Ezra Levant critiques Canada’s pipeline cancellations—Trudeau’s Northern Gateway veto, Energy East’s mid-process rule changes tied to climate science, and Horgan’s defiance of federal approval despite BC polls favoring projects—while comparing them to Quebec’s unchallenged blocks. He links Iran’s protests—fueled by economic collapse (rial at 7,000/dollar), water mismanagement, and militia brutality—to its expansionist Shia ideology and Syria/Russia conflicts, questioning Trudeau’s brother’s propaganda role. The episode ties media bias, conservative moderation, and Alberta’s carbon tax rallies to broader failures of leadership and free speech, urging a harder stance on Iran ahead of the JCPOA deadline. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, who are the most powerful anti-oil, anti-industry lobbyists in Canada?
Well, that's easy.
They're your kids' school teachers.
it's april 13th and you're watching the ezra levant show why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer i know There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
You come here once a year with a sign, and you feel morally superior.
The only thing I have to say to the government for why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
So who is blocking the oil pipelines in Canada?
Who killed the Northern Gateway pipeline?
Who killed the Energy East pipeline?
Who is killing the Kindermorgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion right now?
Who's driving out all the oil sands companies?
My favorite example, or least favorite example, I don't know, because it's so shocking, is this company called Total SA.
It's a huge French oil company that pulled out of Canada's oil sands and then chose instead to invest billions in Iran.
Iran, a theocratic dictatorship building a nuclear weapon, threatening its neighbors, being threatened by Donald Trump, slow-burning civil war from its own people.
That same Iran, it's thought by cold-blooded, profit-oriented businessmen to be a safer bet in which to invest a better risk-adjusted rate of return for their money than investing in Canada's oil sands.
Let that sink in for a minute.
So who's to blame for all this?
The answer will surprise you.
I'll tell you my theory in a moment.
I mean, you could obviously blame Justin Trudeau and Gerald Butts.
The Northern Gateway pipeline was approved by Canada's regulators after an extensive consultation.
Contracts were signed with local Indian bands who actually got to own 10% of the pipeline project.
Everything was set to go, but then Trudeau killed it with an executive order.
No doubt who killed that.
Now, the assassination of the Energy East pipeline was a little bit stealthier.
Trudeau and Gerald Butts and Catherine McKenna, the environment minister, and Jim Carr, the impotent energy minister, they didn't want to be seen pulling the trigger this time, so they changed the rules for the Energy East pipeline years into its application process.
They said the pipeline would now have to answer for any oil that might be shipped in it in the future.
The oil itself would be judged from a global warming point of view, which is a standard that has never been applied in the history of anywhere and would not be applied by Trudeau to oil imported to Canada from OPEC countries like Saudi Arabia or even brought into Canada by train, which is happening a lot these days.
So Trudeau and Butts and McKenna made it impossible.
They technically didn't kill Energy East in the same way.
They just made it impossible for Energy East to proceed by changing the rules of the game midway through the game.
So Energy East left.
And Trudeau blamed them, actually.
But no, again, Trudeau was to blame.
There were supporting actors there too, of course.
In the case of Energy East, there was Denis Oder, the former mayor of Montreal, who demonized the pipeline and gave Trudeau the political cover in Quebec to kill that great jobs project.
Oh, and then Trudeau and McKenna added some more new, weird rules for any proposed future projects.
Remember this?
Projects' decisions will be based on science, evidence, and indigenous traditional knowledge.
We're also taking a bigger picture look at the potential impacts of our proposed projects.
Instead of just looking at the environmental impacts, we'll look at how a project could affect our communities and health, jobs and the economy over the long term, and we'll also do a gender-based analysis.
So if you have any industrial project going forward and you're acing your application because you've got the best technology in the world and you know your business and you're the safest operator in the world and you're tip-top environmentally, well, Trudeau McKenna will say, oh yeah, well, do you meet gender analysis tests?
How about transgender analysis?
Yeah.
You're going to leave Canada.
You'll probably even go to Iran.
And now, Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain suspending the last pipeline project still going.
John Horgan, the BC Premier, is certainly to blame as well.
But as he himself acknowledges, he actually has no real power to stop the Kinder Morgan pipeline.
It's a federal jurisdiction.
The federal regulator has approved it.
Kinder Morgan has won any court battles that have been heard so far.
