Ezra Levant’s May 10, 2018 episode highlights NDP activist Deion Buse’s conviction for assaulting The Ezra Levant Show bureau chief Sheila Gunnreid at the 2017 Edmonton Women’s March, yet no feminist groups condemned him—even after a judge awarded $3,500 in damages. It critiques media bias, like CBC’s refusal to retract fake news claims about the attack, and Bill 9’s 150-meter "censorship zone" around abortion clinics, calling it unconstitutional. Derek Fildebrandt, the lone UCP dissenter, slams party leadership for suppressing MLAs’ votes on social issues, comparing it to Trudeau’s gender quotas, while questioning grassroots democracy. The episode ties these themes to broader concerns: feminist abuse of power, transgender prison policies, and the Iran deal’s collapse, exposing systemic hypocrisy and authoritarianism in politics and media. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, you know that thug who hit Sheila Gunnreid in the face last year?
We finally beat him in court and I'll give you the details.
It's May 10th, 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 about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
We got him.
We finally got him.
That thug who hit our reporter Sheila Gunnread in the face at the women's march last year.
This guy, his name is Deion Buges.
We sued him for assault and battery and this week we won.
And the judge was scathing in his comments.
I'll read you some excerpts from the judgment in a moment, but first just a reminder.
In January 2017, our Alberta Bureau chief Sheila Gunnreid went to report on the women's march at the Alberta legislature in Edmonton.
And this male feminist, an NDP activist with a lip ring named Dion Buse was there at a women's march and when he saw Sheila was there, he swore at her, then he said he was going to hit her and then he did hit her.
But that's what NDP activists, that's what male feminists seem to do, even at a women's march.
And he's so stupid, he did it all on tape.
Here's the clip.
As you look back, so what did you say that it would be shown in it?
No, no, no, I'm just asking you a question.
Do I seem unreasonable to you?
Because I seem really pleasant.
I think I might come across some pleasant reading.
We're just trying to have a conversation here.
I try to have a conversation with you.
Get out of my face.
I will break your camera.
You don't have the right to.
Calm down.
We're going to calm down.
Don't have the right to film you before you go.
Yes, she does.
Just shut up.
He just hit me in the face.
That's good.
That's the same thing.
No, don't.
Hey, don't you need to calm down.
I'm not that guy.
You deserve to be angry.
You deserve to be angry.
You deserve nothing.
No, don't get in this video.
Get him into me.
Was that an ass?
That guy just hit me in the face.
Does it matter?
Do I deserve it?
The problem is.
Yeah, I'm the problem, you victim blamer.
That guy just hit me in the face.
You have footage of it?
Yeah, exactly.
And I'm going to security now.
Go do that, okay?
I'm just trying to make sure nothing happens if it doesn't escape, okay?
Let's take a look at the money.
Get him in the tree.
Get security.
By the way, did you notice that not a single so-called feminist objected to that thug punching a woman at a women's march?
In fact, as you saw, they patted him.
They put their hands on him to console him.
And they helped him get away.
They blocked Sheila and told her she was the one who needed to calm down.
Dion Bugs punched a woman at a women's march.
And all the feminists with their little pink hats helped the abuser because the woman he punched was a conservative.
We offered a $1,000 reward for anyone who could identify him.
By the way, it was his friends who gave him up.
They have a low opinion of him, too.
We gave that info to the police and they charged him.
And he was convicted of a crime.
Of course, he's a criminal.
But Sheila was not informed about that criminal court date.
So she was not allowed to give testimony or to give a victim impact statement, which is her legal right to do so.
So that shocking video of Deion Buse threatening and then punching her was never shown to the judge in criminal court.
Instead, Buges said he was the victim.
He said that people were really mean to him on Facebook about the whole thing.
So that criminal, Deion Buse, was convicted of a crime, but he got off with just 30 hours of community service.
Even worse, the left-wing media went to work immediately turning Dion Bewes into the victim, just like the feminists at that women's march did.
So much for the whole Me Too movement.
It obviously only applies to liberal women who were hit, not conservatives.
I think this story in the CBC was the worst.
They hate Sheila and the CBC because she's a better reporter than any of them.
She breaks more stories than they do.
She's independent.
She doesn't work for the state broadcaster, but mainly because she's not a leftist feminist.
So the CBC actually published a conspiracy theory in that story that claimed Sheila wasn't actually hit in the face by Deion Bewes.
Don't believe your lying eyes.
Sure, you saw the tape, but the CBC went full fake news, full conspiracy theory, full truther.
No, it just didn't happen.
Let me quote from that story.
Supporters of Bewes, Tiana Barnes and Ezra James, say they were at the rally and witnessed what happened.
There's an innocent guy who's being hunted down for something he didn't do, they said in a post on Facebook attached to a video statement.
They argue the man did not hit Gun Reid, but that he hit the camera off the tripod.
Even after Deion Bewes was convicted in criminal court, Buse himself would not accept responsibility.
He kept blaming the victim.
So we sued him in civil court so Sheila would finally be able to have her day in court to show a judge the videotape to tell her side of the story, which did not happen at the criminal trial.
We didn't sue Deion Bewes for a lot of money.
It's obviously not about the money.
It's about Dion Buse admitting, confessing that what he did was wrong and immoral and violent and a disgrace and unmanly and that he needed to apologize, which he has never done to date.
Here's an offer that we sent him.
I want to show you this.
Where we would drop the lawsuit if he just admitted that he hit Sheila and apologized to her.
Oh, and then can you give $1,000 to the Battered Women's Shelter?
Nothing for Sheila.
Just admit that he hit Sheila, say sorry, and give $1,000 to a charity.
And he refused.
That thug, Deion Buse, who, by the way, was already convicted of the crime for this, who was caught on tape, he literally refuses to this day to apologize to Sheila.
And why should he?
The left-wing mob said he was the hero.
The CBC, Canada's state broadcaster, is doing PR for him, just like they did for Jian Gameshi.
They like men who beat women over there.
They're painting Deion Bewes as the victim.
They're questioning whether he even hit her.
So it did go to trial.
And this time, Sheila was there.
And she won.
Here, let me quote from Judge Gordon Sherrick.
First, as to the CBC's conspiracy theory that Deion Bewes didn't actually hit Sheila, and Bewes tried that theory out on the judge, believe me.
