Canadian media fact-checks Trump’s border claims as "misrepresentations" or "lies" but ignores Justin Trudeau’s own—like detaining migrant children under five for up to 180 days or his alleged 2000 groping incident, which went unexamined domestically. Tech giants like Twitter face lawsuits from banned figures (e.g., Jared Taylor) while selectively enforcing free speech rules, pressured by governments and advertisers. Quebec’s Conservatives surge, winning ridings like Sheikudimi-LeFroid (52.8% vs. Liberals’ 29.5%) over constitutional grievances, not ideology, as voters reject Trudeau’s centralism and Roxham Road border policies. His $1.5M India trip—including $20K flights for staff and a $17K special meal—underscores media double standards, where Trudeau’s controversies draw far less scrutiny than conservative leaders’ would. [Automatically generated summary]
Why Don't Canadian Journalists Fact-Check Trudeau?00:10:53
Tonight, Canadian media now have regular fact checks about Donald Trump.
Why don't they do fact checks about Justin Trudeau?
It's June 21st, 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.
I saw this story on Global News yesterday.
Fact check.
Donald Trump overstates scope of order on border policy that keeps families together.
Can I read just a few sentences, the first few sentences from that article?
U.S. President Donald Trump is misrepresenting the scope of his executive order that would halt his administration's policy of separating children from their parents when they are detained illegally crossing the U.S. border.
That's what Global News calls news.
They're not calling it an editorial.
Donald Trump is lying.
That's what misrepresenting means.
Now, that might be your opinion, and it might be a reasonable opinion, but that's being reported as a fact in a news story.
Can you recall a single instance over the past two years where a report about Justin Trudeau starts off, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is misrepresenting, I don't know, his budget, which claims it'll be balanced, but it's not.
I mean, even once a story like that.
Let me read one more sentence from this global news story.
He suggests the order is a permanent solution, but the president is contradicted by his own Justice Department, which describes the effort as stopgap and limited by a 21-year-old court settlement under which the federal government essentially agreed not to detain immigrant minors longer than 20 days.
Again, the analogy there would be, Trudeau says he's balancing the budget, but the Parliamentary Budget Office contradicts him, saying he's actually never balanced the budget and his deficit is skyrocketing, blah, blah, blah.
I mean, again, it's a reasonable point of view, but it's a point of view.
It's not straight news.
This was published as straight news on global.
And my bigger point is when I saw this, I wasn't thinking, well, are they right or wrong?
But what would it take to get even 10% of that skepticism and criticism that Canadian journalists have for a foreign president to point even 10% of that skepticism and criticism and accountability at our own government leaders?
Here's the tweet that pointed me to this story.
Donald Trump says the executive order he signed is a permanent solution to keep migrant children with their families.
Not so, though.
Oh.
Now good stuff.
You guys are doing great holding a foreign leader to account for his foreign voters.
But can we please get the odd fact check about Justin Trudeau or Rachel Notley or formerly Kathleen Week?
Can we get any of that?
I mean whether it's about pipelines for Trudeau or Trudeau and NAFTA or global warming or carbon taxes or the dairy cartel or terrorism or whatever.
I mean have you ever ever even seen just once such a thing?
Global news is awful.
CTV is awful, but nothing matches the Toronto Star.
They truly have Trump derangement syndrome.
Check this article out just today.
Donald Trump said 71 false things in 17 days.
His dishonesty is increasing.
Wow, 71 false things in 14 days?
That's like five a day.
That's a lot.
Okay, let's go through the list.
Let's just start from the top.
Let's scroll down a bit.
You see they list them here.
Okay, the first one, very first one.
Washington Post employees want to go on strike because Bezos isn't paying them enough.
I think a really long strike would be a great idea.
So that's the quote.
And the star says that's false.
Okay, well, what's false about that?
That Trump thinks a strike would be a good idea, that Bezos is not paying them enough, that some employees want to strike.
This is literally the first item in the list of lies, lies, lies.
And I'm sorry, I just see an opinion.
I mean, you could disagree with Trump.
Now, here's a page from the Washington Post's own union website showing they're angry and there's a picket and they're in contract talks and it doesn't seem to be going well.
Here's a story about it in a major newspaper.
How is this even a thing?
I thought you had some scandal here.
Okay, let's just look at the next one.
Maybe that one's just a weird one.
Let's look at the next one here.
Democrats can fix, this is again, this is a Trump statement that they're calling a lie.
Democrats can fix their forced family breakup at the border by working with Republicans on new legislation for a change.
So this is a Trump statement they're saying is a lie.
How on earth is that even true or false?
I mean, it's an opinion.
Democrats can work with Republicans.
It's not even a dare or a challenge.
It's not even a thing.