John Horgan has been advised by his own government lawyers that if they even try tricky business, like slow walking the granting of permits, they'll open themselves up to huge lawsuits from Kinder Morgan for illegal bias.
As in, John Horgan knows he can't actually stop it, and he can't really even slow it down.
And yet he has, hasn't he?
How did he get away with it?
Well, each of the people I've listed is to blame, for sure.
Rachel Notley, too, big time.
She didn't breathe a peep of protest when Barack Obama killed the Keystone Excel pipeline.
She was happy that Donald Trump later revived it, but she actually cheered its death.
Our position on the Keystone was that if we ship unprocessed bitumen to Texas, according to this government and to the American government, we will give tens of thousands of Alberta jobs to Texas, not to Albertans.
And that's not what Albertans want to see.
Just in case you're wondering, she was premier there.
That was not her in opposition.
When Trudeau killed the Northern Gateway pipeline, she didn't utter a peep of protest either.
She consented.
She aided and abetted it.
Prime Minister Trudeau is showing some extraordinary leadership today.
And when Energy East was killed, she was silent.
She didn't care.
Of course she was quiet.
She had been quiet all along, not lifting a finger to go to promote the pipeline out east or to demand that Trudeau do so either.
So now the last pipeline is being killed, and Notley suddenly, I guess, has panicked, realizing it's really her only desperate long shot of surviving in next year's Alberta election.
I think she has no chance, of course, but she thinks she might if she renounces everything she's ever said about pipelines, like at this protest.
And if the rest of us are stupid enough not to notice, yesterday she actually attended a pro pipeline protest.
Seriously, look at these pictures she tweeted.
Don't they look like they love pipelines?
They really hate pretending her staff.
Look at them.
And look, there's David Agen, a cabinet minister, pretending he really loves oil sands pipelines too.
Do they think we're so stupid to remember their lifetime of opposition to the oil sands?
Here's a quick reminder of David Agan.
Doing the right thing.
And I say that doing the right thing means that we have no new approvals for tar sand projects.
We start to invest money into a renewable energy and into a sustainable economy.
No new approvals.
No new approvals.
And look at one more photo in what Rachel Notley tweeted.
There's a sign in front of the legislature in support of a pipeline, allegedly, from that huge labor union called Unifor.
Do you see the Unifor sign there?
It's a labor union that employs Nora Loreto, for example, the monster who attacked the Humble Broncos victims.
So Unifor, as you can see, is pretending to support the oil sands now, too, just like Notley does.
Now, for years, Unifor has spent its members' union dues fighting against pipelines, especially the Kinder Morgan pipeline, denouncing it in press release after press release and rallies and lobbying.
I want to show you an old grainy video I found of their former president, Dave Coles, saying the idea of Canadian oil being ethical is something only an idiot would say.
Take a look.
And what blooming idiot came up with the idea of ethical oil.
Yeah, are we supposed to pretend they haven't been fighting against pipelines for almost 10 years?
Like Rachel Notley, they are hoping you will forget all that and believe that they truly, truly support oil, really.
But here's my point.
These destroyers, Justin Trudeau, Gerald Butts, Catherine McKenna, Rachel Notley, John Horgan, who haven't ever built anything in their lives.
They're the takers of society, who hate the makers, the taxers and spenders who finally, oh my God, killed the goose that laid the golden egg.
They couldn't exist without your kids.
Your kids who then grow up and become voters, who support selfie-taking airheads like Trudeau and McKenna who oppose pipelines.
Now, kids aren't normally bad, of course.
They're not normally political.
They might be idealistic and naive, that's part of being young, but they're not political activists natively, normally, no.
But put them in the hands of political ideologues from kindergarten on, from kindergarten to grade 12, and then finish them off in university, and then you've got a generation of walking, talking, leftist robots who hate oil and gas and capitalism, and they'll tweet that to you from their iPhone.
That's one thing you've got to hand to the kooks at PETA.
Here's that PETA terrorist who shot up the YouTube headquarters the other day.
At least when PETA extremists are haranguing you not to eat meat and not to wear fur, they are not eating meat and wearing fur while telling you not to.
But I have never in my life met an anti-oil activist who does not use oil and gas and plastic and artificial fibers and every benefit from oil and gas, even as they tell you not to use oil and gas.
I've never seen that once.
It's actually the opposite.
Their leaders, from Al Gore to Leonardo DiCaprio, they love private jets and yachts.
But it starts young.