Here's what the judge said after watching the video and listening to, what, five or six witnesses under oath.
Here's what the judge said.
Based on all the evidence, I find that Mr. Buse struck the camera with his left hand, straight on, causing the camera to move backwards, striking Ms. Gunn.
He struck the camera intentionally, as he had threatened to do, and he did so not caring whether the camera struck Ms. Gunn.
Hence, I have concluded that Mr. Buse committed a battery upon Ms. Gunn.
Yeah, the CBC published fake news.
They literally indulged a conspiracy theory that is still on their website today.
All right, back to the judgment.
The assault and battery of Ms. Gunn by Mr. Buse were unprovoked.
There is no evidence either on the video or of the independent witnesses to support the notion that Ms. Gunn in any way antagonized or provoked Mr. Buse.
I do not accept the evidence of Mr. Buse that he feared for his safety.
I mean, yeah, he's a coward.
He's a beta male with a lip ring.
He's an NDP lefty.
But he was just lying when he said even he was scared of a 100-pound woman with a video camera.
Here's the judge.
Someone who fears for their safety, in my view, does not face a camera he believes correctly to be recording and say obscenities.
And someone who fears for their safety does not, seconds later, after having had a chance to leave the scene, return to strike the camera he believes to be recording him.
Now this was never about money, our lawsuit.
Being punched in the face, if you suffer no serious harm, it doesn't get you a huge award.
Judge Sherrick ordered Dion Buse to pay Sheila $1,000 for the punch.
That's pretty normal in civil court cases for one punch.
And interestingly, that's exactly what Sheila offered to Buse, remember, to settle this case if he just paid the $1,000 to a battered women's shelter.
She would have dropped the case, but he refused.
But the judge did something very unusual in his ruling.
He awarded punitive damages in a civil suit.
And it's important to know why.
Here, I'm going to quote him, because I know you won't hear this on the CBC.
In short, Judge Sherrick said Deion Bewes was not properly punished in his criminal trial because the trial judge did not see the evidence.
Here.
With respect to the criminal proceedings against Mr. Buse, I am satisfied that Judge Groves did not have a complete picture of the events.
The record of the criminal proceedings, Exhibit 7, and the evidence in this matter disclosed that Judge Groves did not have the benefit of viewing the video, which is Exhibit 1A, nor did she have the benefit, which I did, of two days of testimony from the plaintiff and defendant, plus four other witnesses.
Furthermore, and significantly, Judge Groves did not have the benefit of a victim impact statement from the plaintiff, who was unaware that the criminal proceedings were taking place, unquote.
That is total vindication, isn't it?
Vindication of Sheila, condemnation of Deion Buse, the criminal, who I should point out again, still has not apologized to Sheila, still does not admit he did anything wrong.
But the judge had one more thing to say, and it's about Sheila as a journalist.
You'd think other media would say this, or journalistic organizations, or women's organizations, but they won't, because they actually don't care about the safety of conservative women or conservative journalists.
Here, last word to the judge.
In a free and democratic society, people, including media, should be able to attend public events, say what they wish, with certain limited exceptions, without the fear of having themselves or their property threatened or physically abused.
The fundamental freedom of the media, as provided for in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, guarantees that the media shall have the freedom to report and provide opinion with respect to such public events as the 2017 Women's March.
To seek to curtail the media's right to report and opine on the event, such as the defendant Buse did here, was unacceptable.
And his resort to physical violence against a member of the media qualifies as high-handed, malicious, arbitrary, or highly reprehensible conduct that departs to a marked degree from ordinary standards of decent behavior.
As stated in another case, it is conduct that, quote, by any reasonable standard is deserving of full condemnation and punishment, unquote.
So the judge in Edmonton awarded Sheila another $2,500 for punitive damages.
Has any journalism organization condemned Dion Buse, who has now been convicted first by a criminal court and now condemned by a civil court?
No.
In fact, the opposite.
The Edmonton Journal scoffed at Sheila, refusing to even call her a journalist.
They call her a staffer.
Nothing from the CBC.
Their conspiracy theory is still online, though.
Oh, by the way, this guy, a former Edmonton-Sutton photographer, Tom Braid is his name, he actually suggested on Twitter that the public should be raising money to pay to Dion Buse.
He later deleted it, but seriously, imagine asking the public to raise money to help someone who batters women.
That's Tom Braid of Edmonton.
And here's a tweet from last year from Allison Post, the woman who organized the women's march, just denying that Sheila was hit at all, despite the videotape evidence.
Imagine being a women's rights activist who literally sees a videotape of a man punching a woman.
But because the man is a leftist and the woman is a conservative, tries to gaslight the woman, calling her a faker.
Well, tell it to the judge.
To hell with the media party and to hell with the fake defenders of journalists.
To hell with all the politicians complaining about mean tweets and left-wing journalists who write endless columns about online bullying.
Oh, did you know that someone was mean to Rachel Notley or Catherine McKenna?
Those same complainers are completely silent on actual punching women in the face, including Rachel Notley.
This happened on the steps of her office by one of her NDP supporters.
Now, we finally got our justice.
No thanks to those fancy people.
We were the ones who found the criminal.
Or more to the point, you were our viewers.
You got him charged and convicted.
Even if Sheila wasn't allowed to testify in the criminal court, we sued him in civil court.
And though it took too long, we finally got a judge to call Deion Buse what he is.
He is a reprehensible disgrace to society, a beater of women, and someone who deserves more punishment than he got because he attacked a function of democracy itself.
Now, Sheila got $3,500 in damages all told.
I really don't even know if Deion Bewes has the money to pay it.
But it was never about the money.
It was about setting things right, since no one else would.
We had a great lawyer who was very conscientious and kept his fees reasonable, but we still spent $36,000 all told on the lawsuit because justice demanded it.
If you think it was a good idea to sue him, if you want to help us cover that legal bill, I'd be grateful.
Go to DionBews.com.
That's right.
D-I-O-N-B-E-W-S dot com.
Yeah, that's the website we've set up to remind him and the world for the rest of his life of what he's done, or at least until he finally apologizes.
He has not.
Please go to DionBews.com and help us cover the legal fees for getting a small slice of justice.
And the next time a feminist, especially a male feminist, talks about mean tweets or journalists having a tough time, ask them about Dion Bewes and why the political media establishment thinks it's just fine to hit a woman if she's a conservative.
