Majid Nawaz’s $3M+ legal victory against the SPLC—backed by Silicon Valley giants—exposes how its anti-Islam censorship and smear campaigns silenced UK officials for years, even amid documented abuse like Rotherham’s 84% South Asian perpetrator rate. Meanwhile, Canada’s Anti-Hate Network, funded by the SPLC, faces backlash for labeling dissent as "fake news," while taxpayer cash flowed to anti-Semitic groups like Sheikh Shafiq Huda’s despite protests. Economically, TD and Scotiabank warn Trump’s trade war could cost Canada 160,000 jobs and a 1.8% GDP drop, yet Trudeau’s elite dismiss risks, prioritizing dairy and telecom over $20T U.S. access for all Canadians. Hypocrisy peaks as Trudeau buys jets for minor fixes while fighter pilots get outdated gear, contrasting sharply with Trump’s populist authenticity—suggesting Canada’s leadership may be out of touch with both economic reality and voter sentiment. [Automatically generated summary]
An alt-left extremist group made an apology and a $3 million payout.
It's June 19th, and you're watching The Ezra LeVance Show.
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.
The mass rape by Pakistani Muslim men of Indigenous British teenage girls, in fact girls as young as 11, has been going on for more than a decade in the UK.
It was detected almost immediately, by the way, by doctors, by social workers, by policemen, by politicians.
It was detected immediately, but it was covered up for years by all of those officials for fear of being called racist.
It's not an opinion, that's a fact, as documented in the official inquiry into the rape of 1,400 young British girls in the small city of Rotherham.
How can you rape 1,400 girls in one small city again and again and not hear a peep about it in official circles?
They weren't just raped once.
It was systematic.
It was on an industrial scale dozens of times.
How did that happen?
Because according to the official inquiry, everyone was afraid of being called a racist because the girls were white and the rapists were Muslims.
That's what they all said when they were asked why they were silent, the social workers, the doctors, the police.
Here's a Muslim reformer, a friend of Rahil Raza, named Majid Nawaz, talking about this last year on a British talk radio network called LBC.
I'm going to let this run for a couple of minutes because I want you to hear him say it and get to know him a little bit.
Take a look.
Why are we still, despite the years of evidence mounting up on this issue, why are we still so uncomfortable talking about this issue and accepting the fact that there is a hugely disproportionate number of British South Asian Muslim men involved in what can only be described, described as a despicable crime.
The fact is that since 2011, these sorts of crimes have occurred in cities up and down the country.
They are spreading.
They have occurred in Rochdale, Rotherham, Oxford, Telford, Leeds, Birmingham, Norwich, Burnley, High Wycombe, Leicester, Dewsbury, Middlesbrough, Peterborough, Bristol, Halifax, and Newcastle.
And in only two of those cases I've just listed from all of those cities were there men not of British South Asian Muslim heritage.
All of the victims in all of those cities that I just listed, the list was very long.
All of the victims except three were white teenage girls.
And so the fact that this pattern, that the fact that 84% of these cases involve British South Asian Muslim men must beg the question, why?
Wow, that guy, Majid Nawaz, actually runs a Muslim organization called the Quilliam Foundation, named after the first British Muslim whose last name is Quilliam.
Nawaz says he's against all sorts of extremism, and I think I believe him.
Here he is working with Tommy Robinson for a while after Tommy left the EDL, the English Defense League.
They've had some disagreements for sure, but they both have overlapping goals and do to this day.
It's sort of powerful, right?
Because Nawaz himself is a Muslim, so he can say things that Tommy can't say, that white journalists or politicians can't say.
In fact, the prosecutor of the Rotherham rapes, 1,400 girls, the prosecutor was a Pakistani Muslim prosecutor.
He had to be.
Or he'd surely have been called a racist too.
So that was last year.
And this year, a few days after Tommy Robinson was arrested outside a court in Leeds for a rape gang trial, Nawaz went on the radio again to talk about it again.
Now listen, again, I'm going to play you a few minutes.
Well, three, four minutes here, because I want you to get to know Nawaz a little bit, okay?
Take a look.
For too long in this country, we, media, the establishment, society, the chattering classes, the liberal elite, whatever term you want to use, have ignored the issue of grooming gangs of young, vulnerable teenage girls who have been victimized, drugged and raped and abused.
Whether it's the Rotherham case or all the other cases that were replicated across the country, it is both the conclusion of the prosecutor in the Rotherham case, British Pakistani Muslim Nazir Afzal, or indeed the official inquiry into why it took so long for these young, vulnerable, underage girls to get justice.
Both of those concluded that fears of racism prevented us from coming to the defense of vulnerable underage girls.