Every teacher's kit in Canada, whether officially coming from the leftist universities or coming right in from environmental lobby groups in our schools, it's anti-oil, anti-industry, anti-energy.
It's the default.
When you criticize or question that curriculum, teachers don't even understand what you're saying.
It's like they hear someone who's opposed to a don't litter campaign.
They don't even understand there's another side to the story.
They can't even conceive of it.
To them, saying you support energy is like saying you support littering.
And so they're teaching your children from kindergarten that that's just normal to oppose oil and gas.
Go to any zoo, go to any aquarium, go to any museum of nature in this country, and odds are it's been turned into a propaganda installation.
Global warming as fact, as human cause.
When I was a kid, I used to love reading every little plaque explaining things in a museum.
Facts, history.
Now it's all politics.
The politics of blaming and scolding and fear, instilling fear into our kids that we're making things extinct because we dare to drive, which is not true.
At best, it's a theory, man-made global warming, one of various theories, but it is just normal facts now in schools.
I say this because I see the news.
But the University of Alberta in Edmonton is going to award an honorary degree, the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Heart of the Oil Patch, Gateway of the North, where the oil signs are, honorary degree to David Suzuki.
This is a city from which the three killed oil pipelines would have emanated.
They seriously chose this moment to praise and reward David Suzuki.
Here's the picture of Suzuki.
I want to show you the next picture.
There it is.
Blockading the Kinder Morgan facility in BC.
He is literally standing in front of Kinder Morgan protesting it.
By the way, there was a riot in Burnaby at a Kinder Morgan installation.
As you can see in that headline there, people were arrested for the violence.
Suzuki was in solidarity with them with violent protesters and he is being awarded by the U of A?
Here's a clip we filmed back at the Sun News Network at one of the anti-Kinder Morgan riots where Suzuki attended on Burnaby Mountain to cheer them on.
And the University of Alberta just invited him to recognize him and honor him.
By the way, he's only the worst of a very bad list.
Literally, two other far-left Canadian politicians are being awarded a far-left New Zealand politician, a far-left CBC reporter.
That is who the U of A thinks reflects its values.
People who hate Alberta hate the industry, hate people in the oil patch.
Do you see what I'm hinting at here?
I'm not even hinting it.
I'm saying it outright.
Trudeau, Notley, Horgan, Butts, they're extreme.
Shutting down our oil and gas industry is extreme.
It's also stupid, given that we simply replaced Canadian oil with OPEC imports.
And now with American imports too, if you can believe it.
But the culture is being engineered to support that extremism.
Look at this.
That's Sippora Berman, the anti-oil extremist with Greenpeace, who until recently served as Rachel Notley's senior oil sands advisor.
Look at what she's tweeting.
She was thrilled to be in Banff to speak to the Alberta Teachers Association convention.
I bet they paid her a healthy fee also.
Probably not David Suzuki's $30,000 standard fee, but probably $10,000.
To indoctrinate teachers into the vocabulary of anti-oil sands and anti-pipeline hatred.
And look, they tweeted right back at her, totally in love.
And look what I saw just now.
I saw a little story about this in the Edmonton Journal too.
Just a dad, a regular guy, Samuel Campbell is his name, ordinary fellow, works in the oil patch in Edmonton, not a politician, went to a school play with his daughter.
His daughter had a speaking role in the play, so he wanted to be there.
Here's what he wrote on LinkedIn.
This is just a normal guy.
He said, yesterday I went to a school play in Edmonton.
My daughter is in grade four.
The school had Trickster Theater, through a program funded by the Alberta provincial government, work with the kids to develop mini-play themes and content.
A Dad's Concern00:11:28
In the play, the kids sabotaged a factory in the name of climate change and then went on to save Alberta from its evil oil industry and greedy oil barons.
Exactly what I want my daughter to be taught to be an uninformed eco-terrorist.
Thanks for nothing at Squela Mill Creek School.
His own daughter was being taught to demonize her own family, her dad even.
Campbell told some more details of it to the Edmonton Journal.
Let me read from the journal.
He said, this is what the journal says.
In his daughter's skit for the grade four class, she had the line, we have to save Alberta.
Campbell wondered what was threatening Alberta.
This was quickly answered by one of the adult performers from the evil oil industry and greedy oil barons.
Let me read some more because the school board itself sent out a spin doctor to defend this play.
Quote, in response to Campbell, both Trickster Theater and the school board stressed that while the theater company organized the skits, it was the children themselves who came up with the specific messages.