They can learn all about it and read the entire court case at DionBews.com.
CBC's Trump Effect Reenactment00:03:30
Stay with us.
We've got an interesting show today.
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Make cat on great t-shirts.
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Support Donald Trump's inauguration.
We are selling t-shirts.
That was an actual broadcast by the CBC called the Trump Effect, and it's exactly what it looks like.
The CBC hired actors to play racists motivated by Donald Trump.
The CBC paid to have some provocative and some racist paraphernalia, apparel, shirts, and hats, and they sold it on the streets as if it were real, and they used it to entrap or sting ordinary Canadians who might react to their provocation.
That is the literal definition of fake news.
But much more than that, they were creating the false news and then reporting on it as if it were true.
That is government-approved fake news.
And I'm reminded of that when I look at a recent column in the Financial Post called Regulating Fake News will only ensure that we only see regulated fake news.
It's written by Professor Herb Gruble, and he joins us now via Skype from North Vancouver.
Great to see you again, Professor Grubel.
And that's such a good point.
What one person calls fake news, the other person calls the truth.
Am I right?
I mean, it's always just a matter of opinion and disagreement.
Exactly.
And the idea that we can put some people appointed by the government to decide what is fake and what is not fake is just ludicrous.
It's just not going to work.
I think we should rely on the common sense of the common people to decide whether they want to believe a story they see or not.
And that's the thing.
The CBC has defended what I thought was an outrageous fake provocation.
They're saying, oh, it was just an experiment or it was a talking point or, you know, it was a reenactment.
Sometimes you see in journalism a dramatic reenactment.
So they would defend it, and they have defended it as journalism.
I thought it was an outrageous smear.
And I suppose we're both right because we're both entitled to our opinion.
It's a matter of opinion.
The idea that there could be some agency that would be the final arbiter, that misses the whole point about a public debate, doesn't it?
We have public debates, and at the end of the day, the voter, the consumer gets to decide.
We don't have a public debate, and then some grand wizard or high priest decides.
That's the difference, isn't it?
Well, what has upset the Apple card really is initially and in the past, there has always been fake news.
And there was no big trouble in the United States because presumably the Republicans and the Democrats both used it and it was just balanced.
But then came this idea that the Russians have imbalanced this.
But, you know, it hasn't been proven and nobody knows how much effect it had.
Fake News for the West00:05:13
But Ezra, let me tell you, with respect to what really happened when I was in Chile on the occasion of giving a lecture there at an institution, a government institution, the School for Diplomats.
It's important to mention this, that I wasn't there on the merit of my political views.
I gave a lecture on the future of the international monetary policies, institutions for future diplomats.
So I walked around town and to my astonishment, at that time, I could not see any demonstrations that I had seen almost every day on the CBC when I was in Vancouver.
Well, somewhat strangely, I went to the Canadian ambassador, put my calling cards through a slot, and he came out and he said, well, so nice to see you, Professor Gruble.
What can I do for you?
And we had a chat.
And he said, well, complaint or concerns over the difference between the number and ferocity of demonstrations against Pinochet that you see on the television in Canada and the actual on-the-ground experience here.
Several people have asked me, why is there this difference?
And he said, let me tell you a story.
Last week, my spies found out that a television crew from the CBC had arrived in Santiago Airport.
We followed them, and the next morning, they went to a poor area of Santiago where they met with 10, 15 people. who went to a garage, picked up anti-Pinochet placards, waved them, and arranged themselves in a position where the camera showed as if it was a really large demonstration.
And the next day, in Vancouver, in British Columbia, in Canada, the people of Canada were shown a demonstration against Pinochet in Santiago.
It never took place.
You know what?
As you were describing that, it reminds me of when I went into the West Bank, when I went into different towns, including Bethlehem itself.
And, you know, there's a phrase, Palliwood.
It's a blend of Palestinians and Hollywood.
It's so much for the consumption of Western media that, you know, the protesters are there, and then it's almost like lights, camera, action.
They have a moment of fake news for the consumption of the West.
When the cameras are gone, they're gone.
You don't even have to go overseas to see that, Professor.
You're in Vancouver.
Not far away are the propped-up protests against the Kinder-Morgan pipeline where you have paid professional protesters.
I see the Vancouver son has a picture of a protester, several protesters, but they don't identify them.
I happen to know them.
They're professional activists.
Clayton Thomas Muller is the name of one of them.
If you didn't know who they were, you'd say, oh, wow, look at that protest.
I actually know their names.
I recognize them because they go from protest to protest.
You don't even have to go to Chile or the West Bank, Professor.
Fake news is right here in Canada, too.
Oh, yes, yeah.
But I mean, and it's not just the mass media like television, everything is very dramatic, but it also occurs in newspapers.
Let me tell you one other episode I personally had experience.
I was teaching at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, and I made friends with two doctors who were learning some advanced medical technology from a famous professor at the famous Skroodsko Hospital.
They were from the Netherlands, and almost weekly they received letters from their parents in the Netherlands showing, expressing concern over their safety, because they were reading in the newspapers all the time about the riots and the deaths that were caused by the riots in South Africa.
And one of the letters included a picture from one of these articles.
And they looked at the picture and said, well, this looks awfully familiar.
And what it was, was a lawn in the courtyard of the Krudsko Hospital where people in the typical South African wonderful climate ate their lunch on the grass.
Censorship's New Frontier00:15:10
And after that, some of them laid down and took a little nap.
This was shown as evidence of another riot which led to wounded and killed people in South Africa.
We're just having a nap after lunch.
Well, you know, and again, I come back, I mean, that's a dramatic example, but we saw news just a few weeks ago that the government of Canada literally writes fake news stories that then they pump out through a PR agency unattributed to, I mean, fake news is as common as real news.
And it's in the eye of the beholder.
I think the only way to sort it out is to let people rely on their own judgment.
It almost reminds me of the purpose of Parliament itself.
You have an official opposition who is paid to oppose because you can't trust either side or any party.
No one is disinterested.
We need checks and balances.
The idea that there can be some perfect wisdom, some high moral authority that we all defer to, and that angel has no biases or interests himself is.
Let me ask you one last question, Professor.
Do you think the real threat to free speech from people invoking, oh, fake news, we have to ban that.