I mean, it happens to be a fact that families are separated, adults from kids.
If someone's detained for a crime, it happens not just to migrants, but to Canadians too.
If you go to jail, your kids don't go to jail with you.
I mean, here's Hillary Clinton making the case for this long-standing law four years ago.
We have to send a clear message.
Just because your child gets across the border, that doesn't mean the child gets to stay.
Should they be sent back?
Well, first of all, we have to provide the best emergency care we can provide.
We have children five and six years old who have come up from Central America.
We need to do more to provide border security in southern Mexico.
They should be sent back now.
Well, they should be sent back as soon as it can be determined who responsible adults and their families are because there are concerns about whether all of them can be sent back, but I think all of them who can be should be reunited with their families.
I'm just showing you this is an issue that administrations of both political stripes have grappled with.
So how is Trump's comment about Democrats and Republicans should work together?
How is that a falsehood?
How is it a lie?
Democrats should work with Republicans.
That's an opinion.
You could agree or not.
The Star puts that in their fact check as false.
I think they're crazy.
Let's go to the next one.
Again, they're quoting Trump.
They're saying this is a lie.
We've done more.
I don't say this in a bragging way.
Actually, some of the haters actually say this.
We've done more in 500 days, so now it's 510 days than any 500-day president first term by far.
Okay, so he's bragging.
Trump has done a lot, by the way.
Maybe you don't like it.
But how can he not?
He's done a lot.
Huge tax cuts.
Tons of judges' appointment, if you care about that.
That whole North Korea meeting.
Getting America out of the Iran deal, moving the Israeli, the embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
Renegoting NAFTA, getting tough with China, pulling out of the global warming thing.
And now, unfortunately, fighting with Canada over tariffs, changing immigration laws.
I'm not saying you have to like any of this.
But how can you deny he's doing a lot of things?
But look at the lame explanation the star gives for calling this a lie.
So underneath his statement there, this is a proof it's a lie.
Trump's critics are not saying this.
What?
So Trump said, some of the haters say this.
And the star says, no, they're not.
Okay, both Trump and the Star aren't even talking about actual people.
Who are they talking about?
It's just a figure of speech.
I'm sure there is a critic of Trump somewhere who has said Trump's done a lot of things.
Why would the star be so weirdly nitpicky?
It's not even a factual statement.
Trump said his critics said he's busy.
Busted!
You're a liar!
They're not saying that, man.
Is that all you've got?
Is that all you got?
And you got 71 of these?
And you're really proud of this investigative journalism.
Trump made a tweet and it's not true, man.
Okay, here's another one.
Look at this.
This is Trump's statement.
So you get what we're doing here.
It's a Trump statement, and the star says it's a lie.
Here's Trump.
When I was talking to President Obama, He essentially was ready to go to war with North Korea.
He felt you had to almost go to war.
Okay.
Now, he said that's what he was talking to Obama about.
I don't think anyone else would know if that's true or false other than the two people in that conversation.
But we actually know that's not false because Obama would say those things publicly too.
Look at this story.
I just pulled this out of random.
This is from the Daily Telegraph, very prestigious newspaper.
We could destroy you, Obama warns erratic North Korean leader.
This is from 2016.
Let me read a little bit more.
President Barack Obama delivered a stern warning to North Korea on Tuesday, reminding its erratic and irresponsible leader that America's nuclear arsenal could destroy his country.
Yeah, so Obama said destroy, and Trump used the word go to war.
And so you're saying he's lying?
Is that the best you got?
Again, you can dislike Trump.
You can disagree with him.
You can have a different opinion.
You can fact-check him.
He's not always right.
No human's always right.
But seriously, this is what you call a slam door in your face, Donald Trump.
Did you hear Donald Trump just said goodnight, but it was actually still twilight or dusk.
Technically not night.
And he said goodnight.
We nailed that liar.
But this is crazy.
This is one of the reasons why no one trusts the media anymore.
I mean, we need a good, strong, oppositional media, but this is kooky.
I'm not saying Trump always gets it right.
I'm just saying that being so breathless about such trivia.
Obama said destroy.
Trump said war.
There's no difference there.
And you're pretending this is so momentous.
It's like the boy who cried wolf in Aesop's fable.
The mainstream media has been crying wolf about Trump every day for two years, even before he was president.
Okay, we get the message.
The media hates Trump and will say anything hostile about him.
And this craziness, it tickles the Democrats.
They love it.
It turns off Republicans.
But independents, people who aren't with one party, I think they just tuned out the media and they discount it all now.
I mean, this whole Russia collusion narrative, the inquiry has spent tens of millions of dollars.
It's been going on for a year and a half and they still have no evidence of collusion.