Yeah, do you believe that?
Do you believe that?
I'll quote some more.
David Chentler of Trickster Theater says in the grade three skit, the students were just trying to stop a factory from polluting, not acting as terrorists.
Quote, I think it's an over-the-top association on the part of a parent to say that the teacher has knowingly created a peace promoting terrorism, he says.
Yeah, yeah, that dad was totally over the top, wasn't he?
Like any greedy oil man would be, wouldn't he?
Let me read some more.
As for the Grade Forskit, school board spokesperson Carrie Rosa says it was about the children traveling 50 years into the future, seeing the negative impacts of climate change, then coming back to warn others about fixing the problem.
They talked about things like pollution, factories, the oil and gas industry, Rosa said.
No adult pushed the children to attack the oil industry, Rosa says.
We want to be really clear about this.
This was their idea.
Yeah, do you believe that?
Do you believe that?
Justin Trudeau and Rachel Notley and their whole band of destroyers, they are the ones pulling the trigger, killing Canadian industry.
But it would not be possible without decades of this propaganda foisted on children from kindergarten on.
And those kindergarten students grow up and they choose who rules us.
P.S. If you're in Alberta this weekend, come to our two pro-pipeline rallies tomorrow, Saturday in Edmonton at the legislature from 1 to 3 p.m.
And then Sunday at City Hall in Calgary from 1 to 3 p.m.
If you want more info, go to repealthecarbontax.com.
If you're in Alberta, I hope to see you on this weekend.
Stay with us.
We have every expectation that people will respect British Columbia's right to defend our interests and to defend our coast.
That's what I will do.
But my preoccupation is the people of British Columbia, and their focus is on the things that I just talked about.
Affordability, services, and ensuring that we can continue to have a prosperous, dynamic economy that's very mindful of the environment.
Again, $35 a ton carbon price, the highest in the country.
A commitment to a climate action plan that will reduce our emissions in the future.
These are the things that British Columbians voted on a month, a year ago, this month, and that's the agenda that I'm going to follow through on.
Well, there you have it.
That was from Sunday.
Premier John Horgan of British Columbia is saying, hey, nay, no problem.
We can scrap a $7.4 billion infrastructure project in BC.
That's not going to let people think we're anti-business or anything.
We've got a booming economy.
He claims that he speaks for British Columbians and he has the mandate in the election to block the Transmountain Pipeline.
Although we know that he and his justice minister and environment minister have been advised by their own departmental lawyers that they have no constitutional basis for blocking the pipeline or even for causing them unreasonable delay.
And if they were to try doing so, they would open the province up to massive liability for a lawsuit from Kinder Morgan.
They're in a strange position.
They know what they're doing is legally untenable.
And they should know what they're doing is contrary to the business reputation of the province, but they're doing it anyways.
Well, we want to bring in a voice of contrary opinion that I believe represents most British Columbians on this subject.
And I say that not just because I want it to be true, but poll after poll has consistently shown that more British Columbians support pipelines, if they're done to the standards of safety that they're always done, than oppose them even after this fight.
And joining us now via Skype is our friend Aaron Gunn, who's a spokesperson for BC Proud.
Aaron, great to see you again.
Thanks, Ezra.
It's great to see you as well.
I know it's a fact that John Horgan has run as an environmental objection objector, someone who would say no to just about everything.
And his worst instincts are emphasized by his coalition with the Rump Green Party.
So you've really got the worst of the NDP instincts here.
It's totally not the party of the working man that the BC NDP used to represent.
And that's why I think he's wrong, Aaron.
He's wrong legally.
He's wrong constitutionally.
A lot of British Columbians who wear hard hats, who work in unions, They work in resources, whether it's forestry or fracking or pipelines or at that massive, gorgeous, gorgeous industrial port.
And so I think John Horgan does not actually represent working men and women when he's against this $7.4 billion jobs project.
No, you're totally right there.
And I think even more importantly, he doesn't represent a majority of British Columbians, as you pointed out to your poll.
And I think that really begins with the last election, which the provincial NDP didn't actually win the popular vote or the most seats.
And they were forced to form a coalition with the Green Party.
And it's kind of, I think, a case of the tail wagging the dog here, where you have the radicals, both that are within the NDP party and the Green Party itself, that are forcing this untenable action from John Horgan, opposing a project that's been federally approved, that he has no right to oppose, that's supported by a majority of British Columbians in poll after poll.