Do you think the real threat comes from government?
Or do you think these days it comes from the crony capitalists at the very, very large social media oligopolies, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google?
I'm much more worried these days that a secret deal is just whispered between Justin Trudeau and Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook.
And the censorship is outsourced to Facebook, Google, YouTube, Microsoft.
And we never even hear about it or see about it like we might if it was a government censorship.
That's my fear.
What's yours?
Well, I was going to say that the troubling thing to me is that it's the propaganda disguised as news that comes from the government itself and government-sponsored agencies.
They have huge resources, as you know, to fight anybody who opposes them.
I am not worried about Facebook and other agencies that may be the carrier of fake news produced by many different opposing and offsetting public interest groups out there.
You know, the communists are planting fake news, but it is typically offset by right-wing, extreme libertarians or racists.
And, you know, we get bombarded by this and we make our judgment.
But when the government can use its sophisticated, very well-endowed resources to add to it, to pursue its own political agenda, that is what scares me.
Let me ask one more time in a slightly different way.
I agree with you.
The government has more resources and it has the legal power behind it.
But I'm talking about not so much the production of fake news, but the censorship of dissident voices in the name of stamping out fake news.
I'm worried that where once dissident voices, conservative or libertarian voices in particular, would be censored by a human rights commission or a lawsuit, now it's Facebook or YouTube just deleting accounts, suspending or banning people's access.
So I'm not saying I'm worried so much about Facebook promoting a leftist agenda or producing fake news.
I'm worried about Facebook saying, well, we have a moral obligation to stop fake news.
And surprise, surprise, what we call fake news just happens to be Andrew Scheer, Jason Kenney, and Donald Trump.
And what we think is trustworthy news just happens to be Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Justin Trudeau.
I'm worried not about the production, but the censorship, the outsourcing of the censorship to Facebook.
Do you have a view on that?
Oh, yes, I fully agree with you.
And I thought that's one of the points I made.
You know, we get only 700 words in an article.
This is exactly the point I would emphasize.
You're absolutely right.
Any kind of a censor, but especially censors appointed by politicians who happened to be in power at the time, are not in the interest of a vital democratic system.
Well, Professor, it's great to catch up with you again.
And I should mention that, of course, you yourself served as a member of parliament, so it's great to have you weighing in on this important public policy issue.
Great to see you again.
Same here.
Goodbye.
There you have Professor Herb Gribble talking about his article in the Financial Post.
If you haven't seen it, the headline is, Regulating fake news will only ensure that we only see regulated fake news.
Stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
Hey, welcome back.
There's a very strange thing going on in the Alberta legislature.
The Alberta NDP keeps putting forward bills that are really not on the public policy radar of most Albertans, in my view.
But they're doing it for obvious reasons, to distract from the real issues of the province, the economy, the lack of pipelines, the carbon tax, and to provoke the United Conservative Party and to change the subject.
Awful legislation, and one of them is called Bill 9.
It's basically a censorship bill that applies to a geographic area, 50 meters, now 150 meters around any abortion facility, in the name of stopping, I don't know, violence or something.
But of course, there is no abortion violence, no violence at abortion clinics other than, I suppose critics would say the violence that happens within those abortion clinics.
The only evidence the New Democrats have put forward is a videotape of a couple of very quiet Christian grandmas standing with a quiet vigil outside one of them.
It's obvious this is designed to rekindle a debate of Jason Kenney and the UCP being extremists.
But the extremists are actually the NDP, I believe, by having a total censorship ban, a censorship zone, 150 meters, that's what, 500 feet.
No cause for it.
But if that's not weird enough, even weirder is the reaction by the United Conservative Party.
At least on six occasions, the party has just walked out of the legislature en masse.
Instead of putting a principal objection on the record instead of voting no, they've just sort of ran away.
Except for one MLA, who's an independent MLA, even though he was elected as a wild roser.
I'm talking about our friend Derek Fildebrandt, the MLA from Strathmore Brooks, who sits as an independent.
He joins us now.
Derek, great to see you again.
Thanks for having me on, Ezra.
Derek, have I properly summarized Bill 9?
I haven't read the actual text of it.
I'm just going from media reports.
Basically, it creates a censorship zone.
First, it was going to be 50 meters, now it's 150 meters around abortion clinics.
No protests whatsoever, no political dissent.
It's not a rule against violence.
It's a rule against speech.
Am I right?
Yes, because the law is already very clear.
Violence is illegal.
Intimidation, harassment against people is illegal.
So the only thing this bill changes is around protest.
And, you know, just today outside the legislature, as we're speaking, there is a peaceful, and so far as I could tell, I haven't been there for it.
But as far as I could tell, respectful protest of pro-lifers, and there's no issue.
I would imagine that in the rare circumstance where it could theoretically happen that if someone were to protest outside of an abortion clinic and yell and scream at women going in and out or photographing them, I think that would be inappropriate.
But the law and court injunctions already make that illegal.
But what this bill does is it makes it illegal to protest, period.
And as far as I've ever seen, I've seen a peaceful grandma pray over people.
Some people might still not like that, but it certainly doesn't reach the level of intimidation or violence.
But this makes it illegal originally for 50 meters.
Unfortunately, when the opposition's away, the government will play.
And so because I was the only conservative in the legislature for six consecutive votes, really just kind of having to man the whole thing myself, the NDP thought that without more than one MLA opposing them and they could do anything they want, they decided to triple the size of their no-protest censorship zone.
So it's now instead of 50 meters, it's 150 meters.
And this is what happens when you don't have any opposition.
It's surely unconstitutional.
You can't ban people from protesting.
You can ban people from violent actions or crimes.
You can ban people from trespassing, but that's not what this does, according to what I've read.
It's absurd because I have, it's not even a thing anymore.
It's not even a thing.
I mean, like you say, a couple of grannies standing in a peaceful vigil.
It's so clearly designed to bait Jason Kenney, who, of course, for his whole life has been pro-life, including when he was in college.
He was a pro-life activist.
But the fact that Jason Kenney and the UCP don't want to, quote, give oxygen to this narrative, I don't think that excuses their abandoning their duties as the official opposition.
If they oppose this bill, then oppose it.
Sure, it's a stunt.
We all acknowledge it's a stunt.
I think the media acknowledges it's a stunt.
But if it's bad public policy, the answer is not to run away.
