Tommy Robinson, convicted in May 2023 for filming outside Leeds courthouse where 29 men—mostly Pakistani—faced child grooming/rape charges, travels to London on July 18th for his appeal amid claims of media bias and excessive 13-month sentence. Meanwhile, Doug Ford’s $6M Hydro One CEO dismissal contrasts with Trudeau’s opaque carbon tax, costing Saskatchewan families up to $1,000/year while removing $1.8B from its economy, despite negligible climate benefits. Robinson’s case and provincial resistance suggest Canada’s carbon tax could face legal and public backlash like Australia’s repeal, with the speaker vowing live coverage to counter alleged "fake news" narratives. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, I'm off to London to cover Tommy Robinson's appeal.
I'll tell you why.
It's July 13th, and you're watching The Ezra LeVance Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here and you won't give them an answer.
You come here once a year with a sign and you feel morally superior.
The only thing I have to say to the government for why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Our former reporter Tommy Robinson is finally getting a proper appeal in court in London on July 18th.
I'm going to go over there to cover it.
I'm not leaving just yet.
I'll still be here in Canada early next week, but I thought I'd tell you why I'm going to go and what I think about it and what I think it's about and why I still care, even though Tommy left our company months ago to go independent.
As you know, Tommy was reporting live outside a courthouse in Leeds in the north of England on May 25th outside a trial where 27 men and two women were being prosecuted for running a rape gang targeting British girls as young as 11 years old.
These rape gangs are almost always Muslim, usually Pakistani Muslim, and the victims are almost always Indigenous white girls in Britain, sometimes Sikh girls too.
These rape gangs work systematically.
It's not rape as we know it in Canada where a mugger drags a woman into a back alley.
It's tricking and trapping, targeting children as young as 11, in the case of Leeds, offering them candy, offering them soda pop, cigarettes, liquor, even cash, and then extorting them.
Give a teenage girl a drink of liquor and then threaten to tell their mother they've been drinking unless they kiss the men and then threaten to show a picture of that kiss unless they have sex with the men and then threaten to burn down their family house unless they continue to do so.
It's called grooming, but that's not the right word because that sounds proper and pleasant.
This is extortion and entrapment and psychological manipulation and predation.
It's men hunting together as a wolf pack, hunting little lambs together, frightening them, using the girls' own kindness and trust and love for their families against them.
So these rapes, they don't just happen once.
Once these girls are trapped, they're raped again and again, often many times in the night by a gang of men.
The girls are trapped and they are passed around.
It's Islamic in its character.
The defendants in trials often justify it on racial and religious grounds.
The British girls are targeted because they're infidels.
And the Muslim prophet Muhammad himself said you can take infidel women as rape slaves.
It's why ISIS did so.
It's Islamic in character, which is why the police, the prosecutors, the politicians, the press, the social workers, hospital workers, everyone in the establishment is so afraid to talk about it because they're more afraid of themselves being called racist than they are afraid of some lower-class girls being raped on an industrial scale.
1,400 girls at least in the small city of Rotherham, UK.
There's only a quarter million citizens in Rotherham.
1,400 girls raped.
That is a measurable percentage and everyone knew.
But no one spoke up for years, so afraid they were about being called Islamophobic.
That's what Tommy's against.
Not just the Islamification of the UK in general, but the Islamic mass rape of British girls.
Children.
Almost all of them are kids.
It's horrific.
There are estimates that as many as 1 million British women and girls have been raped, a million.
And we'll never know, because the police and politicians in the press would never tell us the statistics because there would be riots.
Tommy started the EDL, the English Defense League, in response to this.
In part, he was called racist and far-right.
He's neither.
Most of Tommy's people are actually leftists.
They all vote labor.
They aren't racist.
Tommy's friends include other minorities, like I say, including Sikh activists who want to stop the Muslim rape gangs targeting Sikh girls.
But it was easier for the fancy people to write off Tommy as a lout, a soccer hooligan, as they write off all blue-collar working-class Brits that way.
It's not the rich girls, the connected girls, getting raped in Rotherham, it's the poor girls.
Nobody's nothing, says the singer Morris he would say.
So Tommy was against that, and he was reporting on a rape gang in Leeds.
29 accused, including two Muslim women who helped set up this extortion system.
And then police swept down to arrest Tommy.
George, I'll let the information over.
I'm inciting video.
How have I inciting it?
This is free speech.
This is where we're.
We're not even allowed to.
Look at this.
Look how many people.
Why wouldn't you do this?
I've got more people than.
Just let him do this.
More people can watch this now than ever.
This is ridiculous.
Les, do you feel right when you're doing it?
I haven't said a word.