And yet here we are driving away investment and scaring away jobs and what would be a tax stream into the BC economy and Canadian economy.
Yeah.
I want to play you one more clip, and it's not that long.
It's a clip of Horgan saying, look, if Quebec could cancel the pipeline going through them, that's the Energy East pipeline, that was twice as expensive, by the way.
That was more than $15 billion.
Basically, John Horgan saying, why does Quebec get to block a pipeline, but we can't?
And there is a form of logic there.
I mean, I think it was outrageous that Denny Coderre, a mayor who was so unpopular that he actually lost his re-election, if a mayor could basically single-handedly block the pipeline, why can't he?
Let me play that quick clip.
We showed this on Monday.
I believe there are a number of factors at play here that I think all British Columbians need to understand.
Firstly, the Energy East pipeline was stopped and there was no consequence from that.
It's true.
Quebec didn't get a downgrade.
It didn't get a stern lecture either from Rachel Notley or Justin Trudeau.
There was no constitutional crisis.
There was no clawing back of transfer payments or equalization payments to Quebec.
You know, I don't like John Horgan's point of view.
I disagree with him completely.
But he is making a point.
Why can Denny Coder block a $15 billion pipeline, but he can't block a $7 billion one?
Yeah, and I think it comes down to the root of this problem, Ezra, actually, which is the complete lack of leadership of any kind by the federal government.
And I think you see the consequences of that happening from Energy East, where another company now, Kinder Morgan, is starting to kind of get the jitters about this project, even though it's actually already been approved.
And I think that, again, it's all a consequence of the federal government not showing leadership, not following through.
This is their domain constitutionally.
I don't think there shouldn't be, and there isn't much doubt about that.
And right now, it's just a lack of political will or political competence, or I'm not sure which one it is, to get these projects done that are so important for the Canadian economy.
Yeah.
You know, I noticed that a couple of senior British Columbia Liberal MPs, in fact, cabinet ministers, Harjit Sajjan, the defense minister, he's from BC, and so is the Justice Minister, Jody Wilson-Raybould.
And both of them were scrummed this week in Ottawa, because of course this is quite a big issue in Ottawa.
Neither one of them would go on the record supporting the Transmountain pipeline.
That's quite telling that Justin Trudeau, who claims this is in the national interest, who claims he really, really wants this to happen.
I'm a skeptic of that.
His right-hand man was an anti-pipeline lobbyist, Gerald Buds.
But when the two point men in Quebec, in BC, Harjit Sajjan and Jody Wilson-Rabel, should be selling this, they won't even whisper their support for it.
I find that deeply troubling.
What do you make of that?
Well, I think, I mean, obviously, I can, I don't know exactly what's going on in Justin Trudeau's head.
I can only wonder.
But, you know, one has to think he's been so busy changing the words that various government officials are allowed to say at the Service Canada counterdesk that maybe he hasn't had enough time to really think this issue through.
For the good of personkind, for the good of peoplekind, he has to deploy himself.
Exactly, exactly.
So I think, you know, he's saying it's in the national interest, but maybe deep down he doesn't think it's in the interest of people kind.
So I think that, you know, you're hitting it right on the head, and I think that's why the liberals are suffering in the polls.
One of the reasons why they're suffering in the polls is because they're almost angering both sides at this point, which is kind of, I feel, like the traditional way of how the liberal governments usually collapse is they, you know, they annoy the left and they annoy the right.
They're not really, they're paying lip service to supporting the pipeline, but they're not really doing anything to make sure it's constructive.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I have said it as a joke before, but I have to say it's true.
If this pipeline were owned by Bombardier and not by Kinder Morgan, this pipeline would have been built by now.
I mean, if it were in Quebec's interest, a Quebec company, Quebec shareholders, Quebec jobs, this pipeline would have been built already.
It's a shame that British Columbia and Alberta don't have the same affection by the powers that be.
Aaron, it's great to see you again.
I'm really glad that you're with BC Proud.
What's your website if folks want to check you out?
So we're Facebook-based, so you can visit facebook.com slash BC Proud.
We're the most politically engaged page in British Columbia.
So check us out.
You can see all of our videos and infographics and everything like that.
And you can shoot us a message if you have any comments or feedback.
All right.
Iran's Pen-led Movement00:12:26
Well, listen, I'm really glad you're doing that.