Fears of racism meaning that the state was scared that it would be accused of being racist if it rightly arrested and prosecuted British Pakistani, largely, British Pakistani Muslim men in their abuse of underage white teenage girls.
And so from fear of appearing racist, there was a silence across the country as multiple cases of grooming gangs emerged up and down the country as evidenced now due to multiple prosecutions, successful prosecutions, but sadly and unfortunately too late.
If we hadn't all been silent, if we had all addressed this issue head-on when it needed to be addressed, when it was time to address it, then the void would not have emerged for the populist agitators to fill that gap and become popular actually as a result of addressing what is a legitimate issue.
They ended up hijacking what should have been the concern of every right-minded citizen in this country.
And unfortunately, it takes a bit of courage to address something that people will hurl abuse at you for talking about.
I know on this show, on my own show on the weekends, I've tried to book certain MPs to come on and address the issue of grooming gangs, and on multiple times they've had to back away from fear of the backlash.
We recall Sarah Champion, who in the Labour Party attempted to address this and lost her position in the front bench as a result.
There have been multiple cases now and it's beyond any level of doubt that there's a disproportionate number of British Muslims involved in grooming gangs against underage white girls.
And to say that is to report on the facts.
It's not to be racist.
And if we're backing away from this conversation, then all we're doing is leaving the ground far open in what is a legitimate issue that requires addressing.
We're leaving the ground for the populace to hijack that legitimate issue and make it their own for their own nefarious purposes.
And that's precisely what's been going on.
And it's in that regard that what I'm saying here is I just wish, I wish that those young girls had seen justice served for them as fast as the judge served Tommy Robinson justice in this case.
Because in this case, it's very easy for us to pick on the bogeyman.
But actually the truth is that our silence over decades in this country is the real bogeyman.
And that's the real thing we should despise, our own cowardice in the face of grooming of young girls up and down this country and our conspiracy of silence.
SPLC Controversy00:15:02
All right, so this guy, Majid Nawaz, he's effective, isn't he?
He looks good.
He sounds good.
He has a big platform.
I mean, LBC is a big network.
He's polite company, though.
He hangs out with Tommy.
And Tommy's a little rough around the edges, but he hangs out with more mainstream people, two fancy people, too.
The other week, when our friend Jordan Peterson was in the UK, he went on Nawaz's radio show.
He's a mainstream guy, Nawaz.
So what do you do?
I mean, if you're a leftist who loves political correctness, who doesn't want people to talk about Muslims or Pakistan or immigration or Tommy Robinson or rape gangs, but your only weapon is gone, the weapon that silenced all of Rotherham's establishment, the weapon of calling someone racist or Islamophobic, that weapon doesn't work on Majid Nawaz, does it?
So what can you do to stop him?
I mean, just look at the guy.
He's just talking as if he's a free man in a free country, and you're some leftist liberal white dude.
How do you scare him into being quiet?
Well, you just smear him anyways.
And so a mighty alt-left troll factory called the Southern Poverty Law Center issued their own liberal fatwa against Majid Nawaz and against the great Ayan Her CLE, calling them anti-Muslim extremists.
They literally equated these two with, what, neo-Nazis or something?
It's a smear.
They put it in their Southern Poverty Law Center's field guide to anti-Muslim extremists.
A field guide is in, if you see these people in the wild, don't approach them.
They're dangerous.
Seriously, Majid Nawaz, who runs a Muslim NGO named after the first Muslim in Britain.
I mean, their website's motto is literally, promoting pluralism and inspiring change.
And look at that underneath it.
The world's first counter-extremism organization.
I mean, half the people they work with are Muslim, of course.
The SPLC, I mean, look at that name, Southern Poverty Law Center.
They were set up about half a century ago to fight for the rights of poor blacks in the U.S. South, but now they're smearing a Muslim reformer in the UK.
Well, yeah, because they've been colonized, the SPLC, by the alt-left, and it pays big time.
Their financial endowment at the SPLC is now about $400 million U.S. You make a lot of money demonizing conservatives from big donors.
I mean, if you were built 50 years ago to fight the KKK and Jim Crow laws in the South, but there is no more KKK or Jim Crow laws to speak of, you might have to find a new line of work.
But that's too much work.
So now they demonize anyone concerned about Islam, including Majid Nawaz.
$400 million is a lot of smearing and suing, but it gets worse.
See, Facebook and Amazon and Google and YouTube and Twitter, they have all outsourced their censorship in part to the SPLC.
They let the SPLC decide who gets banned and who doesn't.
Who gets kicked off Twitter or Facebook and who doesn't?
How many times have they done this?
That's the thing about corporate censorship like this, you never know.