In fact, someone laid their hand and assaulted me outside court.
Other people have screamed.
He threatened me about my mother, and here I am being arrested for saying nothing.
I'm threatened to behead the money.
What are they arresting you for, Tommy?
Breaching the peace.
Apparently, I'm inciting on my video.
Can you please, George, get me a solicitor?
Police said he was causing a disturbance.
He was not.
He was by himself on the street, only with a couple of friends, talking into a cell phone camera that was broadcasting on his Facebook page.
It was not a disturbance.
He was not breaching the peace.
He was not on the property of the court.
He did not call the accused rapists rapists.
He called them accused rapists, alleged rapists.
And when he read out the names of the accused, he did so by reading from the British government's own website, the state broadcaster, the BBC, which to this day lists the names of the accused.
Tommy did not read anything from the trial itself.
He did not attend the trial.
He couldn't have violated any court publication ban.
He didn't know what had happened in court to violate a ban, and he didn't claim to know.
He simply stood outside the court for 70 minutes and talked about the issues much the same way as I'm doing right now.
And yet he was scooped up, arrested by seven police, you saw it, prosecuted for contempt of court, convicted in less than 15 minutes, and sentenced to 13 months in prison.
Oh, and then a publication ban was put on top of it to boot.
The 13 months was absurd, but it was allegedly justified in that Tommy had been convicted of contempt of court a year ago in Canterbury for doing much the same reporting on a rape gang.
That's when Tommy worked for us.
But I knew because of that that this was an absurd hearing in a matter of minutes without Tommy having the ability to retain or instruct effective counsel.
It all happened so suddenly.
Why?
Why?
And why such an absurdly long sentence?
And why was Tommy then moved from his prison in Hull, which is probably the safest prison in the UK for him to be in in terms of the lack of Muslim gangs?
Why was he moved from there to the prison in Onley, which is dominated by violent Muslim gangs, so much so that Tommy requested the warden put him in solitary confinement for his own safety?
He's held in a cell for 23 and a half hours a day by himself.
You cannot live that way.
Not for one month, let alone 13.
Why was he moved to Onley prison?
What was the reason?
Why was the sentence 13 months to begin with?
What exactly did he do wrong?
I watched the video.
Why did it all have to happen so quickly at his trial?
And why the publication man?
Why?
Those are interesting questions and like him or hate him.
Tommy Robinson is an interesting person, so why the lack of curiosity from all the media in the world, including Fleet Street, in some ways the most competitive newspaper business in the English language?
Why no inquiries?
Why no investigations?
It's right there in the UK.
Why was the media happy to have him sentenced and thrown away?
Why not a peep from Amnesty International?
Why not a word from Reporters Without Borders from the rest of the civil liberties set?
Why not a word from any elected politician in all of the UK, except for one UKIP peer from the House of Lords and the UKIP leader himself in the European Parliament?
Why no one else?
There was a rally in London and Hirt Wilders attended to speak wonderful, a Dutch politician pushing for freedom in London.
Well, tomorrow there is another rally in London and Wilders was again set to speak.
But look at this news.
Wilders announced he was going to go, but then the British Foreign Office told the Dutch government that they not only would not provide security for Wilders, as they normally do as a diplomatic courtesy, but they would ban the Dutch diplomatic police from escorting Wilders as they usually do.
Now, Wilders is a target for terrorist attacks, just like Salmon Rushdie is.
So the British government was absolutely saying, we don't have the courage or honesty to ban you.
So we'll pretend we're not banning you, but we will turn a walk on a British street for a rally into a suicide terrorist trap for you, so you'll have to back away, Hirt Wilders.
It's cowardly, it's outrageous.
The UK allows foreign tyrants to visit London all the time, including recently the King of Saudi Arabia.
He's allowed bodyguards, but not the Democratic leader, Geert Wilders, because it's part of the unethical immoral war against Tommy Robinson.
But we have news.
The news is that on July 18th, there will finally be an appeal of the sentence.
It's too late for my liking.
It's too slow.
It should have happened months ago.
It should never have been necessary.
But here it is, July 18th, and it's incredible.
It's a three-judge panel.
And the judge presiding is Lord Justice Ian Burnett, the Lord Chief Justice of all of England and Wales, the top judge in the entire country.
It would be like having the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States hear a case in the U.S. Amazing.
Top judge, top court.
I think there's a real chance things will be aired out.
All those questions I listed earlier.
I know there might be some conspiracy theorists who, with some justification, point to every other stitch-up so far for Tommy, every other rigged rule, every other time he was framed, even the latest scandal with the Girt Wilders security thing.