I know Ontario Proud.
Are you affiliated with them?
Yeah, yeah.
We're both affiliated and we work together.
There's kind of some different people involved there, but we're kind of working together towards the same goals.
I'm really glad Ontario Proud has done some very good work online.
They've certainly caught this moment because they're providing an alternative point of view to the dominant leftist narrative.
I admire them.
They're sort of doing what we do in a way too.
They're filling the gap left by the mainstream media, but doing it mainly on Facebook.
I'm excited.
I'll have to go to BC Proud and click like and follow you.
Hopefully Mark Zuckerberg won't stifle you yet.
But if you do, if he does, that's a sign you're being effective.
That's my view.
Aaron, great to see you again.
Thanks.
Thanks a lot, Ezra.
All right, there you have it.
Aaron Gunn is a spokesperson for BC Proud.
And as he reminds me, that's a Facebook-based initiative.
And we sure need that, don't we?
We need someone to push back.
Stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
Welcome back.
Well, the entire world was gripped by the prospect of democracy finally coming to Iran in a nationwide series of protests that reached their apex just before New Year's Eve.
But since then, it's fallen out of the news.
And world politics has shifted to other places, most recently to Syria, where Iran, of course, has a large expeditionary force.
But how are things going back in Iran?
Is the grassroots public still rising up against the Ayatollahs?
What's the nature of the protest?
Is it political?
Is it economic?
Is it religious?
Joining us now for an update on this subject is someone we spoke to earlier this year who follows it very closely.
Her name is Erika Kasrayi, and she is an Iranian activist.
Welcome back.
Good to see you again.
Thanks for joining us today.
Oh, thank you for having me back on.
Well, we care about Iran for a number of reasons.
A big one of them is it is not a free country, and it's tens of millions of people living under the yoke of a theocracy, and that leads to so much hardship.
And I think a lot of people in the West had this flicker of hope that, you know, this was almost like a Tiananmen Square moment for Iran, and the Ayatollahs would blink, but they don't seem to have blinked.
How about the protesters?
Are they still going at it, Erica?
Well, the protest movement has sort of taken on different forms.
And since the initial sort of revolt around Christmastime, the political uncertainty has led to an economic crisis.
The price of the rial has fallen dramatically.
It's almost close to 7,000 rials, the dollar.
So, you know, there's definitely a lot of political unrest.
But unfortunately, you know, the media has sort of taken their eyes off of what's happening on the ground in Iran.
And really, they don't have access to on-the-ground news like the West does.
So we don't have free press.
Unfortunately, all of the news that's coming out is coming through social media, and Iran watchers are trying their best to give some visibility.
So thank you for bringing back the information to your viewers.
Well, it's a pleasure to have you because we want to tell our people what's going on.
Now, you sent over to our producers a variety of visuals that were smuggled out is probably the wrong word because it's not like the olden days where you had to sneak out a hard copy of a photo.
This, as you said, comes out through social media, but you've collected various items from recent days in Iran.
Why don't you describe them and we'll get through as many as we can in the time we have.
I want to show our people what heroic protesters are doing on the streets to give some encouragement to people in the West to continue to put diplomatic pressure on Iran, especially here in Canada, where our leader is too chummy with Iran.
I don't know if you know this, Erica, and I don't mean to go on a tangent, but Justin's brother, Alexandra Trudeau, actually did a propaganda movie called The New Great Game.
He actually did a propaganda movie in co-production with Iran's state media.
So I'm very worried that here in Canada, Justin Trudeau has a special affection for the Iranian dictatorship because his brother actually did government propaganda.
So with that setting at the table, let's go to the news from the ground.
Why don't you show us some of the viz you have today?
So as you can see from some of the videos, the women are really leading the movement in Iran.
They're continuing to defiantly remove their hijab.
We have a movement called White Wednesdays where women are wearing white headscarves and taking them off and flagging them in public in defiance of forced hijab.
We have, they're called Dukhtarane in Khiyabona en Galab, which is the Women of Revolutionary Street.
In the last 10 days, we had farmers protesting in the town of Esfahan because of the mismanagement of water sources.
And they came out to protest the mismanagement of the government's responsibilities.
And they were faced with brutality from the Basijis and the government militia.
There was a day where the price of the dollar was extremely high, and the government came out and they basically made an announcement that tomorrow for 24 hours will honor the price of the dollar to about 4,000, I think it was 4,500 reals.