Enduring Media Silence00:05:30
They've got a few minor players on tax evasion and whatnot.
But where's the Russia part?
Oh, and then this porn star, Stormy Daniels, that's going to take Trump down any minute now, or whatever it is this week.
I tell you, it's not news.
And maybe it's a reason why CNN's ratings have plummeted.
And the CBC's ratings are so low they won't even release them publicly.
I'm guessing less than 400,000 people watch the CBC's flagship show, The National, at night.
So about the same as us on our rebel YouTube page, really.
But it's not just the lameness of these critiques, how they're either nitpicking or just challenging matters of opinion.
Trump said he's awesome, but no, he's not, man.
Look, it's this.
This is the real deal.
What would it take for our Canadian media to have a similar fact check of our own leaders?
I mean, I get it.
We're all interested in Donald Trump.
I sure am.
He's the most important politician in the world and the most powerful and the most entertaining.
And he has a big impact on Canada.
I get it.
I'm the same way.
You know, shouldn't Canadian media also, you know, occasionally, once in a while, fact check our own guy?
I mean, just for example, yesterday, Trudeau said this.
What's going on in the United States is Rome.
I can't imagine what the families living through this are enduring.
Obviously, this is not the way we do things in Canada.
He's talking about that detention of kids thing.
Okay.
But what about the fact check of what he said there, that that's not the Canadian way, that the fact is actually, you know, in Canada, we detain children.
Did you know that?
I'm not going to even source a journalist here.
Do you see this?
This is the website of the Canada Border Services Agency.
This is the official government of Canada report.
Scroll down to where it says minors.
Do you see that?
We detain kids.
We detain them by the dozen, by the hundred, over the course of the year.
We detain them with their parents.
We detain them on their own without their parents.
We detain kids, as you can see, highlighted for a second there.
Zero to five years old.
Can we show that?
There we go.
Age.
Do you see it says age there?
We are detaining children of tender years.
For the first quarter of last year, 34.
In the second quarter of last year, so January, February, March, 34.
April, May, June, another 34.
July, August, September, 19.
I'm just going with the children of tender years, zero to five years old, the toddlers.
Scroll down a bit more.
This is from the official government website, the Liberal Party website, not the Liberal government website.
Look how long we detain some of these kids.
180 days.
That's six months.
That's half a year for kids.
This is for kids.
Do you see that?
It's for kids.
That's longer than some convicted rapists spend in actual custody in Canada.
I've seen rapists get out of jail in three months.
Now, maybe there's a good reason for keeping these kids in jail for six months.
I'm not saying don't do it.
Maybe there's a reason.
Maybe there's not a reason.
Probably is worth some journalism.
But don't you think our preening, self-righteous prime minister could use a little fact check?
Here he is again.
What's going on in the United States is Rome.
I can't imagine what the families living through this are enduring.
Obviously, this is not the way we do things in Canada.
Well, tough guy, it actually is the way we do things in Canada, and I just proved it to you.
Can we get a little fact-check on that?
Not 71 lies that are about trivia, but how about just one fact check about the five-year-old who spent six months in a Canadian prison for whatever reason?
Maybe it's a good reason.
I don't know.
But no one thinks Trudeau needs a fact check.
You know, the other week an old news story came to light about Justin Trudeau.
This is an editorial from the Creston Valley Advance.
Trudeau groped a young female journalist in Creston, B.C. in 2000.
He wasn't an MP yet, but he was a grown man.
And he later told her he wouldn't have groped her had he known she was a national journalist.
He apologized to her after the fact, but really, it was more, oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know you were important and could embarrass me later.
Not a peep about this story on the CBC or CTV or any major Canadian media.
It was everywhere in foreign countries, by the way, even BuzzFeed, The Sun in London, England, The Hill, major paper in Washington, D.C., Daily Telegraph.
It was such big news because, you know, Trudeau is such a preening male feminist.
He claims he's part of the Me Too movement.
Not a word in Canada.
Look, let's keep talking about Trump Me Too.
Let's just not be insane like the Toronto Star is.
Let's criticize him.
Let's debate him.
Let's follow him.
I support him.
You know that.
You can disagree with me.
But do you think it might be nice if, you know, maybe once a year, like on a special holiday like Halloween or Valentine's Day or something, just one magical day a year, we could have the odd fact check of Trudeau by CBC or Global or even the Toronto Star.
Not 71 fact checks.
Can we at least get one a year?
Yeah, no.
Bizarre Twitter Claims00:08:17
Look, it hasn't happened yet.
I don't think it's going to happen.
Oh, well, I guess you'll just have to keep watching us here at the Rebel.
We'll keep doing it with the few resources we have.
It's more fact-checking you'll get elsewhere.