But I am hopeful enough, I still believe in the UK enough to think it's finally, finally going to be a fair hearing in a fair court.
And Tommy, through his family, has sent word from prison to specifically ask me to go to London to report on it.
They contacted me to tell me that Tommy has requested that, and I get it.
I get why, because Tommy knows me from when we work together, and he knows I've been helping with his crowdfunding this past month.
He authorized it.
But more than that, he knows that there is no mainstream media in the entire UK who are trustworthy on this file.
None.
Maybe one reporter here or there, but none of the newspapers, none of the TV stations will be positive or fair to him.
None.
They all despise Tommy.
And of course they despise so many of their own readers and viewers too.
But they are all in collusion to cover up what Tommy was uncovering.
And then there's the class thing too.
They despise an uppity working-class bloke like Tommy Robinson, who's speaking for his people when the establishment won't.
Doesn't he know his place?
And they hate that Tommy is a hero to his people, to millions of them, so they hate that.
So they attack him.
The BBC, the tabloids, even the prestige press.
So Tommy asked me to go to report because he knows the media will all lie about him.
Of course they will.
They always do.
And though there might be some citizen journalists there or even a handful of journalists from places like Breitbart, London, or a few niche publications, we at the Rebel will have more reach than they do.
We have more viewers.
We'll get the word out.
So I accepted his invitation and I'll be flying out there next week.
And I really think that I'm going to cover the appeal of a political prisoner.
I think that's what Tommy is.
This wasn't a crime, what he did.
A contempt of court as Tommy was convicted is not a crime.
And Tommy obviously didn't hurt anyone.
There was no criminal trial of Tommy.
He's in solitary confinement.
They'll let that sink in.
Tommy is not convicted of a crime, and yet he's been in solitary confinement for almost two months now.
That's more than any murderer would get in the hole, as they call it, in prison.
And imagine if he actually had to serve all 13 months as the judge demanded in solitary.
This is so wrong.
I don't know what we will find out at the appeal.
We will find out what we will find out.
And I will be there.
I will file a video report before and after court and at noon hour and every coffee break, whatever.
And if it's allowed, I'll report on Twitter during the hearing itself from the courtroom.
I'll have to check to make sure that's allowed.
I don't want to be held in contempt myself.
So that's what I'm going to do because Tommy is, you know, he's being silenced.
Like the girls of Rotherham were silenced.
Like Herd Wilders is being silenced.
Maybe like we will be silenced one day, but for now, I'm going there to report.
Support Tommy's Appeal00:04:25
And what can you do?
Well, I have three specific suggestions.
Number one, did you know you can send Tommy a letter?
You can do that.
Now, beneath this video, we will have the instructions on how to send Tommy an email in prison.
And I know that he gets them delivered to his cell.
His wife told me.
He likes these letters, you can imagine, because otherwise he would go mad in that tiny little cell 23 and a half hours a day.
You go to emailaprisoner.com.
That's not our website.
That's a company that specializes in writing to prisoners.
And you enter his proper legal name and prison name and prisoner number.
All that info is below this video.
Tommy loves the letters and you can wish him well.
He can't write back, but he reads what he gets.
That's the first thing.
Send him a letter just to say hi, just to give him something to do for 23 and a half hours a day.
Second, if you haven't already, chip into his legal defense fund.
That's at savetommy.com.
100% of those funds go to his lawyer and 100% of the surplus goes to his family.
The third thing, and this is a fun thing and it's a free thing, and I've done it myself, is download a Tommy Robinson ringtone for your smartphone.
Now I know that sounds silly, but it is fun and it is a conversation starter and it's free.
And if you're wondering what the ringtone is, it's this sound.
We've taken that audio of that chant, oh, Tommy, Tommy, and we've made a ringtone for your phone.
Go to TommyRingtone.com and you can download it for free and we have some very easy to follow video instructions for how to get your phone when someone phones you, it rings, it plays that sound as your ringtone.
I had to follow those video instructions.
I didn't know how to do it.
But if I can figure it out, you can figure it out.
And the fourth thing you can do, and it would be a good favor to me, Tommy wants me to go to London and I will go to London, but he told me with less than a week's notice.
So the airfare was very expensive and the hotel rooms were very expensive.
It was more than $2,500, I'm afraid to say, even though I booked economically on Expedia.
Now, I don't want to take money from Tommy's official crowdfunding budget for his lawyers, for his family for that.
So I am not going to.
I've set up a special crowdfund, a different one, just to get me over there to report on the appeal.
And it's called TommyTrial.com.
We've got a lot of websites, don't we?
TommyTrial.com.
If you can help me cover my flight and hotel, I'd be very grateful.
So that's my report.