It's to vote against it and come up with a proper response.
I think they're the ones playing games too.
If they think it's a bad law, they should speak and vote against it.
I mean, I'd almost say it's childish just to say, oh, I can't.
It's like putting your hands over your ears and say, I can't hear you.
Yeah, No, no, the bill is coming forward anyways.
That's my thought.
I agree.
You know, if the NDP are playing games by simply trying to bring this up to get abortion as an issue of public discussion, and it's really not today's protest exempted, which is an annual event, it's not really an issue that people are talking about.
So yeah, sure, if it's a game by the NDP to try to trap the UCP to talk about this, the appropriate response from the UCP isn't to play games of their own.
The government, unfortunately, gets to set 98% of the agenda in the legislature.
And the opposition, unfortunately, we have to respond to it.
And the appropriate response when the government's playing games or doing something just trying to trap us is not to be just as immature and to play the same kind of games.
If Jason Kenney did not believe he was going to get the unanimity of his caucus on this issue, then the appropriate thing is to do what conservatives are supposed to do in theory on controversial social issues and allow a free vote.
Allow people to vote their own conscience in consultation with their constituents.
Instead, they've been told they're not supposed to vote one way or another, which would be bad enough.
But they're told they're not, you're not even allowed to show up for debate, and you're not allowed to speak to it, and you're not allowed to vote on it, period.
And their attempt to not give this oxygen, I think, is actually giving it more oxygen.
Yeah, I think you're exactly right because it's so bizarre, and it's almost like the NDP can toy with the government.
Imagine mentioning a word, it's like Voldemort, the name of the villain in the Harry Potter series.
Oh, you can't mention the name, and all of a sudden all the MLAs jump up and scurry out of the room.
It would be like a game.
Let me see how quickly I can get them to jump out and run out.
Of course, it begs the question.
It's actually quite sad.
It's like they're playing Red Rover anyway.
Yeah, it feels that way.
And the thing is, if this law is as improper as I think it is, both constitutionally and in terms of, I mean, there's no problem to be solved here.
I think violating free speech is inappropriate.
But if this bill passes and becomes law, which it surely will, if the United Conservative Party becomes the government next year, as many polls suggest it will, will they also be afraid to dismantle it then?
Will they be afraid to repeal the law?
If they're so terrified to even mention its name and its word, does that mean that they won't vote on it when they have a majority?
It's so many strange questions, Derek.
And I doubt you have an answer to their thinking because you're an independent MLA right now.
But have you heard anything?
I mean, surely there's got to be some MLAs who don't like this game playing.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, I know the vast majority of the UCP caucus very well from when I was in the Wild Rose and working to unite with the PCs.
There are some very passionate pro-life members of the UCP caucus who feel very strongly against the status quo abortion laws.
There are also some pro-choice members of the UCP caucus.
And then there's many who are on a spectrum in between who might lean one way or another, but are a bit more moderate on the scale.
And, you know, I feel bad for them.
I'm in there every day.
I was just in there this morning putting forward amendments to the bill.
I've actually had some at least one amendment pass to the bill.
It was unfortunately not my favorite amendment, but it was at least something.
But I'm in there putting forward amendments, debating the bill every day, like this morning and late last night.
And I see shame in their eyes.
They are not proud to be doing what they're doing.
I think the vast majority of them don't agree with their strategy on this.
And I can see shame in their eyes when they're playing Red Rover running in and out.
They want to be there debating.
They want to be there voting, doing their most fundamental and basic job as MLAs, but they're told they're not allowed to for party leadership and the whip.
And, you know, as I can attest, it's not a very good career move to defy what the bosses say.
Yeah, I want to talk to you a little bit more about that in a minute.
But this reminds me about the United Conservative Party convention the other day in Red Deer, a huge convention, largest from reports in the province's history, over 2,500 people.
57% of those delegates said they wanted parents to be notified if the kids go to religious-based or sex-oriented classes or extracurriculars.
Conservative Quotas Controversy00:14:30
Very, very normal.
I always thought that was standard operating procedure.
57% of delegates said, Yeah, we just, we're parents.
We care about our kids.
We want to know what they're up to.
And afterwards, Jason Kenney said, No, no, no, I hold the pen, was his phrase, and I'll interpret the will of the people.
And I just sense that this idea that by being not just not pro-life and not pro-parent, but to actually be more NDP than the NDP, to silence, who was able to silence the United Conservative Party MLAs?
Not Rachel Notley.
Weirdly, pro-life Jason Kenney.
Who is able to silence or wants to silence 57% of UCP members on parental notification?
Weirdly, not Rachel Notley, but Jason Kenney.
And I've known Jason for 20 years.
I find it a very bizarre strategy.
It doesn't change the law.
It doesn't change reality.
It's really weird to see Jason Kenney be the enforcer of the other side's point of view.
And I think it's just to buy peace with the CBC.
And that peace will never come, by the way.
The CBC is not going to suddenly stop attacking the UCP or its MLAs because they're not voting their conscience.
Everyone knows where Kenny and the UCP stands.
The fact that they're doing this weird strategy, I think, only shows they lack courage.
It doesn't show anything more.
I'm ranting.
What's your view, Derek?
It was a good rant, I'll give you.
You know, if I was at the convention, I have to admit, I would not have voted for that particular resolution.
I agree with a lot of it, but I thought it was poorly worded.
I think that the NDP's bill, Bill 24, which they put forward and passed in the fall and which I voted against, which made it illegal for parental notification, is overly rigid.
But I also think mandatory notification without any regard to the circumstances is also overly rigid.
In most cases, I think it's fine if parents know what their kids are up to on religious and sexual matters at school.
I'm a parent and I want to know.
But in some cases where the child could actually be put at risk if they have a potentially abusive family which would kick them out of the streets if they were gay, I think there's a pretty strong argument to be made that the parents shouldn't be notified automatically in that case.
And so I think these overly rigid classifications are not serving well.
But I overall agree with the principle of that particular policy resolution, but I couldn't have supported it because I think it was overly rigid.
But the broader point here, though, is the grassroots guarantee.
And a key condition of my support for unification and for Jason Kenney's leadership was the grassroots guarantee.
That the grassroots members get to drive unification.
The grassroots members get to pick who their candidate for MLA is, not the leader.