Unlike government censorship, where at least there is a notice or a warning or an explanation or a trial or an appeal, Silicon Valley censorship just happens.
Have they banned 10 people or 10,000 people or 10 million people?
And on what basis?
Well, the same basis that they slandered Majid Nawaz and Ayanhur CLE.
But Majid Nawaz did something new.
He fought back.
He crowdfunded a lawsuit against the SPLC.
He asked people on the internet to chip in to pay for his lawyers.
And he really did it.
really moved to sue them for slander, for claiming he was an anti-Muslim bigot, for smearing him everywhere and anywhere, and no doubt the countless secret actions they were taking against him that they didn't make public.
Now I saw this and I thought, well, good luck to him.
I mean the SPLC, they have close to half a billion dollars and they're run by lawyers basically.
They can fight anyone forever.
Just bury them in costs and legal appeals and they'd never blink.
I've never seen the SPLC blink.
But then they blinked.
Oh my God, did they blink?
Look at this video elocuted by the boss of the SPLC himself just yesterday.
Take a look at this.
The Southern Poverty Law Center was wrong to include Majid Nawaz and the Quilliam Foundation in our field guide to anti-Muslim extremists.
Since we published the field guide, we have taken the time to do more research and have consulted with human rights advocates we respect.
We've found that Mr. Nawaz and Quilliam have made valuable and important contributions to public discourse, including by promoting pluralism and condemning both anti-Muslim bigotry and Islamist extremism.
Although we may have our differences with some of the positions that Mr. Nawaz and Quilliam have taken, they are most certainly not anti-Muslim extremists.
We would like to extend our sincerest apologies to Mr. Nawaz, Quilliam, and our readers for the era.
And we wish Mr. Nawaz and Quilliam all the best.
Oh, yeah.
And they paid Majid Nawaz more than $3 million U.S. for his trouble.
$3 million?
That is a staggering sum to be awarded at trial.
But to pay that out as a preference to going to trial, what was the SPLC afraid of?
I mean, what did they do in secret that would come out in public?
What would be revealed by the lawsuit?
Of course, what they did in public was damaging to Nawaz, but to pay $3 million for that?
I think that the SPLC wasn't just paying to repair his reputation, but to keep their own reputation intact.
I can only imagine what they were afraid would come out in court about their malice or who's really pulling the strings in their decisions of who to hate and who not to hate.
I think they were afraid of their records being made public.
And the surrender was so fast, so fast.
It's great.
And now I see that I and her CLE is thinking of suing too.
She absolutely should, of course.
And she should either take her $3 million or press on to see what documents will be revealed, what internal communications and decisions have been made.
See the emails, the minutes of their private meetings.
The SPLC are professional serial slanderers.
Not just that, but they do it as a business.
They receive support from the organizations that ask them to censor, especially in Silicon Valley.
It's a very profitable business, isn't it?
But they're planting their slanders around the world, extremely damaging.
And so they themselves, if ever taken to task, could pay out huge damages to those they've smeared.
There must be a hundred Majid Nawazes out there.
Maybe not all of them as media friendly as him, but surely a dozen of them are.
But look, look at this.
Look at who has just set up a Canadian branch plant.
The SPLC has given a grant to a Canadian colony run by notorious hucksters, Evan Balgord and Bernie Farber, called the Canadian Anti-Hate Network.
It's funny because they sure hate a lot of people themselves, namely conservatives who disagree with them, like us here, the Rebel and our viewers.
In fact, let me quote from this story.
I went to the Rebel Media Conference.
The anti-Islamophobia M103 motion was the theme.
The crowd was over a thousand people and there were strong emotions in that crowd.
At one point, one of the speakers encouraged people in the crowd to stand up, pointed the journalists on the edge, and shout fake news at us.
That was the first time I'd seen that happen in Canada.
Yeah, Evan, that's called dissent.
It's called disagreeing.
It's legal in Canada still.
Evan Balgord has made a name for himself online, consorting with violent antifotypes.
And Bernie Farber is the chief advocate of censorship in Canada.
They're both fools.
Again, the two will make money off their scandal mongering, won't they?
But maybe the answer up here is the answer that Majid Nawaz found out over there.
Sue the bastards, make them back up every allegation, make them justify every slander, especially in light of their notorious malice.
I noticed just this weekend that Evan Balgord signed up as a premium member of the rebel.
Hello, Evan, you foreign-funded censor.
The world now knows that you work for a corrupt organization that calls anyone they disagree with racists, just for fun and profit.
We know you're liars.
Your U.S. master just admitted to being liars, and they just paid $3 million in the process.
We won't be reluctant to sue you for your smears either.