And people were standing in line for hours for the exchanges to be able to buy the dollar, and all the doors were closed.
I don't know which videos you're showing.
Yeah, we're keeping up with you and showing the images of people waiting outside a bank.
It looks like they're locked out as they try to do that.
It's actually, right, they're actually exchange.
They're money exchangers.
And I guess they don't understand that the government doesn't set the price of the money.
I mean, this isn't like something that government can decide.
It's just international.
Money is not controlled by a government.
So people are angry.
The government of Iran has squandered the people's money.
And now the people are angry.
I mean, this unrest is taking on different shapes and forms.
And it's definitely not over.
I think all eyes right now are on President Trump and the changes that are going on in our own government here in the United States with the hopeful confirmation of Mike Pompeo and the newly appointed NSC director, Mr. Bolton.
I think we're going to have a different approach now towards Iran policy come May 12th for the deadline of the recertification of the JCPOA.
I think you're right.
That's a very interesting observation.
Those two new senior staff have a more hardline view towards Iran.
I'd like to refer to a couple more of your videos because they're so interesting and I know that they have not been seen in mainstream media in Canada.
I like the grassroots and by the way, Iran looks beautiful.
I mean, I didn't realize, I mean, it's a vast country, it's very large.
I didn't realize, I mean, we saw the lush green park there of the protests.
It looks very pretty.
But even you can have a pretty prison, I suppose.
I mean, that's what Cuba is.
Let's take a look.
You mentioned that some of the protesters specifically refer to the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini.
Tell us a little bit about that, please.
So I know in the last time we spoke, we talked about the different movements that were going on.
One of those movements is to insult the Supreme Leader, Khamenei.
And so there's a movement of graffiti artists where they're vandalizing government buildings and bridges and writing death to Khamenei.
I know that we showed a video of a young lady holding up her white scarf in her hand.
She has written death to Khamenei, no to forced hijab.
Right.
Yes.
So Khamenei is not a figure that is respected or liked right now in Iran.
And I think his allegiance with Assad and Russia is not bearing well for him on the international stage.
Let me ask you one more question about that.
We spoke to a friend at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who encouraged us to look at Trump and Syria partly as a reaction to the use of chemical weapons, but also as a reaction to Iran to try and make Iran suffer a proxy defeat.
And I thought that was an interesting way of looking at it.
Is it true that Iran's regional ambitions and the money and people cost of that, having young men be soldiers in Syria, is that part of the discussion there amongst people who are dissatisfied that this is some expansionist would-be empire that does not serve the day-to-day needs of the Iranian people.
Is that an issue?
Absolutely.
I mean, the inception of the Islamic Republic was exactly for this idea of the glory of Islam.
And if you know anything about Shia Islam, they believe that the 12th Imam will only return when the blood of the Jew and the Christian is to the knee of the horse of Mahdi.
And Islam has been injected into all of the world.
So they really believe this, and they will stop at nothing.
So to not take this very seriously, Iran is a regional power.
And the reason I believe that the Trump administration still hasn't taken any action is because you're not just dealing with Iran right now.
You're dealing with Russia.
And you're getting involved in a much more complex conflict than we expected.
And so I think I blame President Obama for this problem.
He was so desperate to make a deal at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives in Syria.
Wow.
Well, I tell you, Erica, I won't say it's a pleasure catching up with you because the news is so grave and it's so distressing, but it's a pleasure to spend time with you and have you so eloquently describe things.
And thank you for curating the videos and photos that you have done.
Of course.
We'll continue to invite you back to give us updates on this because there was a brief moment, I remember right on New Year's Eve, actually, when it felt like change could come.
And I hope that the tide has not gone out of that.
I hope that Iran will be free.
It has not.
And let me close on a positive note.
All right.
On a more hopeful note.
There is a movement inside Iran now that is led by the pen, and that is called the Constitutional Movement.
There is some lawyers, some law students who are writing a new constitution that is based on the U.S. Constitution for a future of a free and democratic Iran.
So there's hope.
The young people of Iran are going to reclaim their country.
I believe that with all my heart.
We just need the support of the free world.
The Iranian people need support.
Well, you have our moral support, and hopefully you will have more than that from more powerful people, including in the U.S. administration that you described.
We've been talking with Erica Kasrai.
Thanks so much for taking the time with us and bringing so much information and wisdom.
You're welcome, sir.