And the grassroots members get to set the policies of the party.
And I remember Jason Kenney signing, he did a big blown-up billboard that he put his signature on saying that the policies should be developed from the bottom up by the grassroots members, not imposed from the top by its leader.
That's almost an exact quote of what that pledge, the grassroots guarantee said.
And I should say there was no asterisks on it.
And so he says the members get to decide.
And then the instant they decide something that he didn't want, he says, well, at the end of the day, you shouldn't have believed me.
Yeah.
You know what?
I think I did my show on this on Monday.
And I should note that on jasonkenney.ca, his website, the grassroots guarantee website has been deleted.
That page has been deleted.
So there's a big question mark there.
They said it was technical issues that happened minutes after that resolution.
I want to ask you, you alluded to grassroots members choosing their MLA, and I know we're almost out of time, but I want to take a minute.
You are an independent MLA for various reasons, but you have expressed an interest in running for the nomination in the writing.
And I would put it to you that most Albertans, if they had to name a handful of Wild Rose MLAs, sorry, United Conservative Party MLAs, other than Jason Kenney and probably Brian Jean, your name would be in the top three for sure, maybe even the top two.
I mean, there's some other competent MLAs, no doubt about it, but you've been a vocal advocate.
You've fought hard.
You were with the Taxpayers Federation.
You have your reputation there.
You have a very strong riding.
Tell me what Jason Kenney has said to you about your desire to have the right to run, not to be appointed, but to put your name to the members of the riding.
What's Jason Kenney said to you, and what's his explanation?
Well, I met with Jason in November, and he had been saying for some time, just stay quiet.
We're going to bring you back.
Everything's fine.
He said himself that these controversies were primarily media inventions and that they were, in his words, bullshit.
But just we'll get over it.
Just keep your head down.
It'll be fine.
And we had a meeting in either late November or early December and just discussing the details of this.
And about 90% of that meeting was him telling me that I can't run in my own constituency if I wanted to return to the caucus and run in the next election.
He said, and I'll give you a probably near-exact quote of what he said.
It wasn't recorded or written down, but the near-exact quote was: actually, I'll give a bit of context.
My current constituency, Strathmore Brooks, was combined with the neighboring constituency of Chestemere-Rockyview.
And Chestamere-Rockyview is represented by Leela Ahir, one of the only two female members of the United Conservative caucus.
And the party's pretty lacking in female MLAs, I'll be the first to admit.
But my constituency was combined with her.
So either one of us had to run somewhere else, or we were going to have to face off against each other in the nomination in advance and determine who the members want to be, the MLA.
And Jason Kenney said to me that he would not support my return to the caucus and running the next election unless I decided to, unless I moved to a different constituency to run.
And his quote that he said to me was, how would it look if one of our only two women was defeated in the nomination by some bearded blonde redneck?
And now, I don't take redneck as a pejorative term, and I don't think he meant it as such.
But it was pretty clear because there's only two women in the caucus, of which I am not one, that I would be free to run in any other constituency, including other parts of my constituency that were conjoined with other neighboring constituencies with incumbent male UCP MLAs, but not against female UCP MLAs.
And, you know, so it was pretty clear to me that this was a Trudeau-style gender quota, except that the way Trudeau does it, it's actually probably better, which is hard, very sad to say.
He does it at least in the open.
He says, because it's 2015, we're just going to have quotas, and that's that.
But the way things are happening in the United Conservative Party is in public, when we look you in the face, we say, no gender quotas, merit only, let the people, let the members decide.
But then when we're behind closed doors, we say, well, we got to look good.
So we're just going to do this through dirty backroom politics.
And that's the way things have happened at UCP.
So that's why, regardless of any other excuses they've tried to cook up, that is the reason why I'm not allowed.
Why the members in my constituency have been told they're not allowed to even decide who their candidate for MLA is going to be.
They're going to be told who the candidates they're allowed to vote for are, but they're not going to let me run because I think they're afraid of what the result might be.
Yeah.
We're fans of Leela here.
I think she's a great MLA.
I would guess that you are a fan of hers as well.
It sounds to me you just want a chance to put your name to the vote.
By the way, we've sent an invitation to Leela here inviting her to come on to give her side of the story.
I'm a fan of hers.
I think she's fought hard.
I think she's fought hard for the oil and gas sector, which is very important to me.
Because she is a woman, and I think she's a woman of color, I don't know, she is more effective at rebutting certain politically correct attacks from the NDP than people who look like you and me are.
But that doesn't, in our system of meritocracy and egalitarianism, trump the right, in my view, of the members of your riding to have the say.
And obviously, I think I would love it if the both of you were MLAs and the Constitution and the grassroots guarantee seems to suggest that the members should choose in a vote.
And you're saying that's not going to happen.
Does that mean that you're blackballed from any riding?
Does that mean that you are basically ending your days as an independent MLA?
And if you run it again, it's as an independent MLA.
Is this the last of Derek Fildebrandt in provincial politics?
Oh, you haven't seen the end of me.
I can assure you that.
Yeah, no, what they said is because we couldn't come to an agreement.
I'm not allowed to run in any constituency for the United Conservative Party.
You know, and I've got no problem with Leela other than that in the later stages, she sought to be protected and not face an open nomination.
That's the only problem I've had with her.
But, you know, regardless of if we think we need more men, women, or purple, brown, or white MLAs, it should always be up to the local members to make that decision.
And it's not like my constituency is a heavily ethnic constituency.
It's a predominantly rural and suburban constituency.
But it doesn't matter what color the local people are there.
It should matter what politics and what person they want to pick for their own MLA.
I'm from meritocracy.
I mean, I absolutely agree.
I mean, I don't think we should have racial quotas or gender quotas.
And I think it's, in fact, a little bit diminishing for the party to suggest that Lila couldn't win on her own merits.
So, I mean, I don't know if you've thought of your plan.
If Jason Kenney has blackballed, you're returned to the party because you want to run in your home riding.
Sounds like you're going to go down fighting for the remainder of your term, doing the things in the legislature that the other UCP members won't.
It sounds like you're sometimes the only one in there fighting the fight.
I know you put forward a motion that MLA should have a pay reduction.
You're the only one of any party who supported it.
You're doing great things in your final year there.
Is it too early to think about what you're going to do afterwards?
Because I think you have a strong voice.