And we'll do our best to encourage other conservatives to stand up to the slanders of the alt-left, especially those who would bring disreputable foreign tactics to Canada.
Stay with us for more.
Welcome back.
Well, every year, the government of Iran, which is persona non-grata in Canada, by the way, their extremely bad behavior, their pro-terrorist behavior, their domestic abuses against their own citizens and our citizens, has really cut ties between our two countries.
That hasn't stopped Iran from messing around in Canada's political landscape.
And one of their flagship provocations every year, they call it Al-Quds Day.
It's conceived by Iran, it's financed and organized by Iranian agents, and it's basically an anti-Israel, anti-Semitic festival in Toronto and in cities around the world.
London, in England, they have a very big one.
What's so gross about the one in Toronto is not just their bald-faced anti-Semitism, but the fact that they like to have it on the grounds of the government legislature.
Of course, they don't even have a permit, but the fact that it would be like an alt-right KKK rally calling for death to the Jews, but because they're Iranian, no one really much seems to care.
No one other than our friend Candice Malcolm, who has written an outstanding article on the subject and brings with her some shocking news that one of the keynote speakers at this year's Al-Quds rally, who called for the eradication of his Jewish enemies in Israel, he actually got a summer jobs grant from Justin Trudeau and Jonias Navaya Skype is the woman who broke this exclusive scoop, our friend Candice Malcolm.
Candice, again, another great scoop by you.
I'm so proud of your work in the Toronto Sun, and I'm so glad you have that forum.
Tell us a little bit about Sheikh Shafiq Huda and who's financing him.
Well, you know, this is just, you almost can't make this stuff up, Ezra.
All the controversy that surrounded this Canada summer jobs grant, 1,600 Christian-based organizations have been denied funding by the Trudeau government, even organizations that aren't political or don't do advocacy, but because of their beliefs, their personal fundamental moral beliefs, the Trudeau government has denied them from this grant.
It's become a huge controversy.
And yet, this organization, this Islamic organization based out of Kitchener, Ontario, whose sheik gave a despicable speech at Al-Quds Day, the rally that you were talking about, calling for the eradication of Israel and Jews.
His organization qualified and received federal funding from the Trudeau government under this Canada jobs grant in 2018.
This organization, this Sheikh, is now, there's been complaints filed about him by both B'nai Berth, a human rights organization, and an accusation made by a Quebec MP that he has broken the criminal code.
So, you know, such a controversial group, such a hateful individual.
And yet, this is where our Canadian taxpayer dollars are going.
Yeah.
If people think you're exaggerating, we have a 50-second clip of Sheikh Shafiq Huda.
And he's not just, he's not a foreigner.
Like, I mean, I think he was born in a foreign country, but he's in Canada.
He runs this organization in the Islamic Humanitarian Service of Kitchener.
So he's not some nobody off the street.
And he has a bit of a profile enough to get a government grant from the Liberals.
Let's play 50 seconds.
And he uses code words.
He says, eradicate the Zionists, eradicate Israel.
I don't think he ever comes right out and says, kill the Jews.
I think he's savvier than that.
Let's let him speak for himself.
Here's 50 seconds from a larger speech.
I am praying for a day to come in our lifetime where we won't need the Al-Qud rally because Palestine will be free.
Oppression will be eradicated.
And justice will end.
That's the day we pray for.
So we don't have to be every Saturday in the Holy Month of Ramadan.
This is our prayer to the Almighty Creator.
Whether you call him God or Allah, you call him Jehovah, whatever name you want to call him.
We pray to the Creator and to the Almighty.
A day will come when we will see justice throughout the world.
The eradication of the unjust powers, such as the American Empire, such as the Israelis and Zionists.
And self-same way that we saw the British Empire wither away, the sun never set on it, the sun sets on it.
We will see a day coming, inshallah, God willing, in our lifetime, where this empire, the Zionist empire, the American Empire, will be down in the dustbins of history, inshallah, God willing.
I watched the whole clip.
I think he also talks about body bags of Israelis soldiers getting sent back of Gaza and body bags.
I have to tell you, Candace, I find him hateful, obviously, but I don't support the Many British call for a hate crimes prosecution against them.
I don't really believe in word policing, even for bigots like this.
I think we should screen people when they come to Canada to make sure we're not importing hatred from Iranian agents.
I think we have to denounce people like this, but I'm always nervous about hate crime prosecution.
I don't think I support this guy.
You heard him.
He's for eradication.
But I think your report gives us a bit of an opportunity to do something that we can all agree on, even free speech purists.
And that's this.
And what do you think of this?
He took the money from the Liberal government.
He took the summer jobs grant that was denied to 1,600 Christian groups.
I think we can demand that he pay that summer jobs grant money back to Trudeau.
And I think we should have a big to-do about it.
I think we should set up a petition, show people what he says.
And I'm not saying throw that man in prison.
Demand Refund: Payitback.ca00:05:42
I'm saying get our bloody taxpayers' dollars back.
What do you think about that?
Yeah, I think absolutely it's an excellent idea.
Canadians should put pressure on this kind of individual.
You know, I think that there's a difference between hate speech and incitement of violence, which, you know, this kind of seems borderline in my own view.
But I do tend to agree that the worst thing you can do with these kind of individuals is expose their hateful ideology for everyone to see.
So, you know, you watch that video, you see an individual is so hateful, as there's someone who's so ungrateful.
You know, he's talking about how he loathes and hates the American Empire and the British Empire.
Well, Canada is part of that historic framework.
And so here he is standing in a free country in Canada, taking advantage of our freedom, of our opportunity, of our liberty, and even of our taxpayer grants.
And at the same time, calling for and praying for the end of basically Western civilization as we know it.
What a hypocrite.
And I think that if enough Canadians raise this as a concern, point out to the Trudeau government that this is totally unacceptable, yeah, we could probably pressure this individual, this group, you know, return the money, or hopefully maybe next year Trudeau will get rid of this attestation or change it to limit these kind of groups from being able to receive funding in the first place.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, that's the thing.
It's bad enough what he's saying.
But the fact that you and I pay taxes and this money, it doesn't go to your Christian church or your Salvation Army or anything like that.
But our tax dollars through Justin Trudeau goes to this guy's organization.
Well, Candice, we've set up a petition at payitback.ca.
Pay itback.ca.
And I propose that anyone who disagrees with the bigotry of this Iranian agent, and I'm calling him that, because this whole al-Qudsteh is an Iranian government propaganda exercise around the world.
And I tell you, if he dared criticize the Iranian government in the same way, he'd be thrown in prison, by the way.
If people sign payitback.ca, I propose that we give that petition to this sheik demanding he pay the money back, but we should also give it to the labor minister, Patty Hajdu, the one who said no to all these Christian churches, Christian summer camps, Christian food banks, but paid this guy.
I think she has to show some self-respect and respect for taxpayers and ask for the summer jobs grant back.
And we have to show her that thousands of Canadians demand that.
So what do you think of a petition at payitback.ca calling for the money to be paid back?
That's the least we can do, I think.
Yeah, I agree.
And I think pressuring these kind of organizations, pressuring, you know, Justin Trudeau was asked about this in the House of Commons yesterday.
And, you know, he kind of doubled down on the whole concept that there should be some kind of a liberal values test or attestation in order to receive these kind of fundings.
You know, I don't think that these kind of funds should really exist at all.
And if they are going to exist, first of all, they should be available to everyone.
And if they're not going to be available to someone, it should be organizations like this that promote hate, that promote division, that skew and warp history and promote myths and lies.
I think it's shameful that our money is going to a group that's so hateful, so anti-Canadian.
I would definitely support that petition and I'll share it through True North Initiative.
We'll get that out.
I want as many Canadians as possible to sign that petition to show the Trudeau Liberal government and this Islamic organization that this kind of activity, this kind of speech is not welcome in Canada and really should not be receiving support from taxpayers.
Yeah, I think that's the least to me.
I won't go as far as B'nai Brith and call for a criminal prosecution of this guy.
I'm more of a free speech nick.
But I think every one of us can agree this guy should not be getting our tax dollars.
Well, Candace, thank you.
Again, you break the news nationally and it's such a pleasure to see and all the media party chases to catch up with you or sometimes they even denounce you for even breaking the news because they don't want to see the truth.
But you've done it again.
So congrats to you on a scoop.
And I think our viewers would love to join in and go to payitback.ca.
Let's see if we can get 10,000 names.
I think we can get 10,000 names pretty easy.
Maybe more when people learn the facts about this.
I agree.
And again, I encourage Canadians to share this video and to share the petition, get people on board.
Let's show this government, this organization, that this kind of stuff is just not welcome in our country.
All right.
Well, congratulations to you.
And now it's up to us, folks.
Let's sign this petition.
It's not even about the amount of money.
I bet they only got a few thousand bucks.
It's the symbol that Canadian taxpayers are paying for that bigotry.
I'm sure there's no other word for it.
Go to payitback.ca, and we'll give you an update on this in maybe a week or so.
All right, stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
Well, for weeks, there's been a staring contest between Justin Trudeau and Donald Trump on the issue of tariffs in trade, whether it's steel, the auto sector, or dairy.