Now, I know some people even around here say, why are you so obsessed with Tommy Robinson?
Well, I'm not really.
I mean, he's an ex-employee and he's a friend, not a close friend, but we're friends enough.
But that's not why.
It's because Tommy is a champion for those without a voice, for those without a friend.
He's the last lion in the United Kingdom, the last man of courage, at least on this file.
There are a few other great Brits.
I really like that Nigel Farage who fought for Brexit, don't you?
I like a lot of Brits, but no one fights for the people like Tommy, especially against this issue, the Islamification of the UK, the Muslim rape gangs.
Everyone else is too afraid, too afraid of being killed, too afraid of being called racist.
Tommy fights.
I'm actually not doing this for Tommy as a person.
I mean, I like him well enough, and I like his family well enough.
We're chums, but that's not why I'm going to London.
I'm going there for the larger cause that Tommy champions for all those young girls he stands up for.
It's for what Tommy does, not for who Tommy is, that motivates us.
When Tommy's out of prison, when he's safe and sound, I'll take a break from Tommy.
He's more than a handful, I can tell you, from the year I worked with him.
My mission is narrow.
Crowdfund his lawyers and go to London to report on his appeal.
And once he's out of jail, I'll give him a big handshake, might even give him a hug.
I'll wish him well, and then I'm going to come back to Canada.
And I don't want him to work for us again in the rebel.
He's too much of a stubborn mule, as you can imagine, which is exactly why he's perfect to fight for the future of the UK.
We'll always be friends with him and we'll support him from afar.
And God forbid he gets into a jam again.
We will be there for him, but we hope that doesn't happen.
We'll be there for him, not because he's such a character, even though he is.
Not because he's a lovable rascal, though he is, but because without him and his fight, I feel like the lights are going out in the United Kingdom.
And that's just not something any of us want to see.
If you can help me get to London next week, please do.
Go to TommyTrial.com.
Jerry's Fight for Light00:12:46
In any event, I promise you not only the best coverage of the appeal, but frankly, the only real coverage of his appeal that isn't a pack of lies for the establishment.
Stay with us for more.
Happy to say today, the CEO and the board of Hydro One, they're gone.
They're done.
They're done.
We're going to turn a new corner.
We're going to make sure we keep with our promise of reducing hydro rates by 12%, making our businesses more competitive, making sure that we take the burden off the people of Ontario when it comes to their hydro bills.
Well, there you have it.
The new Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, keeping a huge promise.
I mean, I suppose $6 million is not enormous in the scope of the entire budget, but by God, it was symbolic.
The president of a public utility called Hydro One made almost $6.2 million last year, up a million point seven from the year before.
I mean, I guess he was doing that great a job, even though Ontarians pay some of the highest electricity prices in the entire province.
Well, how did he manage to do it?
How did he get the CEO and the whole board to go away without the gazillion dollars worth of penalties that people thought he would be entitled to?
Joining us now to help us unravel this mystery is our friend Jerry Agar.
He's the host of Noobs Talk 1010, weekdays from 9 to 12 in Toronto.
Jerry, it's great to see you again.
Thanks for coming on the show.
Thanks for having me, Ezra.
You know, a lot of these boards and agencies, they really burrow into the government.
They write these sweetheart contracts, termination clauses, extremely luxurious.
And if you want to sack a guy, you've got to make him a gazillionaire.
How did Doug Ford manage to say goodbye to the whole board and the CEO with just a fraction of a fraction of the severance everyone thought he'd have to pay?
Well, that's actually an open question at the moment.
How exactly did that happen?
And I'm going to theorize on that in a moment, but just in case somebody is not familiar with how this all transpired over the last several years, energy prices, as you alluded to, Ezra, have been controversial in Ontario for quite some time in a real election issue.
And then there were several things that made Hydro One itself specifically controversial.
One was that in order to try and balance a budget, the Kathleen Wynn government sold off part of Hydro One to private entities.
So there was that.
And then there was the $6 million compensation for Mail Schmidt, the CEO.
And Doug Ford, as part of his campaign, started referring to him as the $6 million man and said he's gone day one.
And all kinds of newspaper editorial writers lectured Doug Ford that maybe he didn't understand how this worked.
He didn't have the legal authority to do it.
If he did do it, he'd have to give Mael Schmidt a 10-point-something million-dollar goodbye package.
And in fact, the very morning that this happened, the Toronto Star had written about, oh, we thought on day one he was going to get rid of the $6 million man.
Well, at 4.45, day one, the $6 million man left with $400,000.
And the board has said that they will all leave as well.
Why would somebody leave $10 million on the table?
I have no idea.
But the rich aren't like the rest of us.