I think you come from your taxpayers' background.
You've fought like hell for years.
It's obviously you're out of sync with Jason Kenny.
Then again, so are we here at the Rebels.
So maybe that's why we get along so well.
Is it too early to brainstorm about what you're going to do next?
It would be a shame if you left the world of public policy.
I haven't made a decision, but I've had, you know, what really got me moving was a few weeks ago I had town halls in Strathmore and in Brooks, and I invited folks to come out and talk in the aftermath of the cancellation of, or the pending cancellation of the Trans Mountain Pipeline.
And people were very upset that they were being denied the right to pick their own candidate for MLA.
And a lot of people encouraged me to either run as an independent conservative or to begin a new conservative party.
And I haven't decided what route to go.
I believe in grassroots democracy.
I don't believe in corporate conservatism.
I believe in blue-collar grassroots conservatism.
And I don't believe in Ottawa-style conservatism here.
I believe our party or our movement should be autonomous.
A lot of people in Albert are talking about independence right now.
I'm not there.
I still want, I believe in Canada and want Canada to work, but Canada is broken.
And I believe the route for Alberta is not a continued model of federalism where we just simply yell back at them, as Jason Kenney proposes.
It's not federalism where we roll over and show our belly to them, as Rachel Notley practices.
And it's not a full independence, as many people are starting to agitate for.
I think it's autonomy.
It's demanding a repatriation of the British North America Act 1867 constitutional powers that run our own business here, remaining a part of Canada.
So I'm considering various options, but my heart lies with an autonomous, strong, and conservative Alberta and a conservatism that is not an old Tory corporate conservatism, but that works for people in the oil patch, that works for farmers, for real people on the ground.
Yeah.
Well, for what it's worth, I hope you don't start a new party.
I think splitism at the party level is something that should be avoided.
I think the unification of the parties was a success.
I could understand if you ran as an independent, given your roots in the riding and what you're reporting that you hear.
I don't know.
It's very difficult to run and win as an independent.
I hope you continue to contemplate things, and I look forward to keeping in touch.
I want to make it clear because I say this when I was talking to my colleague David Menzies about Doug Ford and his decision to throw a great conservative named Tanya Granick Allen out as a candidate.
And she was the one who made him the king, kingmaker in the riding.
And David's very mad at Doug Ford, and I understand that and I am mad also.
But I said, look, at the end of the day, Doug Ford has to beat Kathleen Wynne in Ontario.
There's just no two ways about it.
And my view is at the end of the day, there's two people who could be premier next year.
One is Rachel Notley, one is Jason Kenney.
And without any shadow of a doubt, Jason Kenney is going to be a better premier than Rachel Notley, and he must win.
Rebel's Good Conversation00:04:21
But that doesn't mean that we here at the Rebel and grassroots conservatives who care about conservatism shouldn't do our best to maintain the true conservatism and the grassroots democracy.
And I believe that's our role here at the Rebel: to be good faith critics of Jason Kenney and the UCP.
And when they fail, not just to give them a free pass because we're conservatives, not to be gotcha bad faith critics like the rest of the media, but to try and keep them conservative because there's no point in having an unconservative conservative party.
So that's my take on things, Derek.
We're fans of yours.
I want to see you staying part of the fight, whether it's as an MLA or something else.
And I'm sympathetic to your concerns.
We have reached out to Leela.
As you know, Jason Kenney is blackballed the Rebel.
He's not allowing any other MLAs to talk to us.
Yeah, that's my take.
I'll give you the final word.
We've had a good conversation, chewed over a lot of things.
If you had one last thing you wanted to tell Rebel viewers, what would it be?
Yeah, no, I was the very first conservative in the legislature to call for the conservative for the unification of the conservative family in Alberta.
I'm not sure that that was the right decision anymore.
I really believed it was necessary.
But now I'm seeing very dangerous signs that this new party is not looking like the new fresh party that I hoped it would be, living up to the grassroots guarantee.
But it is looking dangerously close to the entitlement to power and self-conceit of the Tories of old.
Not as bad as it was under the height of Jim Prentiss when they thought they would rule the universe.
But I'm seeing very dangerous signs.
And I really want the United Conservative Party to succeed and be the party that I thought it was that we were founding.
But I'm very concerned about the direction it's going right now when grassroots democracy is stamped out on members picking the policy, when grassroots democracy is stamped out on letting local members pick their own candidate, and when basic parliamentary democracy is stamped out, when MLAs are not even allowed to vote freely or even debate things just because someone else says so.
All right.
Well, we'll leave it there.
Good conversation.
Went on longer than I had originally thought, but there was so much to cover.
Derek, I'm grateful for your time.
It's been a while.
Yeah, it's been a while.
It was great to see you in Calgary at our anti-carbon tax repeal, the carbon tax and pro pipeline rally a few weeks ago in Calgary.
It was great to have you there.
Thanks for spending the time with us today.
We'll keep in touch.
I think you're an important part, an important voice for conservatives in Alberta and in Canada.
And I hope that we can find and you can find a place that is satisfying and where you can continue to make a difference.
So thanks for being here.
My pleasure.
All right.
There you have it, Derek Phil de Brant.
And as I mentioned several times, we have, in fact, reached out to Leela here to have her point of view.
I remain a fan of Leela's, no doubt about it.
Of course, she is under Jason Kenney's prohibition for MLAs from the UCP to talk to any rebel media journalist.
Stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
Hey, welcome back on my monologue Tuesday about sexual misconduct by powerful feminists in politics.
Jonathan writes, I truly feel for the victims of these pigs, especially our own soldier.
You know, normally I wouldn't say that a soldier, a tough, strong guy, is a victim if a female MP follows him back to his hotel and sleeps with him.
And I don't think the soldier himself really wants to embrace victimology, but it is a fact that he was on a variety of medications, and she insisted he drink alcohol.
And he said he objected, but she said she was a nurse and knew better.
So how many ways did she abuse her authority to take advantage of him?
I'm a nurse.
It's okay to drink when you're on meds.
I'm a member of parliament.
You know what?
She questioned him in the parliamentary committee.
She asked him if he was married or engaged.
And she sort of styled the questions as if it was a legitimate question.
She was using parliament like a Tinder app or some dating app.
Parliamentary Tinder Swipes00:04:59
And so now we know that she's responsible for at least two, maybe three MPs to be kicked out of their parties.