Things seem to be in hand until the G7 meeting in Quebec, where they went off the rails through an misunderstanding or a few careless comments and tweets.
Oh my God, it looks terrifying.
Don't take it from me from a political point of view.
Take it from two different Canadian banks that have run the numbers.
I have in front of me a report from TD Bank that says if this trade war actually comes to pass, 160,000 Canadian jobs would be in jeopardy.
Trade War's Economic Devastation00:03:24
The Scotiabank says that such a trade war would shrink Canada's GDP by 1.8%.
We're talking about a recession.
Is this going to happen and can we survive?
These aren't just hyperbole, hyperbolic questions.
They're real life now, I think.
Joining us now via Skype to talk about this is our friend Professor Ian Lee.
He's with the Sprat School of Business, an associate professor at Carleton University.
Professor Lee, I'm sounding dramatic.
It's not me that's dramatic.
These numbers are terrifying.
There's also predictions that our dollar will fall into the 60-something cent range.
Tell me how bad it would be if this Trump-uh-Trudeau trade war actually happened.
Excellent question.
Good to speak with you, Ezra.
There's two separate issues.
The issue is how likely is it going to happen?
And if it did happen, how bad will it be?
I'm actually of the view that the consequences are so bad that it won't happen.
You know, this is almost like the logic of mutual assured destruction back in the old days between the United States and the Soviet Union.
The consequences of nuclear war were so awful to both sides.
The devastation of life was so awful, it ensured it didn't happen.
But in that instance, there was a rough equivalence.
Both sides had enormous numbers of nuclear warheads.
In this instance, my analogy falls down.
And that falls down because we don't have lots and lots of nuclear warheads, to continue my metaphor.
What I'm trying to say is the United States is 10 times bigger.
And people say, well, 10 times, you know, it's that big.
Well, it's sort of like a person who plays peewee hockey, you know, at the age of five or six, saying, I'm going to get into a fight with an NHL professional hockey player.
That's not a contest.
I mean, it shouldn't even be allowed.
It would be child abuse because the small child would just be, you know, it would be horrible what would happen to them if you got a fight with a huge hockey player.
The numbers in these two studies are showing, A, that we're one-tenth the size of the United States.
They also show the incredible dependence of our economy on the United States.
To put this as bluntly as I can, and I know it's very politically incorrect right now, but we need the United States far, far more than the United States needs Canada.
And I know it's, you know, where there's a lot of people, you know, pounding their chest and saying, you know, let's stand up to that bully, Donald Trump, you know, and poke him in the eye because he's rude and all those, you know, things.
My late mother, who was a very, very practical person, never went to university, grew up in Depression, Saskatchewan, actually.
And she used to tell me over and over and over when I was a kid, you know, you don't cut off your nose despite your face.
And if we get into a trade war with the United States, we are truly cutting off our nose despite our face, and we are going to hurt ourselves.
We're not going to hurt the United States.
Yeah.
Well, and those are the two opposing forces politically.
It's like catnip to politicians, especially those on the left, to demonize Trump.
It's the easy thing.
Hollywood's behind it.
The media generally behind it.
Yes.
So you get applause from certain quarters.
Cool Heads in Ottawa00:03:44
So that's tempting to a politician, applause and moral support, and maybe Saturday Night Live will cheer for you.
But on the other hand, that economic devastation, here's what I think is different about Trump.
And you can love him or hate him.
But I think, Professor, when he talks about trade wars, this is not something he's just discovered in the last year.
I've seen interviews of Trump in the 80s on the Oprah Winfrey show talking about trade barriers.
So this isn't some casual thing he's trying out.
He's been thinking about it for decades.
And I see he just got tough with Chinese tariffs of an enormous scale.
Here's my question.
People who think Trump is bluffing in a poker game, that he would never do it because of, you know, like you say, the mutually assured destruction.
Trump, not only do I not think he's bluffing on Canada, we see he's not bluffing with mighty China.
And so here's my question.
I'm sorry, I'm just giving you some of my thoughts, but my question is: do you think there are cooler heads in Ottawa who would say, whatever you think of Trump, this man has ice in his veins on tariffs, and if he's willing to fight China, he'll fight us too.
Ezra, I completely agree.
I've been saying this for two years.
Just let me deal quickly with your first point.
Trump did not just suddenly wake up one morning, you know, and say, chee whiz, I think I'm going to start, you know, yelling and bluffing, blustering the neighbors over trade.
I went back and read just after he became the candidate for the Republican Party, I read every economic speech that he had given to that point.
And I've read every economic speech he's given since that it could be classified as a speech on trade and investment.
This is his issue.