And maybe he just decided, Ezra, you know, if that's what you think of me, I'm out of here.
I don't have to deal with this.
I have millions in the bank anyway.
Yeah.
And of course, when you're making that kind of dough, you've got a lot of money for lawyers, but no one has more money for lawyers than the premier of the province.
He's got the whole Justice Department.
So it could have been very lengthy litigation and it could have been brutal.
You're right.
We may never know.
But if his contract called for a $10.7 million severance and he walked away with $400,000, I mean, listen, $400,000, that's still a mighty fine severance, but it's a triviality compared to what he had on paper.
I have to say, Jerry, between this and the repeal of the controversial child sex ed curriculum and the scrapping of the cap and trade and coming out against the carbon tax, I can't recall a premier of any province, let alone Ontario, doing so much so quickly.
And it's the height of summer, by the way, when normally politicians and bureaucrats are sort of in idle mode or barbecue circuit mode.
Jerry, this is very impressive to me.
I was a fan to begin with, but I was worried.
I'm a super fan now.
What do you think?
Well, I think it's incredible they've moved this quickly.
And they're also doing things that, of course, their detractors said they couldn't do.
When you said you couldn't recall somebody who's done that, what came to mind for me was the late brother of the now premier, and that's the former mayor Rob Ford, when everybody said he couldn't contract out garbage, that it was a city hall job.
And he fairly quickly got that done.
And he did a whole list of other things, getting contracts with the unions without breaking the bank, without allowing them to strike during the Pan Am games, a whole bunch of stuff that people thought couldn't be done.
So maybe, Ezra, the Toronto Star Editorial Board should start to catch on.
The Fords aren't as stupid as the board thinks they are.
Yeah.
You know, and there's also something to be said about having experience in business, where if you've got to make a cut, you just have to do it.
There's no wiggle room.
Unlike a tax collector, you can't just order more revenues.
A lot of politicians these days are sort of lifers.
They've either been in politics their whole lives or they've only worked in other government institutions.
I think of Justin Trudeau's cabinet.
I really don't think there's any private sector experience.
I mean, I guess you could say Bill Morneau, but he sort of inherited that.
Whereas Doug Ford, he actually had to sweat a payroll.
He actually had to look at his bank balance in the company.
Can I, you know, all the things a private sector guy has to do.
There's something to be said about having done something before getting into politics, don't you think?
Yeah, I do.
And in case somebody hears you say Bill Moore No inherited that and thinks that Doug Ford inherited Deco Labels, the company that is their family fortune, he did inherit that company to an extent, but a much smaller version of it.
And in fact, did not inherit the Chicago operation.
He flew down there one day with his manager, just deciding we're going to open up in Chicago and found a facility and found some people and greatly expanded the business.
So that gives him the real solid understanding and managerial experience that you were alluding to.
Yeah, I remember during the campaign when he said he was going to scrap the carbon tax and all the fancy pants, economists, pundits, none of whom have ever worked in the real world, said, well, now you've got a $2 billion hole in the budget.
And Doug Ford said, don't tell me we can't find a few percent of fat here.
And he said it so naturally because, of course, anyone, I mean, listen, in our own family budgets, if you had to tighten the belt by 2%, you could do it.
And it wouldn't even be that bad.
2%, what's that?
Like going out for rest to a restaurant one fewer times a month.
So I think all these sacred cows, you're talking about things the Toronto Star said could never be done.
All the fancy people said would never be done.
I guess if that's the world you come from, you believe those things as an article of faith.
I like Doug's outsider-ness.
I like it.
And I just got to say, I mean, I know I'm fanboying again.
But Jerry, this is so encouraging compared to what Ontario has been subjected to under Kathleen Wynne and Dalton McGuinty beforehand.
Such a change.
Well, it's an absolute different, about face, 180-degree way of viewing what government is supposed to do and what things ought to cost.
When you say, could you take 2% out of your household budget?
Well, most people could.
Some people might not be able to at the very bottom edge of the income levels, but most people could.
But it's laughable to say that you couldn't do that in government.
In fact, I remember the first time Doug Ford started to float that, and he was on my radio show.
And I said to him, How are you going to fund this?
And he said, Do you think we could find 2% at Queen's Park?
And I laughed.
And then he said, Yeah, yeah, that's the normal reaction.
Yeah.
You know, I want to make a comparison.
And I know that Doug Ford himself doesn't like this, but I don't care.
I want to compare him to Trump in these three ways.
Number one, he's got some private business experience.
He's obviously not a tycoon, a billionaire like Trump, but he knows how to read some financial statements and he knows how to make a decision.
Number two, he's not hypersensitive and hyper-conscious of pleasing the media.
He sort of likes to fight with them from time to time.
And number three, the fancy people look down on him, but folksy people of different backgrounds like him.
And maybe even more than Trump, Doug Ford connects to new Canadians, to ethnic communities that, I don't know, the Ford family has always had sort of a special bond there.
In those three ways, I think that I know that Doug Ford doesn't want to be compared to Trump, but I think he is a Trump-like figure.
And I think he's inspiring people across Canada that they don't have to sit back and consider being liberal an inevitability.
What do you think of that?
Yeah, I don't know that Trump connects with new Americans.
Not as much.
No, not as much, definitely.
No, not so much.
In fact, to emphasize on that, you know very well, Ezra, that one of the knocks the left tries to put on the right is that it's a white boy club and we don't care about the unfortunate and we don't care about minorities.
And from Rob Ford to Doug Ford, those people should go to any of the rallies that the Fords would have.
And it's now, of course, because Rob has passed on, just Doug.
But go to those rallies and see who's there.
The rainbow of colors that shows up and the cross-section of economic means, it's unbelievable.
It's truly Canada.
It's truly Toronto.
Yeah, much more so than the stale old NDP.
You're right.
I mean, I think Trump does better amongst minorities than the media gives him credit for, but certainly not in the massive numbers that the Fords, Doug Ford and his late brother Rob did.
Well, Jerry, I tell you, you know, there's a saying, I think it's in the Bible, put not your trust in princes.
And you never want to be too enthralled by a politician because you're just setting yourself up for disappointment.
But so far, so great.
And I got to say, I was getting to worry that Ontario had accepted its have-not status, accepted a slow decline like, say, Michigan and Detroit over the last 40 years.
I think Ontario is coming back on the right track.
I'm an optimist.
I mean, I'm a new Ontarian myself.
You're an old-timer here.
Are you optimistic about Ontario's future?
I don't know that I'm an old-timer here, but I'm much more optimistic about it now.
I want to say something, some advice I got from my wife that you reminded me of when you said, you know, put not your trust in princes.
I remember as I was early in talk radio and there was a politician that I was liking, and my wife said to me, don't get caught up in the individual.
Worry about the policies.
Support the policies, because if the person goes off the rails, you were still right when you supported the policies.
And so far, Doug Ford and the PCs have been right on with their policies and what they've accomplished so far.
I think you're right.
By the way, Jerry, when I said old-timer, I don't mean you're old.
I mean, you're seasoned.
You know your way around.
You know the beat.
You know the file better than me because I'm only five years in this province.
Well, Jerry, you've encouraged me.
The policies encourage me.
And, you know, it gives me an optimism for the whole country because how Ontario goes, to a large way, the whole country goes.
It's still the most important economically, demographically.
It's so important.
And I think it could be a role model for the rest of the country again.
Here's hope.
And last word to you, Jerry.
Well, let's hope that one thing that Doug can do is I think he may have Saskatchewan in line, but a few other provinces might join with him to fight Trudeau all the way to the Supreme Court if they have to on the federal imposition of cap and trade.
This is a premier now in Ontario who really actually has the will to do so.
And maybe that will encourage a couple other provinces, and we'll see where that goes.
From your mouth to God's ears, Jerry, great to have you on the show again.
Thanks, my friend.
Thank you.
Taxpayers Federation Pushback00:12:10
All right, there you have it.
Jerry Agar, he's the host on News Talk 1010s every weekday from 9 a.m. till noon.
Stay with us.
We're ahead on The Rebel.
Welcome back.
Well, we're told that Canadians have a duty to do our part to fight climate change, although we're never told what that fight will actually achieve.
How many degrees will the weather change if we pay massive taxes, if we no longer have pipelines?
We're never told that because the answer is absurd.
It is such an infinitesimally small effect on the world's climate that it won't actually have a measurable effect.
It's about virtue signaling, proving how moral we are, the theory goes, in order to buy social license from those who hate industry.
It's a complex explanation and it doesn't seem to be convincing many people.
The carbon tax that Alberta brought in was supposed to pave the way for social license.
It has not placated British Columbia or environmental extremists.
So while the benefits of this fight for global warming are harder and harder to find, the costs seem more and more real.
Interestingly, Justin Trudeau has refused to release his government's estimate of just how penalizing a carbon tax would be on ordinary Canadian taxpayers.
Well, the province of Saskatchewan has gone ahead and done a study of their own.
And joining us now to talk about the results of that study is Todd McKay, the Prairies Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
Joins us now from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.
Todd, how are you?
Thanks for joining us today.
I'm doing well.
Thanks for having me.
Thanks.
I don't want to focus on the bizarre formula that we're supposed to buy, which is if you inflict all this pain on yourself, you will have certain benefits.
I don't think people believe in the benefits anymore.
They see that it's not buying social license for the pipelines.
They know it's not going to actually change the climate.
So let's not talk about the supposed benefits.
Let's focus on your op-ed in the National Post called Ottawa Hides Its Carbon Tax Math while Saskatchewan crunches the numbers.
So there's no gain, there's no payoff.
I think we can probably agree.
But what is the pain?
How much money would Justin Trudeau's carbon tax hurt someone in Saskatchewan and by extrapolation, anyone else in the rest of the country?
Yeah, so that's a really good question.
So first of all, that's a question that Ottawa refuses to answer.
They've been asked many, many times.
Everybody's put in lots of access to information requests.
Ottawa refuses to answer it.
So Saskatchewan, doing the due diligence that really is absolutely required in this situation, Saskatchewan worked with the University of Regina.
Experts there did some really comprehensive analysis.
They put out a report that's 276 pages long.
And of course, there's a lot of a range of variables here.
But what they've said is that, you know, the negative range could be that a carbon tax would knock out about $1.8 billion out of the Saskatchewan economy every year when it hits $50 a ton.
And in addition to that, it could cost families up to $1,000 per.
You know, when you look at that $1.8 billion number, that's about 2.4% of the GDP.
That's a huge amount of money.
That's a really tough blow to an economy that's still shakily rising from some of the struggles we've had with low energy prices in the last number of years.
That's a big price to pay for a policy that's pretty shaky in terms of helping the environment.
Yeah.
I mean, 2.4%, if you take 2.4% out of an economy, unless that economy is just roaring to begin with, you're pretty much throwing it into a recession.
And again, I don't want to delve into the obvious point that this is for nothing.
Like, we're achieving no change in the weather.
We have not placated the foes of industry.
So the whole thing's a joke to begin with.
But what we're trying to measure here is the cost of it.
Now, let me ask you why.
What excuse has Justin Trudeau provided for not giving the information?
I mean, the governments are full of information.
If this tax is going to be brought forward, we should know its economic impacts.
Why have they said they're keeping their estimate of the punishing costs?
Why have they said they're keeping that secret?
So the main explanation we typically get is that Ottawa is asking the provinces to impose a carbon tax.
And until they know what the province's plan is, it's hard for them to estimate what the cost would be.
Now, that's totally a false explanation for two reasons.
First of all, they do have lots of analysis.
You don't have to know exactly what somebody's going to do to estimate what the impact could be on a range of possibilities.
In fact, here's the results to the access to information requests that we did.
It's all blacked out.
They're not showing the numbers they do have.
Nobody's saying they have to know absolutely everything about what will happen, but they do need to do at least the due diligence of showing the numbers they do have.
But here's another reason that that's an absolutely false excuse.
I want to let you in a little secret, Ezra.
You don't have to be James Bond with super spy gadgets to figure out what Saskatchewan's going to do on the carbon tax, what kind of provincial policy they've got cooking.
Look, Saskatchewan says it's not imposing a carbon tax.
That's what Premier Brad Wall said.
That's what Premier Scott Moe said.
That's what everybody who has ever listened to anything coming out of the government of Saskatchewan knows.
They're not imposing a carbon tax.
So there is no reason that Ottawa can't figure out what it would look like if it imposes a carbon tax.
Because if a carbon tax hits Saskatchewan, it's coming from Ottawa.
It's not coming from Regina.
It's going to come from Ottawa.
They know that.
We know that.
Everybody knows that.
If they don't have all of the math done, they need to get it done.
Because if they're going to do it, it's going to come from Ottawa.
For them to say that they don't know that is baffling.
It's totally nonsensical.
Well, it wouldn't be the first time a liberal has told a fib about a sales tax.
That's really what this is.
You know, interestingly, Saskatchewan, in many ways, is more resource-oriented and export-oriented than Alberta, which is, I was surprised to learn that because it's not just oil and gas.
It's potash, it's uranium, it's wheat.
And everything has to be transported by rail, by truck, whatever.
And of course, it's the prairies get cold in the winter.
So you need energy to move things.
You need energy to stay warm in the winter.
Saskatchewan is a more energy-intensive place than, say, Prince Edward Island, which you could practically bike around.
I think that this is very punitive.
Let me ask you a question.
The northern territories, Nunavut, Northwest Territories, Yukon, are even more sparse than Saskatchewan in terms of population, even more cold, and at least Nunavut and Northwest Territories are larger.
I'd have to check the map on Yukon.