Now this soldier, I mean, and everywhere she goes, she cries sexual harassment against her.
She's a sexual predator.
On my interview with John Cardillo, Paul writes, pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal was the only thing Trump could do, and I'm thrilled he did so.
John Kerry is panicking.
The former Obama administration is panicking.
It was a horrible deal.
I don't doubt they have some nuclear skeletons in their closets that they don't want the world to know about.
Wow, that's very interesting.
It is quite something to see the vigor with which the old administration is squawking and opposing Trump ripping up their deal.
I should remind you that that was not a treaty.
Under the U.S. Constitution, the Senate must ratify any foreign treaty.
It's why the U.S. Senate, it's why the global warming treaties don't apply to America.
The Senate has not ratified them.
This wasn't even put to the Senate.
It was like a private agreement that Obama signed.
So of course, Trump can rip up a treaty just that's not a treaty the same way Obama brought it in by just saying it's over why is John Kerry so desperate to prop it up why is Susan Rice The liar who claimed Benghazi was because of a YouTube video.
Why are they so squawky here?
I think the plain answer is that this was sort of the centerpiece of the Obama foreign policy legacy, peace with Iran.
And Trump said, Yeah, no, that's not a real peace.
We're going to fix this.
So their last piece, I mean, Obamacare is gone.
Tax cuts, he's out of the global warming treaty.
He's out of this Iran deal.
Like, what is left from the Obama years?
Really?
I can't even think.
Can you think of anything that's what's Obama's legacy today now that Iran is dead and Obamacare's dead?
But yeah, it would not surprise me one bit, especially given that Hillary Clinton was sort of always around and poking around and all the deals she had on the side with her Clinton Global Initiatives and the Clinton Foundation.
It would not surprise me one bit if all these folks had some investments in Iran.
I have no evidence of that whatsoever, other than evidence of the total continuous corruption in the Clinton Foundation.
On my interview with Barbara Kay, Liza writes, Barbara is spot on.
Why are they forcing a theory on our kids with this early indoctrination in our public schools?
Why does the government think it has the right to be doing this?
Well, that's the thing.
My chief objection to the sex ed curriculum in Ontario, which I have read, unlike most of its supporters, my chief objection is that it is so, so, so young.
Why are you talking to six-year-olds about that?
Even Freud talked about a latency period.
Even the most sex-crazed psychologists and theorists out there say there's a period of time where people are not sexual.
Why are you trying to sexualize them other than, Occam's razor, what's the simplest answer?
Well, who was the deputy minister in charge of education when this sex ed curriculum was drafted?
Ben Levin, who was convicted of child pornography, of trying to meet young kids to molest them.
I mean, I'm sorry, that is a factor here.
You would think that any fruit of that poisoned tree, any sex ed documents developed under his oversight would be abandoned as poisoned, but they weren't.
My first objection is that the kids are far too young.
And my second objection is there's just crazy, kooky theories and politics in there.
I say again, and I do this every time we talk about this: name the six genders.
You can't.
I bet you most liberal MPPs who supported this can't name the six genders.
It's just crazy, crazy theory stuff.
Yeah, that's my objection.
And sorry, putting that on a birth certificate, that's virtue signaling, but it's crazy.
It doesn't say gender, it says sex.
And there are only two sexes, and you can tell that because you can test if someone has X or a Y chromosome.
All right, it's so crazy, but that's the way the world is going.
And there's a lot of things where your gender, your sex actually matters.
And more than just virtue signaling, we talked with Barbara about Corrections Canada, which now must let anyone who simply identifies as this or that gender go to the prison of their choice.
What man wouldn't say, I want to go to the women's prison?
I mean, what man, not just rapists who want access to women, but what man wouldn't say, yeah, I bet it's nicer in the women's prison.
I bet it smells better.
I bet it looks better.
I bet the food's better.
I bet it's less harsh.
I bet the guards are nicer.
What man wouldn't say, oh, you know, I'm identifying as a woman today, so I want my constitutional right.
Why Any Man Would Choose Women's Prison00:02:26
You send me to the girls' prison.
I mean, I can't imagine any scenario where I would end up in prison.
But yeah, I'd want to go to the girls' prison too.
Probably better in about 10 different ways.
That's crazy, but that is the law.
That is the law.
That's our show for today.
You know what?
I'm still mad about that Dion Buse.
I wasn't at the trial.
We had some folks go to the trial.
Sheila was there.
We had supporters there, and we sent our chief editor there.
Deion Buse is still unrepentant.
Even though he was convicted in a criminal court, even though he just got smashed by this judge in Edmonton, punitive damages, how often does that happen?
He still won't admit he did anything wrong.
He's still squawking and whining.
He doesn't get it.
I wonder if he'll even pay the $3,500 he owes Sheila.
I don't know.
I wouldn't be surprised if he tried to wriggle his way out of it.
He seems like that kind of a guy.
If you think it was the right thing to do to sue him, I sure think it was.
It wasn't about the dough.
We knew, we knew from the law that you punch someone in the face.
You know, there's enough cases of a punch going to civil court.
A punch in the face is worth $1,000, maybe $1,500.
That's just what it's worth in our civil justice system.
We knew Sheila wasn't going to get a lot of dough.
Frankly, she tripled what we thought we would get.
We thought we'd get $1,000 to $1,500.
She got $3,500.
It was about a judge saying Deion Buse is reprehensible and about getting rid of the conspiracy theories on the CBC website and about bringing justice that the criminal courts did not do because Sheila did not have a chance to testify.
And that video was never seen by the judge in criminal court.
If you think it was a good idea to help, or if you just simply want to read the judgment in full, and I recommend you do, it's not very long.
It's not a very long judgment.
I think, going from memory, it's maybe 10 pages or less.
It's a quick read.
The judge is very clear.
You can go to Dionbews.com.
I encourage you to read it to get the facts from the judge who listened to a bunch of witnesses.
I think there were six witnesses altogether.
I have to add up.
And if you want to chip in to help us cover the cost, we spent more than 30 grand on this lawsuit to stand by Sheila, wouldn't you?
If you would, go to DionBuse.com if you want to chip in five bucks or $500.
We could use it because the lawyer did a good job and we got to pay him.
Anyway, that's our show for today until tomorrow on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters.