to buy

00:19:06.580 into a second lockdown. Did the lockdown in the spring because, you know, we knew far less about

00:19:11.460 the pandemic then. We didn't know how to deal with it as well. And so yes, we put up with that for about

00:19:18.020 six weeks. But on the second one around, you know, it was mostly affecting younger people. The death rate

00:19:25.940 was lower in the second wave, despite the number of deaths being higher. There was far more infection.

00:19:31.620 So the rate itself of people dying from it was lower. And people were kind of nonchalant a little

00:19:37.060 bit about that. But as soon as the caseload got pretty heavy, Albertans started to say, okay, okay,

00:19:44.980 okay, wear a mask when I go to the store, and I won't go to the movie theater, and I won't go to a

00:19:50.420 hockey game. You know, yes, okay, fine. And it's worked really, really well. And the big thing,

00:19:56.340 of course, was Christmas. You know, I won't get together with my family. Longstanding tradition,

00:20:03.860 as there is everywhere, of people getting together with big family groups and having a

00:20:09.300 steamy, boisterous Christmas dinner inside with lots of food and lots of fun. And we decide, okay,

00:20:16.580 we'll give that up. And should we go to Hawaii? Should we go to Mexico? I don't know, maybe not.

00:20:23.060 Let's decide. And I think most people decided they wouldn't. And then all of a sudden, you have these

00:20:27.860 UCP staffers and ministers and the MLAs take off. And not only are they dumb enough to go,

00:20:34.740 they're doubly stupid, because they take selfies of themselves at, you know, a carnival in Mexico,

00:20:40.900 or on the beach in Hawaii, and post it on Facebook, and say, hey, that's what I'm doing.

00:20:45.460 Yeah. Instantly. That's one of those things that people instantly understand. You can talk about

00:20:52.420 whether or not someone benefited from insider trading, but sometimes it's really kind of hard

00:20:57.300 to follow whether the rules were broken, and you don't, it's a little too technical and complex.

00:21:02.500 It's not complex. You are sitting there in your basement with nobody except your household

00:21:09.460 school in, in, you know, small town Alberta. And here is your MLA.

00:21:18.740 That's real easy to understand. And that's why he got that big bull back. It is the freedom

00:21:24.020 attitude of, of Albertans. Absolutely. But we also sucked it up in the name of getting rid of the

00:21:30.900 pandemic. And then all of a sudden his, his MLA within the letter of the rule, but certainly not

00:21:37.780 in the spirit as they were understood by most people. And so that's where he got that big bull back.

00:21:43.620 Yeah. And I noticed that he lost a chunk of popularity, I think about 10% over that. But

00:21:49.060 interestingly, a lot of it did not go to the NDP. It went to alternative parties on the right,

00:21:57.300 soft separatist parties. And I think that's interesting. And, and I think that, I mean,

00:22:04.900 when Jason Kenney was campaigning, he had that pickup truck, he went around the whole province.

00:22:09.220 He used to be with the Taxpayers Federation, very much a shoe leather operation out on the streets,

00:22:14.900 out with the people. I wonder if he's in Edmonton under the dome, as they call the legislature,

00:22:21.860 surrounded by bureaucrats, experts, political spin doctors, but everyone around him

00:22:29.380 is part of the lockdown class. So they're not feeling any pain. At worst, they're working from

00:22:35.380 home, which is like a snow day. They're probably enjoying some parts of the lockdown, if they had

00:22:40.740 a staycation, but they got paid for it. So it's very different. And it's a class, a class thing.

00:22:47.700 And it's a different, I mean, go ahead, private sector versus public sector. Yeah.

00:22:54.820 I think there are an awful lot of people who have a fair amount of money on both sides of this issue.

00:23:00.100 But it's whether or not you can survive the pandemic and the lockdown in particular,

00:23:07.300 with your paycheck still coming in. Right. And if you, you know, I talked to a fellow the other day,

00:23:13.860 who runs a restaurant in a small town in Alberta. He has sold his house. He's liquidated his RSP.

00:23:23.060 He has given up all of his savings. His wife has done the same. They're about to move into a rental

00:23:28.660 property because they starting over in their early 60s, because he wanted to keep his employees paid.