This, I believe it's not so much immigration.
I'm not suggesting immigration is not important.
What I'm saying is the trade file, this sense that America has been taken advantage of by its allies and its enemies over the last 30, 40, 50 years is deep in Donald Trump's psyche.
Point one.
Point two, this is not all by itself in Donald Trump's head.
There are large numbers of Americans.
I have traveled on road trips across many states as recently as last summer to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, went to Canton, Ohio, and went to Cleveland, Ohio, went across upstate New York and upstate Pennsylvania.
And we drive down every year to Hilton Head and we've spoken to people in rural South Carolina, rural North Carolina.
If you get outside the big cities, the San Francisco's, the Chicago's, the New Yorks, where the very well-educated and high-income, wealthy, and upper-middle-class and elites live, they're doing fine.
But you get out to the small towns, the rural, the semi-rural, the burbs, the exurbs, and there's it's a completely different America.
And he resonates because they feel that they have been exploited, that they have been taken advantage of.
And so Trump is absolutely sincere and real on this, whether we hate him or not, whether we like him or not.
He is absolutely authentic.
He is going to deliver on this because he is convinced this is going to get, yeah, he's going to retain control of the Congress, of the U.S. House this fall, and ensure his reelection in 2020.
So yes, he has ice in his veins.
The second part of your question very quickly, Ezra, are there people in the Ottawa bubble, and I'm obviously being a bit sarcastic when I say that.
Are there people in the Ottawa bubble who understand that?
Elder Statesman Needed00:08:46
I'm not sure.
And I've lived here all my life.
But there's such a contempt towards and dislike towards Trump that I think it has clouded the thinking of people, many people in Ottawa.
Some say, oh, we'll stand up to the bully, not having any sense that we don't have the capacity to stand up to an economy that's 10 times larger.
Then there's others who don't think that Trump is going to do it, that he's just bluffing.
And so we've backed ourselves into a corner.
I believe that Mr. Trudeau went into the NAFTA negotiations and Ms. Freeland making a huge strategic mistake.
They went in saying, we're going to protect those six or seven or eight protected industries.
We're going to defend them to the death.
Instead of going in and saying we must have access for all 36 million Canadians to the totality of the American economy without tariffs and with the dispute mechanism.
And to achieve that end, everything is on the table.
Telecom, Canadian telecom, dairy supply management, banking, airlines, et cetera.
Instead, they didn't.
They went in and said, we're going to stand up to the bully and we're going to keep protecting our protected industries.
I think that this was an enormous strategic mistake.
And there are all those strange obsessions with gender analysis and global warming, things that, you know, I'm against them substantively, but even from a prosperous point of view, put them in another treaty, not a trade treaty.
You want to talk about gender?
What's that doing in a NAFTA?
Let me ask you what scares me.
Detroit, Michigan, Ohio, these places you mentioned, they're hurting.
They were called the Rush Belt for so long, as in it used to be the steel belt, but it got worn out and obsolete.
Trump has said, I'm bringing the factories back.
He was focused with Mexico, but now we're on his radar screen, and that's bad, I think.
I understand that Canada exports many more cars to the states than we import.
If Ontario hates Trump, and I don't think all Ontarians do, but the leadership does, what does Trump care?
He doesn't have any votes in Ontario.
If he moves some of those big three factories from Windsor, from Oakville, back into Detroit and Ohio, he'll have a lock on those states forever.
And yeah, people in Ontario and Quebec will be very upset with that, but they don't vote in the Electoral College.
I am truly worried.
I don't think we were on his radar.
I think he was focused on China and Mexico, and we just sort of flicked his nose once too many times.
What do you think the likelihood is that Trump is saying to heck with it?
If I bring a million or even a half a million more car production a year to Ohio, Michigan, people will say he did it.
Trump did it.
He brought industry back and he'll be assured of a re-election.
I think that's so tempting.
Trudeau doesn't have anything to offer that's more tempting.
I agree.
And that's my real fear.
I have said over and over, Trump doesn't care what the voters of Mexico or Canada or Germany or France or UK or anywhere else say or think.
They're not going to vote for him.
He knows that.
He knows that he was elected by the thinnest of margins in three states that put him there.
I'm referring to Michigan.
I'm referring to Ohio.
I'm referring to Pennsylvania.
And in, and I have driven through those states, I mean, as recently as only two months ago.
And there is, again, it's not, I don't think Canadians really have this full accurate sense of what's going on.
He is popular in these blue-collar neighborhoods and communities, Scranton, Pennsylvania, for example, where, you know, they are not as prosperous.
I mean, it's obvious with the eye.
You don't have to look at statistics.