Iranian Resistance Needs Support00:02:36
Have a wonderful weekend.
Thank you, you too.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Well, that's very interesting.
I want to hold out hope because I know this is a complex problem that the world didn't fall into in a sudden, so it may take some time to get out.
Hopefully, Trump's machinations in Syria are part of the raveling up of the Iranian military empire and will eventually lead to the liberation of that country itself.
Stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
Hey, welcome back.
On my monologue yesterday about a left-wing activist journalist who condemned the fundraising for the families of the humble Broncos as sexist and racist.
Liza writes, it's too bad the family must suffer.
The circus when they are trying to deal with a very fresh tragedy, everyone should leave them in peace to grieve.
The disgusting ghouls who are crying, their fragile ghoul tears need to get some damn humanity.
Yeah, you know what?
I'm just going to guess that most of the family of the humble Broncos did not see her super gross tweet, although some of them probably did, because Nora Loretto was so proud of the fact that her tweets had 8 million views last week when she normally probably gets 8,000.
So she was sort of boasting that if 8 million people saw it, odds are some of the families did.
But I think most of them are focused on real things, important things, family healing, the injured, grieving.
What I found useful about the story was what it reflected back from the mainstream media.
Globe and Mail, The Walrus, McLean's, the CBC, the people who were delighted to publish Nora Loretto when she said similar things in their magazines, because they actually don't deeply disagree with her.
Deborah writes, Nora, like all true narcissists, love to get a reaction, whether positive or negative.
They feed on it for narcissistic supply because they have no emotional depth, so they use others to project their ugliness on.
I have to say there's something to that.
I mean, listen, I've made 90,000 tweets in the 10 years I've been on Twitter.
That's a lot.
Some of them have been dumb.
Listen, you can't say 90,000 things without having a few clunkers.
And every once in a while, maybe like in life, you say, ah, that was wrong.
I got that wrong.
Join Us: The Conservative Call00:02:56
Maybe you don't make a big noisy apology.
You just delete it and shut up.
Not her.
This is the most exciting week of her life, the most relevant week of her life.
I think there's something a little broken upstairs, although you never know if she's a little bit off or if that's just how all social justice warriors are these days.
It's hard to say.
On Facebook, Google, on shutting down conservative voices online, Ted writes, you're not the only one who worries about the rebel.media being summarily shut down from the internet.
You bet your conservative audience is also.
I don't know of any other media or voice or venue that is doing the job of conservative journalism that the rebel is doing.
Ted, thanks very much for saying that.
We do our best.
There are some conservative journalists in this country who don't work for us.
We love to talk to some of them.
We love it when Candace Malcolm and Anthony Fury join us.
They work for the Toronto Sun for now.
I don't know if you remember our old friend Andrew Lawton, who worked with us and then he went full-time on the radio in London, Ontario, until they fired him.
So I'm worried that there's this larger purge of conservative voices.
If you read the National Post these days, it's barely recognizable from what it started out as 20 years ago.
I was there in the early days, 1999, 2000.
It was a very conservative magazine, newspaper then, and now it's not.
So yeah, there are other voices, but God forbid they silence the rebel.
Who's going to lead the charge, not just on the safe conservative things, but on the ones that people get all politically correct about?
I don't think there's a lot of courage there.
And as I say to Jason Kenney and Andrew Scheer, who are a little bit shy about the Rebel, if we weren't being true conservatives, they would be the most conservative thing in the country.
And that's a very difficult thing for a politician to do and to be.
Whereas if we are fighting the good fight, they can appear more moderate, more centrist as opposed to if we were gone.
Imagine if the most conservative thing in all of Canada was Andrew Scheer.
We'd be doomed.
I just regret that he's sucking up to the middle and to the left so hard.
Oh, it's awful to see him on the CBC.
Let's end with a positive note.
I'm excited about our rallies in Alberta.
If you are in Alberta, please join us.
In Edmonton tomorrow, that is Saturday, 1 to 3 p.m. at the legislature.
In Calgary on Sunday, 1 to 3 p.m. at City Hall.
If you want details, go to repealthecarbontax.com.
We call it that because, look, the carbon tax was sold as social license.
Hey, Alberta, punch yourself on the nose.
Tax yourself.
Hate oil and gas.
And in return, BC will let you put a pipeline through.
No, that was never going to happen.
So since it hasn't happened, I think it's time to repeal the carbon tax anyways.