00:23:36.100 How many people in the public sector have had to make those kind of sacrifices because of lockdown?

00:23:42.500 Yeah, zero. And so all this, the push that there's been, there's been some push, as you know, in Canada,

00:23:48.420 for an Australia style lock, where we lock everything down. You're not allowed out of your house.

00:23:54.820 You can't walk your dog down the street. If you go out, it's only for essentials. You're not allowed to go

00:24:00.420 more than five kilometers from your house. You have to wear a mask when you're outside as well.

00:24:04.340 Yeah. I mean, crazy stuff. Yeah. And all of that push, I guarantee everybody who's in favor of that

00:24:11.620 is somebody who has a paycheck coming in on a regular. Yeah, absolutely. And it's a mystical

00:24:20.020 superstition level belief. I call it lockdownism. And people hold it. I find it heartbreaking.

00:24:28.580 I think that maybe Jason Kenney is trying to straddle both worlds. And I don't think you can.

00:24:35.780 I think you go either full lockdown, like Doug Ford, John Tory, Quebec does, or you embrace freedom,

00:24:42.020 like Florida's DeSantis, South Dakota's Kristi Noem. I don't think you can have it halfway. I mean, by the

00:24:51.220 way, Ron DeSantis and Kristi Noem, they still, you know, they're not anti-masks. They're just saying,

00:24:57.540 we're not going to force you on these things. I don't know. I just, I think that even Jason

00:25:01.540 Kenney himself could be overwhelmed by the public health deep state.

00:25:04.500 I think he did find a good balance. And he was lucky too, in that his provincial

00:25:11.540 officer of health, Dina Hinshaw, is also a very good Albertan. And she understands that we're

00:25:17.220 basically averse to lockdown. So they together worked pretty well at finding, I think, what was

00:25:23.860 a pretty good balance. They had to release us a little bit on February the 8th because the numbers

00:25:31.700 have come down so precipitously. In early December, when we were at the worst, our average over seven

00:25:39.460 days for new infection was almost 1900 a day. Now it's 300 a day. You have to release people. You

00:25:47.860 have to say, okay, okay, you can go back to restaurants a little bit. You can go back to the

00:25:51.220 gym a little bit. You can have some more activities. And if you can expand your church

00:25:57.780 service a little bit, you can have a funeral, that sort of thing. If things are better in three

00:26:03.540 more weeks, and I think they're going to be, in fact, I think they're going to be down to the three

00:26:07.620 week level by the end of this week. If after three weeks they're better, we're going to expand it again

00:26:13.460 and again and again so that by early May, we could be back to normal. But there's another thing that's

00:26:21.700 touching on all this that also, I think, explains why a lot of the UCP support that's left the UCP

00:26:30.580 has gone instead to more independence-minded parties on the right. And that is that I don't think they've

00:26:37.140 bashed the feds enough. You know, this is all the feds' fault now. We've done our bit as provinces.

00:26:46.980 In Ontario, in Quebec, we might not like what they've been doing in those provinces. We might not

00:26:51.060 like everything we've had to do in Alberta, but the provinces have done what they can. And the people

00:26:56.900 who have completely fumbled the ball are Justin True and the federal government, because they were so late

00:27:04.020 to the game in getting real vaccines that we now aren't getting it. And you're watching the Americans

00:27:11.140 inoculating about two million people a day. The equivalent in Canada, of course, will be around

00:27:15.860 200,000 a day. We're not even coming close to that. We're not even a tenth of that because the feds can't

00:27:23.060 get vaccines. And this morning, the province has got another notice from the federal government. I haven't

00:27:27.940 seen it in the news yet, saying that, well, Pfizer has decided that even its lower level of doses that

00:27:37.300 it's shipping, it's now counting each vial as six doses rather than five. The original agreement with

00:27:44.340 the fed was for five doses per vial. And it's very important to understand that if Pfizer said you're

00:27:51.300 getting the same amount per vial, but you have to get six doses out of this rather than five,

00:27:56.580 and now we're sending you a reduced number anyway, you're talking about say maybe a 40% reduction

00:28:02.820 from the original total. And that means that we're going to be, you know, we're going to be

00:28:07.780 the end of the year before we're talking about widespread vaccinations in Alberta. And the Economist

00:28:13.460 magazine now thinks Canada alone among the G7 will be middle of 2022 before it's reached widespread

00:28:22.100 vaccination. And that is something I think the province has started to, Alberta has started to bash

00:28:27.700 the feds about that a little bit, but I think they need to hit them harder because it's the feds' fault

00:28:32.660 that we don't have the oil activity that we should. We are the lowest of the major oil producing countries

00:28:38.740 in the world in return to production after the 2014 collapse. We're the lowest of the major countries

00:28:45.140 in the world. And that's because of federal policy. And now we're going to be stuck in lockdowns for

00:28:50.020 another year because the feds were too dumb to go and get real vaccines. And they put all of their

00:28:56.580 their eggs in the Chinese basket. Yeah. I got one last question for you, Lorne. And by the way,

00:29:01.780 thanks so much for taking so much time. But you made me think, you talk about bashing the feds and of

00:29:06.500 course, every provincial premier, that's a go-to. But in Alberta, there really are some legitimate

00:29:13.460 grievances, I believe. Every province has its grievances, but I think Albertans are most acute.

00:29:19.300 But there's one thing I can't help but notice. And I tell you, this is not from any personal animus.

00:29:25.940 I just, I don't know if you heard the quiz I like to give people. I say, don't Google it.

00:29:31.620 Can you tell me who the Conservative Party's health critic is? And some people get that one.

00:29:38.340 It's Michelle Rample. I say, can you tell me who the Conservative Party's foreign critic is?

00:29:42.820 Their defense critic, their critic for transport, you know, the flying rules. And no one yet has got

00:29:50.980 more than one of them right. And their critic for innovation and science, there's five houses down

00:29:59.380 the block. Okay, so that, you know, I asked a friend of mine who lives in Calgary Centre,

00:30:04.340 who's the energy critic? Right, right, exactly. It was his MP, he didn't even know it. And the point I make

00:30:09.700 by that quiz is not to embarrass people, the opposite. Because I asked that of people who are very savvy,

00:30:17.060 follow the news very closely. I asked that to your colleague, Laurie Goldstein of the Toronto Sun.

00:30:22.820 He got three in a row he couldn't do. And my point was, Laurie, you're smarter than your average bear.

00:30:29.700 It's not you. It's that these critics are silent, either by strategy or by practice or something.

00:30:37.460 And so you say, Jason Kenney ought to fight the Fed stronger. I agree. But where is

00:30:42.500 the Conservative Party of Canada? We hear Erin O'Toole talk about vaccine bungly. Okay, got it.

00:30:50.900 But that's more saying we would be more competent than them. That's not a philosophical disagreement.

00:30:56.100 It's not an ideological disagreement. It's, we would be better at basic tying your shoes stuff

00:31:02.100 than Trudeau. But where are the ideological conservative disagreements on any file? I don't see it

00:31:09.940 anywhere. I think the Conservative Party of Canada, and I have my disagreements with them personally,

00:31:15.140 put that aside. Where the heck are they on the on the battles of our era? They're not opposing,

00:31:20.100 they're not criticizing. Where are they? They're afraid, they're afraid of cancel culture, right?

00:31:24.580 They're afraid that they're going to say something that they'll then be jumped on on social media and

00:31:28.820 jumped on by the CDC and the Golden Mail. Oh, they're racist.

00:31:33.540 But about the lockdowns, surely there's no racial angle on the lockdowns.

00:31:38.420 But there was, of course, there was initially there was. But, you know, everybody who's anybody

00:31:43.940 thinks lockdowns are the way to go. So you've got to get over this. I remember one time that a fellow

00:31:50.820 who had worked for Wacky Bennett, when Bennett was the premier of BC in the 50s and 60s. And this guy

00:31:57.700 was now retired and I met him doing something for Alberta Report magazine back in the 90s. And I met

00:32:04.260 this guy who was long retired. And he said, Wacky Bennett's theory was he would win any election

00:32:10.820 where he got to run against the lower mainland press. And so he would go out into the Kamloops

00:32:17.860 and Prince George and in the interior of BC. And he would say, you've got to send my government back

00:32:23.860 there or all of those people in Vancouver and Victoria are going to be telling you how to run

00:32:28.500 your life. And I think Aaron O'Toole has to do something like that, too. But you mentioned in

00:32:33.300 the intro, though, this long discussion you and I are having, the self-inflicted wounds of the UCP.

00:32:39.460 They're similar in the sense that, you know, Aaron O'Toole seems to be worried about fighting hard

00:32:44.820 during the pandemic against the Liberals. The UCP, too, has created this problem for themselves

00:32:51.860 because they think whatever they do, they don't have to explain because Albertans are just going

00:32:57.620 to be along with them. They're going to default to the UCP because they're not the NDP and the NDP

00:33:03.460 were despised for the four years they were done. And I think in both cases, the federal conservative

00:33:09.460 party and the provincial UCP both have to start thinking about what their communication strategy is

00:33:15.700 and how they hammer home ideological differences with the NDP provincially and with the Liberals

00:33:23.060 federally. And I think that's exactly right. I think you'll see there that you see that Trudeau

00:33:27.940 has come down in popularity in the last couple of months, mostly over the vaccine. But Aaron O'Toole

00:33:33.860 has not benefited from that. The conservatives have not come up in the polls, neither has O'Toole.

00:33:38.580 And I think that's because, as you say, they're largely silent. They're invisible. I don't know

00:33:44.660 what they're doing. Yeah. Very frustrating. Well, Lauren, thank you so much for spending so much time.

00:33:49.460 I feel like we really covered a lot of bases today. And we didn't actually have a chance to get into

00:33:54.340 your article, but let me just read out the headline one more time and encourage people to find it at

00:33:58.420 edmontonsun.com. The headline is Parks, Coal Mining Fiascos, An Indication of How Out of Touch UCP

00:34:05.540 is with the voter base. So much in there, too. Great to see you again, my friend. Stay

00:34:11.220 healthy and optimistic and upbeat and keep up the fight.

00:34:14.900 Will do. You too.

00:34:15.780 All right. There you have it. Lauren Gunter, Edmonton Sun. Stay with us more. 0.98

00:34:19.940 Hey, welcome back on my show last night. Bruce writes,

00:34:34.900 I'm glad Rebel News is doing so well in spite of the snobbery of the dinosaur media. No offense to

00:34:39.240 dinosaurs. Rebel News has grown and rocked the reporting world. Congratulations, too, for reaching

00:34:44.000 out to Quebec residents who are suffering insane regulations. Thanks very much. I mean, listen,

00:34:48.620 we have challenges every day, but I think that the lockdown and the terrible media coverage,

00:34:56.940 the media complicity in the lockdown, the media cheerleading in the lockdown, no matter the cost

00:35:01.900 to civil liberties, no matter the scientific basis for it, is a time for us to shine because we

00:35:07.900 specialize in telling the other side of the story. And we are also activists. And so when we crowdfund

00:35:13.580 civil liberties lawyers, I think this is a time for which the Rebel was built. 0.67

00:35:19.580 Gilly writes, I had the privilege of catching some of the original Rebel pieces, including the

00:35:24.060 very first shows. As the commercial goes, you've come a long way, baby. It was fascinating to see

00:35:28.540 what we were talking about six years ago. It seems like a luxury now. Oh, you're so right. I call them the

00:35:33.980 before times. Ron writes, how about Rex Murphy on your advisory board? Well, that's an amazing idea.

00:35:41.180 I don't know if he would ever consider it. I think he wants his own independent brand,

00:35:47.340 it would be my guess, but he would be so welcome and it would be such a coup for us to have some of

00:35:53.020 his stature. Well, that's our show for today. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at

00:35:58.460 Rebel World Headquarters. See you at home. Good night and keep fighting for freedom.

Rebel News Podcast - February 10, 2021

With Trump gone, China flexes its muscles — and Canada bows down low!

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