Stay with us for more.
Well, longtime viewers of The Rebel will know that we are constantly under attack for censorship, not just by private plaintiffs suing us for, I don't know, a human rights commission or defamation, but by the tech companies themselves.
And what I mean by that is Facebook banning us from posting Tommy Robinson, for example, or YouTube restricting access to our videos.
Well, sometimes conservatives try to fight back.
For example, Prager U, which has a very popular YouTube channel, has sued YouTube Google.
But it's hard to be successful when the terms of service or contract with a tech company basically say, take it or leave it.
If you don't want to be censored by us, start your own service.
Trouble with that, of course, is the whole attraction of a Facebook or YouTube is that everyone else is already on there.
You could have the freest platform in the world if you like, but if you're there alone, what's the point?
Which brings us to a very interesting lawsuit brought against Twitter.
In this case, it's by a white supremacist who claims he was banned because of his political views, and he surely was.
But he's suing, saying Twitter claims they're a free speech platform, and he wants to hold them to it.
And he's won his first round in that battle.
Joining us now to talk about the case and its ramifications is our friend Alan Bukhari.
He's the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News.
Alan, it's great to see you again.
Thanks for joining us on this.
Hi, Ezra.
Hi.
So yeah, like you said, it's a very interesting case.
And you don't have to agree with Jared Taylor's views.
I mean, like you said, he's a white supremacist, and that's pretty bad.
But the case will still have ramifications for Twitter and whether, you know, other people, say, ordinary conservatives or right-wingers could also suit the company.
That's right.
I mean, in a way, the fact that he's a white supremacist, the fact that I think most right-thinking people would find his views either odious or beyond the pale.
You know, there's a saying in law, hard cases make bad law.
But I think when it comes to free speech, you've got to dig in on the hard cases.
That's why the ACLU in the United States would defend neo-Nazis, and they would send a Jewish lawyer or a black lawyer to make the point.
We don't agree with this guy, but if we don't fight in the first stitch, it's a lot easier to fight in the first ditch than the last stitch.
I think we've got to fight for the Jared Taylors, even if we disagree with them, if we're going to have the Ezra Levants and the Alan Buccaris and even people further to the center than us.
Absolutely.
Tell me a little bit about the facts here.
Tell me a little bit about the facts.
And this was just a preliminary legal skirmish, wasn't it?
Yeah, so it's not the whole case.
He hasn't won yet, and he could still lose his case.
Twitter could still say they banned him legitimately.
What this case was was Twitter brought a motion to dismiss the case entirely, and they lost that.
So the judge said that it's possible to sue Twitter on the basis that they falsely advertised that they have unconscionable contracts.
So they claim they can ban people for whatever reason, whenever they like.
at any time.
And the judge said, you know, that's a fair basis that people can sue Twitter on.
Then they can also sue Twitter on the basis that they claim to be a free speech platform, whereas they're actually not.
So there's a false advertising element there as well.
Yeah.
And that's interesting because it now means that Twitter can't just dismiss these cases and other people can now potentially sue Twitter on the same basis as Jared Taylor.
Yeah, I mean, we've talked about this before, and you've really helped clarify things for me on this.
Is Twitter, is Facebook, is YouTube, a platform onto which anyone can say what they like?
Sort of like a telephone company or a theater that could be rented.
I mean, you could have a play by Shakespeare one day.
You could have an opera the next day.
The theater just rents you the space.
That's a platform.
But the other is a publisher.
Are you taking responsibility and are you exercising judgment over the contents of what is said on the platform?
We would find that bizarre in a telephone if AT ⁇ T or Verizon or whatever they're calling in the UK Vodafone would say, no, no, you're not allowed to talk about that on our telephone lines.
We would find that bizarre for a phone company.
But that's sort of what Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Google, Amazon are saying, aren't they?
Well, they're really actually trying to have it both ways.
And it's quite interesting if you read the transcript of this exchange between Twitter's lawyer and the judge.
Twitter's lawyer is essentially arguing that like a newspaper, he actually explicitly compares Twitter to a newspaper and says, you know, if they don't want to publish someone based on completely arbitrary factors, then they have that right.
But also at the same time, Twitter's lawyer is claiming that they have Section 230 protection, which means they're a platform.
And platforms aren't held legally liable for the content posted by their users, whereas a newspaper is held liable for the content they publish.
So Twitter and all the social media companies are trying to have it both ways.
They want to have the legal exemptions that come with being a platform, whereas also having the privileges that come with being a publisher, which is to say they can ban anyone whenever, for whatever reason.
Twitter's lawyer made some bizarre statements during the trial.
It's quite amusing when you read the transcript.
The judge pressed them on the point and said, you know, does that mean Twitter could potentially ban people on the basis that they're gay or they're black or they're a woman?
And Twitter's lawyer essentially argued, yes, they could.
They had that right.
So Twitter's making these bizarre, bizarre claims about what they have a right to do and what they have a right not to do.
And they're essentially saying, well, we have the rights of a publisher, but we also have the right, the protections of a platform.
Well, I mean, there's an analogy here.
In the United States, there have been some high-profile cases of a pizza parlor and a bakery, a fancy bakery where the baker does artistic inscriptions and it's been a cause celebrity, so it's gone very high up in the courts.
Can a Christian baker be compelled to write an artistic message celebrating gay marriage, even if he opposes it for religious reasons?
So the left so often says, bake the cake.
That's sort of, as in, you are compelled to, it's discrimination for you not to.
And yet Twitter is making the argument that says, it's private property.
We can do what we want.
Cannot compel us to do business with someone, and and there are two very different point of views, as you so correctly point out, Twitter's having it both ways.
They like to be uh virtue signalers, and you know the fact that they're allowing Peter Fonda to publish such obscene things about uh, you know Millennia Trump, Baron Trump, the it's like they're, they're so political um, I don't know.
I just they're trying to have it both ways.
But let me ask you this, or i'm i'm, i'm thinking of so many thoughts of the same.
Actually, another great example, uh, just yesterday uh, Twitter took over 20 hours to delete a tweet from uh Occupy Wall Street, Nyc.
Uh, which was essentially uh advocating the murder of uh immigration agents.
Ice agents said, you got a, you should, you should stab the ICE agents and pull out their still-beating hearts as a warning to other ICE agents.
And they took over 20 hours to delete that and they only deleted it after, after we pointed it out to them, we reached out to comment, and then then they deleted it.
Quebec's Surprise Shift?00:15:19
I, I saw that that was shocking.
That was tantamount to a terrorist post, and they deleted the tweet, but they didn't shut down that whole account, did they?
Yeah, it's still tweeting like it hasn't even had a temporary ban.
It's it's still going strong, uh.
So yeah apparently uh, if you defend the murder of government officials in America, you can keep your twitter account in some cases.
You know, the other day on my noontime show, I I played a great excerpt from uh, a parliamentary, parliamentary committee in the United Kingdom.
They were grilling uh, Google's head of counterterrorism and, and viewers might be saying why would Google have a head of counterterrorism?
Well, Jihadis use Google and Youtube to promote their messages and so I think it makes sense to have them every question and I watched we played about 15 minutes of interactions.
They weren't grilling him on stopping Islamic terrorism that besets the Uk.
They were grilling him about Tommy Robinson and demanding again and again that he censor Tommy Robinson.
Now, I don't even think he knew who Tommy Robinson was.
He said, i'm not familiar with that, I got to look into it.
I mean, he never.
They were pressured probably five different labor mps and there might have been a conservative too, frankly and he just said, i'm sorry, I don't know that, i'll get back to you the extreme pressure on him.
I mean, I don't know how he withstood it.
So, on the other hand, you got to acknowledge that these companies are under public pressure, and probably private pressure, to do government dirty work for them.
And in Canada there was a story in the Toronto STAR ALUM I don't know if you saw it where Justin Trudeau, our prime minister, privately threatened Sheryl Sandberg, the c?
Oo of Facebook, that if she didn't crack down on fake news, as he called it, before the next federal election.
So he was very explicit, this was political censorship he would do it to Facebook if Facebook didn't do it itself.
I'm not defending Silicon Valley.
I'm just pointing out that a lot of their nasty work is basically contracted out censorship from governments, isn't it?
Yeah absolutely, and you know I, I will actually defend Silicon Valley on this.
Uh, you know they've they some of the?
Uh.
The reforms they've been making have been fairly moderate compared to what some politicians and some newspapers have been demanding.
And when Justin Fredeau says fake news, he probably means you guys, right?
He probably means the rebel.
That's what he thinks of fake news.
And what American leftists think of was fake news.
It's, you know, Breitbart and Infowars and conservative media in general.
And as he said, in the UK, they want to censor Tommy Robinson because, you know, he's a huge problem for them.
Even the Conservative government probably wants to censor him there.
It's under their leadership that he's been locked up.
So absolutely, they're facing pressure from governments.
And I think there's governments on the one hand and from their advertisers on whom they rely for revenue on the other.
So the only real way to fight back against these guys is to apply pressure from the grassroots and pressure conservative politicians and right-wing politicians to counter this narrative from the left-wing establishment that these platforms have to become these censored spaces.
That's the only way I can think of fighting back.
Well, I hope that's not the only way because just the same way as your conservative leaders in the United Kingdom are quite timorous, ours in Canada are too.
In fact, they've decided the path of least resistance is to throw right-wingers under the bus.
I mean, even in the United Kingdom, I very much admire Nigel Farage, but I know that he is worried that if he would dare to defend Tommy Robinson, he would be called far-right also.
I think in Canada, our conservative politicians are so afraid that they would absolutely throw the rebel under the bus rather than be associated with us.
Americans, I think, are bolder.
But if we have to rely on politicians, Alan, I think we're doomed.
Last word to you.
I want to ask you, does this step in this Twitter lawsuit by Jared Taylor?
Does this thing have a chance of winning?
I mean, does he have a good lawyer?
Is the court a good court that will give him a fair hearing?
Yeah, his lawyer is very good, Noah Peters.
And I've met Noah personally, and he's a fantastic lawyer.
And I think he makes the same, he makes the same point I made earlier, that, you know, it's not about Jared Taylor's views, whether you agree with him or not.
It's about does Twitter have the right to ban anyone for whatever reason.
And I think they have a fairly strong case because they did essentially kick Taylor off for his political views.
There was no allegation of harassment or abuse or anything like that.
Some of the excuses they've used to kick up other right-wingers.
So I think it's certainly one to watch.
Yeah, well, that's for sure.
Well, I'm so glad you're covering this beat.
I really appreciate your time, Alan.
It's great to see you again.
Thank you.
All right, there you have it.
Alan Bokari.
He is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News.
And I think he's one of the most important journalists covering one of the most important beats there is right now.
I think that is the front lines of censorship against conservatives.
So it's something definitely to keep an eye on.
Stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
Welcome back.
Well, an interesting turn of events.
The Conservative Party of Canada won a by-election in Quebec in the riding with the interesting name of Shikudemi LeFiord.
In fact, it wasn't just a win, it was a trouncing.
The Conservative candidate Michard Martel won an outright majority, very rare, 52.8%.
The Liberal Party falling to 29.5.
And very interesting to me, the NDP in the single digits, 8.6%.
Well, what does this mean for Andrew Scheer?
What does this mean for the Liberals?
And what was the issue that put the Conservatives over the top?
Well, I have no clue because I don't not plugged into the Quebec scene, but I have a friend who sure is.
His name is Eric Duem, and he joins us now via Skype.
Eric, great to see you again.
Welcome back to the program.
It's nice to have you on again.
Always fun to talk to each other, Ezra.
You are plugged into Quebec.
Obviously, you're a very popular talk show host.
You're a journalist.
You get involved with things.
Can you tell me, was this a surprise to you?
Because it's coming as a surprise to English Canada.
I know it's a surprise in English Canada, but those who have been following this by-election closely were not surprised for several reasons.
First off, we have to say that the Conservative candidate, Mr. Martel, is somebody very, very well known in the region, very well appreciated.
So the importance of having a local star candidate was certainly one factor.
The other factors are also, Ezra, that for six months he's been campaigning almost alone because the Liberals took a lot of time to choose their candidate.
And the third thing also we have to look is that the NDP and the Bloqué Bécois, who had that seat not that far away, but like not the last election, but the one before the NDP won during the orange wave here in Quebec.
And before that, it was a Bloch Québécois constituency for a few elections.
Those two parties were in the single digit, the NDP at 8% and the Bloc at 5%.
So the fact that both parties are practically disappearing outside of Montreal right now means that it's a two-way race between the Liberals and the Conservatives.
And in English Canada, you have to understand a lot of people don't like Justin Trudeau and the federal liberals.
It's been going on for ages.
It's like in Alberta, I think we're the only place where we're so skeptical of the federal liberals and their centralist approach.
And when it's a one-on-one fight, the conservatives in rural Quebec and in different regions of Quebec will always win.
So that's something to take into account.
And English Canadians need to understand this is not an accident.
It could be, it doesn't mean it's going to happen everywhere next year for the federal election.
But if the campaign is going well and if it's a one-on-one between the liberals and the conservatives outside of Montreal, conservatives could win easily 30 to 40 seats with such a strategy.
Well, that is amazing.
That is news to me.
I'm very glad to hear it.
I would have, I thought that Jagmeet Singh, the new NDP leader, you know, it was interesting to me his choice.
He's obviously not resonating in Quebec the same way that Thomas Volcare or Jack Layton did.
Not at all.
And the religious signs in Quebec, you know that there's been a huge debate with the Charter of Values and everything we had over the last few years and the Commission Bouchard Taylor and the reasonable accommodation debate that we had in Quebec on identity.
The fact that somebody arrives here and is so, you know, for him, it's so important to show us his religious background.
People didn't appreciate that.
I don't think the NDP could be a factor anymore in Quebec.
The other thing also, the Bloch Québécois is disappearing, Ezra.
You and I have done Block Québécois in the good old days when the Bloc was the official opposition in Ottawa and was winning 40, 50, 52, 54 seats easily in Quebec.
Well, those days are gone, gone, gone.
The Bloc Québécois now wouldn't win a single seat if there was a general election currently in Quebec.
So that's something changing.
And it's hard for English Canadians to understand how come people who usually vote NDP and Block Québécois over the last decade or two, how could they switch to the Conservatives and ignore the Liberals?
You have to understand that the political spectrum is not split the same way it is in English Canada.
For many of us, the first thing that is the most important is constitutional.
We want to make sure that provincial rights are respected.
When we talk about the federal liberals, we're talking about the centralists in Ottawa.
We think that Ottawa knows best, and that's not really appreciated in our region.
So it's not necessarily a left and right split.
It's more a centralist versus decentralist approach that we have.
And that explains why people who usually are Bloc Quebecois supporters or NDP supporters switch from those parties directly to the Conservatives, and they don't even consider for a second Justin Trudeau or the Liberals.
That is so interesting to me.
I have one last thing I'd like to run by you, Eric.
And you've really illuminated things for me here.
I observed that Justin Trudeau, who's really thrown open the border between New York State and Quebec at a little stretch of road called Wroxham Road, and there's thousands and thousands of fake refugees.
They're obviously fake.
They're coming from the United States.
There's no such thing as a refugee from the United States.
And they're deliberately crossing illegally.
And it's so often that the RCMP and the border guards have set up a little semi-permanent camp.
When Justin Trudeau decided to put those migrants on a bus and send them to Toronto, I thought, isn't that interesting?
Maybe Quebecers are fed up with it so much that Trudeau wants to push the political pressure to Toronto.
It's very odd to me.
And so I had a theory.
It's just a hypothesis.
I don't know.
Maybe you can tell me.
That one of the quiet issues under the radar is that Quebecers don't like this open borders, don't like this sanctuary province idea that has been foisted on them by Trudeau.
It's part of the religious accommodation issue.
It's part of the, that's my theory, is that maybe that was part of the vote against Trudeau.
You tell me if there's any truth to that.
It's not even a silent issue, Ezra.
It was very vocal.
And actually, the Conservatives during that by-election had endeavoured and their member of parliament responsible for public safety, Pierre Pollus, who's an MP here in the Quebec City region.
They went to the Roxham Road in Saint-Bernard de La Cole and they've campaigned out there.
They were far away from the constituency where the guy got elected.
But it's an issue that is so important and that resonates so badly that the Conservatives went to that border to show the problem of what the Liberals are doing, the lack of political leadership to support and to respect our borders.
And that was very, very clear that the Conservatives have been using that.
You also have to understand, Ezra, that even the provincial liberals, they're going in an election, a general election in Quebec on October 1st.
The provincial liberals, they know that this issue is not good for them.
And they're pushing against Ottawa.
They're doing it even publicly now, putting limits to say, look, we have way too many refugees, illegal refugees.
We don't know what to do with them.
You know, we're not going to take them anymore.
Find a solution in Ottawa.
So even the provincial liberals are now fighting against the federal liberals because they know they could be hurt during a provincial campaign that is coming in a few weeks.
So it's going to be a very interesting thing.
And we know that during the summertime, Ezra, the number of illegal immigrants that cross the road are much higher than during wintertime.
Obviously, it's easier to cross when it's plus 30 than when it's minus 30.
So we're going to see a lot of those illegal immigrants all over the summer.
And that could really, really hurt the liberals, you know, in October 1st or the general election.
So they're pushing Trudeau.
And that's why Trudeau felt the pressure of his own allies in Quebec.
And he took those buses and sent them in Ontario.
But what I saw in Ontario with the last provincial election, I'm not sure that all Ontarians wish to have a sanctuary of illegal refugees neither.
Yeah.
Well, that is fascinating.
I tell you, I've learned more from you in the last nine minutes than I have learned in nine months on the subjects of Quebec and open borders from the mainstream media in English Canada.
Last word to you, Eric.
I just want to add one thing.
Another thing also that is important, and it went almost silent in English Canada, and I think it's very important to share it with your viewers, Ezra, is that the former leader of the Bloc Québécois, Michel Gaussier, came out in favor of the Conservatives a few weeks ago, and he went campaigning in that constituency for that by-election.
It's very unusual in Canadian politics, think about it, that you will see a political leader of a party supporting another party, leaving his party and campaigning against this former party.
It's very, very unusual, and it helps a lot of former Bloc Québécois supporters and voters to now cross from the Block Québécois to the Conservatives because one of the former leaders did it.