You can see it, you know, just in the housing and the cars and so forth.
And they like him.
They respect him because they think he is standing up for them.
And this is what people in Canada don't realize.
And that's why, again, I said I think that Mr. Trudeau has made a serious mistake with Ms. Freeland in negotiating.
Instead of saying, what can we offer up in order to assure as much as possible guaranteed access to the entire U.S. market of $20 trillion?
Instead, we got so focused on defending 9,000 dairy farmers and several thousand workers in the telecom industry that he's lost sight of the grand prize, which is that our economy is completely dependent on the U.S. and we must have access to the entire U.S. economy.
And we risk losing that because of our, I think, intransigence in negotiating at NAFTA.
Yeah.
I tell you, I wish there were some elder statesman, even if it was from a different party.
I know, I just sense in my bones that Brian Mulroney would help if asked.
I think that he's, even Jean-Cretchen, I mean, he's a proud Canadian and he's poked the U.S. in his day.
I think Cretchen's a deal maker by nature.
I actually think he could even help.
And I'm not a super fan of his.
I think even Stephen Harper, in his own way, is trying to smooth things over.
I put this out on Twitter the other day.
Conrad Black, a former personal friend of Trump who did business with him in Chicago, there are elder statesman-type characters who don't have the Trump derangement syndrome in them and who understand what's at stake.
I just don't know if there's anyone in Trudeau's circle that could let go of the steering wheel and let a grown-up take over.
Last word to you, Professor.
Listen, I'm a critic of Trudeau's for partisan reasons, but God forbid we lose Canada's auto industry.
It ain't never coming back.
And we've already lost so much of our oil and gas industry.
Is there a way that some elder statesman, even if he's from another party, even if it's Frank McKenna, who I think did a good job as an ambassador down there, is there someone that can maybe help straighten things out?
I do believe there is.
And again, it goes back to a mistake.
I'm not a partisan.
I don't belong to any political party.
I do not donate money to any political party.
But I think that Mr. Trudeau, when he did after he became the leader, as we all know, he famously threw up the elders in the Liberal Party.
Many of them were blue liberals, which is the word we give for business liberals, whom I do respect.
I include Frank McKenna in that.
I include Jean Charé, who I have enormous respect for.
Robert Bourasa, the late Robert Bourasa, John Manley, maybe.
John Manley.
There are, I'm hoping that a group of senior elder liberal, Jean Cretan, approach Mr. Trudeau very privately, quietly, and say, look, Mr. Trudeau, you've had 24 months to try out that progressive agenda of yours, and it has failed miserably.
And we're at risk, we're risking the entire economy of Canada.
And they could provide, call it a backroom kitchen cabinet to him for this crisis and then give him the advice that he's clearly not receiving from his aides at the PMO or his cabinet ministers.
Well, I tell you, for the sake of so much of our industrial economy, I hope we get it back on track.
Professor, you've been very generous with your time.
Thanks so much for your point of view.
And God willing, one of those elder spatesmen in the Liberal Party, at least, will be able to get through to Trudeau and pull him off his collision course.
Thanks for your time today, Professor.
My pleasure, Azure.
Thanks very much.
All right, there you have it.
Professor Ian Lee, he's with the Sprat School of Business at Carleton University.
Stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
Hey, welcome back.
On my monologue yesterday about Justin Trudeau wanting a new government jet because of a loose wire in a gauge.
Harry writes, As a former RCAF soldier, I was communication system tech air and repaired many, many loose wires.
They were very simple repairs with minimal cost.
Could you imagine what a luxury of an Air Force we would have had if we follow the same procedure that our prime minister follows?
Talk about entitlement.
Exactly.
A loose wire.
So you want to spend tens of millions of dollars on a luxury jet.
But our fighter pilots, they have to get hand-me-downs from Australia.
James writes, I think Australia has a used Airbus they will sell us along with the used F-18s.
Yeah, but only the best for Justin Trudeau.
Luxury Jets and Hand-me-downs00:01:00
I mean, seriously, he's letting his chef live at 24 Sussex Drive.
He's living at Rideau Hall, and he just spent $7,500 on a child's play structure at Harrington Lake.
He's going for like, he wants to outshine Donald Trump and Prince Al-Walid, I think.
Wayne writes, another liberal politician who feels he's entitled to his entitlements.
Nothing to see or here, folks, move along.
Yeah, it's hard to imagine the media culture that got Bev Oda drummed out of cabinet over a $16 orange juice or had a year and a half scandal over Mike Duffy having $90,000 of his expenses paid to the government by Nigel Wright, the chief of staff.
So the scandal there that led to this enormous criminal trial, which failed, of course, was that conservatives paid money to the government.