So that's also something that you have to keep in mind in English Canada.
And Andrew Scheer and the MPs from English Canada need to understand that there is a lot of constituencies that could lead to their victory if they want to be back in power.
And the road to victory for them is probably in those constituencies in Quebec.
Well, that is amazing.
Thank you so much for this detailed briefing.
It's fascinating.
We're going to keep a close eye on Quebec.
And thanks for making yourself available.
I know you're so busy.
Why Pay $17,000 for a Chef?00:04:59
You do your own media work there.
So we're grateful to steal a few moments of your time.
Merci, Monomi, I appreciate that.
Mercier, auxir.
Okay, au revoir.
Forgive me, my French accent is terrible.
Well, that's our good friend Eric DeHem.
Isn't that fascinating?
It fills me with a little bit of hope, with a little bit of hope.
And if Justin Trudeau loses a riding in his home province of Quebec, well, maybe we just do have a chance to dislodge the guy in 2019.
Wow.
All right, stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
Hey, welcome back on my monologue yesterday about the revealed costs of Justin Trudeau's trip to India.
Ryan writes, If Mr. Harper had spent this amount of coin on a trip, plus had bad negotiations with India, there would be so much outrage by the Canadian media and liberal politicians alike.
The left-leaning media would hold this story in the public eye just as long or longer than the scandal on Mike Duffy.
They'd be crying for him to resign immediately, but not with little potato.
They know the hand that feeds them.
You are exactly right.
Imagine, like, India is the biggest democracy in the world.
We don't have a ton of trade with them, but we could, especially agriculture.
They got over a billion mouths to feed.
Energy, they're buying so much oil from Iran.
Wouldn't it be great if they bought some of our ethical oil instead?
Imagine burning bridges with the largest democracy in the world.
Part of the British Empire, they speak English.
They have a democracy that's analogous to ours because they come from the British.
Imagine just burning that because you just couldn't control yourself.
You invited a convicted assassin.
It's almost unbelievable.
If someone were to pitch a script to a fictional movie and said, and the prime minister invited an assassin who was convicted of trying to murder an Indian cabinet minister in India, people say, no, that's too much.
No one's going to believe it.
That's just too on the nose.
Yeah, that's real life.
Anthony writes, wow, Canadians paid $1.5 million to be embarrassed.
Yeah.
Yeah, I just keep thinking of some of those line items.
But to me, I've bought tickets to India before.
I personally, here at the Rebel, I personally bought the four plane tickets for our staff to go to India a couple years ago.
I was really scared about buying those tickets because I can't, like, that's so far away, right?
And we found out for $1,200, and I think it was Air Canada.
We just bought more than two weeks in advance and economy.
And yeah, it's not a comfy ride.
You got to stand up and stretch.
They give you a meal.
They give you drinks.
You snooze.
$1,200 and some of those people were spending $20,000.
There's no private sector company, not even a big law firm, not even a bank.
You think an assistant, a junior assistant at a bank, would be allowed to bill $20,000 for a first-class flight from Canada to India?
No, no, no, no.
Well, it's holding money.
Jude writes, $17,000 for his special chef?
Did he hire a plane to haul Alberta beef?
A few sheep, maybe a couple of hogs, a flock of chickens, a musk ox, and finally a moose?
What the hell?
Well, no, I mean, I don't know if you saw yesterday I listed all the fruits and vegetables and groceries, like thousands of dollars in groceries.
But how come it costs $17,000 for a chef?
I mean, okay, let's say you know a chef and he loves India so much, he wants to come along and be part of it.
And let's say you can somehow justify this.
I don't know how you justify bringing an Indian cuisine chef from Canada to India without that coming across as an insult.
I don't know how you justify it.
But if he's your buddy and maybe he's told you a lot about India and he's your like personal helper, outer explainer for, okay, fine.
So why are you paying him?
Like if he's so important, he's like this person.
Like let's say, I know this says, I'm just trying to come up with a scenario here.
Let's say you went to an Indian restaurant so much and you got to know the chef and he became a good friend and he said, you've got to go to India, man.
And let me tell you about India.
And every time you talk to the chef, he was promoting India and you thought, well, you know what?
I'm finally going to India.
Why don't you come?
Because I'd love you next to me and help.
Like you'd be like my personal private tour guide.
I'm just making up a scenario.
Okay, then I could maybe understand him coming with the Prime Minister to help be a helpful guide.
But why are you paying him $17,000 then?
Why is he not either chipping in $1,200 for his own flight or why are you paying him $17,000?
And from what I see, he prepared one meal.
Well, because it's Justin Trudeau and nothing's good enough for the young prince.
But hey, you military veterans, you're just asking for more than we can give.