They have received some sort of assurances that they would be compensated in some way, I think.
I know they have other rebates, other subsidies.
I don't want to go beyond my knowledge there.
Is it possible that Saskatchewan could get some sort of mitigation, or is Justin Trudeau just being adamant and punitive towards the province?
Well, I think certainly Ottawa is doing what it often does and trying to buy peace.
And so we've seen already with environmental funding that was dangled in front of the provinces, roughly $60 million was dangled in front of Saskatchewan.
Sign on to the plan, you get $60 million to put into green projects.
Saskatchewan said no.
It's not for sale.
The principles here aren't for sale.
You can offer $60 million and we're not signing on.
It doesn't matter.
So look, I think that that pressure is going to increase.
In fact, again, actually, I'll flash this A tip again.
I don't know if you can see it, but the headline here is equalization.
They're analyzing what happens with the equalization program based on what would happen with a carbon tax.
Look, all of that's leverage from Ottawa, controlling, throttling the flow of money from the capital outward and trying to force the provinces to get on side.
Look, I don't think it's going to work in Saskatchewan.
Saskatchewan's been very clear.
They're not imposing a carbon tax.
If Ottawa wants a carbon tax, it can try to impose it on Saskatchewan, but it's going to see a fight in the courts and it's going to see a fight in the court of public opinion as well.
Yeah.
I'm just thinking 60 million bucks as some sort of payoff and they're going to take 1.8 billion out of the economy.
You don't have to be a math major to know that's no deal.
Let me ask you, I think Brad Wall was very strong on this and Scott Mo, the new premier, very strong on it.
You see Jason Kenney very strong on it.
He's probably going to be the next premier of Alberta just if polls are right.
And Doug Ford has taken a hard line too.
I saw that photo of Doug Ford meeting with Justin Trudeau and their various advisors and I thought, boy, that's a tough meeting.
Maybe, maybe there's a chance this can be beat.
I mean, we tried to beat the GST.
I know you guys, the Taxpayers Federation fought hard about that a generation ago.
Do you think you can actually stop the carbon tax?
They repealed it in Australia, which is a bit of a miracle.
Do you think it's possible that if Alberta and Saskatchewan and Ontario get together and sue in the courts and fight politically, and if you guys at the Taxpayers Federation get behind it, do you think it's possible we can stop this in a way we didn't stop the GST?
Yeah, look, I think it is possible.
In fact, I think it's likely.
We're going to beat this thing.
You reference Australia.
Australia brought in a carbon tax.
They were told they were going to lead the world.
The rest of the world was going to follow them.
They woke up and realized that folks in India and China aren't laying awake at night wondering what Australia is doing about its carbon emissions.
Nobody else followed.
But the cost of the economy was huge.
Australians got rid of it.
Look, we can beat this thing.
I think it's going to be a long, tough fight.
I think that this is going to be a good scrap, to be totally honest with you.
But we can beat it.
And here's the number one reason.
There's the court arguments.
There's the media debates that we're going to have and all of those kind of things.
But people aren't buying it.
They're being told that it won't cost them anything and it'll help the environment.
What they're actually seeing is it's going to take millions and millions of dollars out of their pockets and it's not going to help the environment.
If you really care about the environment, you've got to demand a better policy than a cash grab from government.
People know that.
The politicians can kind of try to ram it through at the top.
But when politicians go up against the people, they generally lose, even if it takes a while.
I think we're going to win this thing.
Well, what a great note to end on.
You've given me some hope.
I like your attitude.
And I think you've got to have that attitude if you're a taxpayers advocate.
And we love the Taxpayers Federation.
It's great to have you on the show.
We talk to your colleagues in other provinces too.
Nice to have someone from Moosejaw on the show.
Keep up the fight and let's keep in touch on this one.
I look forward to when Saskatchewan actually takes it to court.
Maybe we can have you back on then or even before that.
That sounds great.
All right, there you go.
What a pleasure.
That's Todd McKay.
His article in the National Post again is called Ottawa Hides Its Carbon Tax Math while Saskatchewan Crunches the Numbers.
He's the Prairies Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
Stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
Court Reporting Mission00:01:36
That's the show for today.
I am not off to London right away.
I'll let you know when I'm over there.
But I just wanted to tell you, because it's on my mind, I'm booking the trip.
I'm getting things set up over there.
I'm looking forward to doing court reporting.
It's going to be a heavy trial.
The fact that the absolute most senior judge in the United Kingdom, the Lord Chief Justice for England and Wales, leading a three-judge panel of Tommy's hearing, that's amazing.
That's like going to the Supreme Court of Canada or the Supreme Court of the United States.
I got to tell you, I'm a little nervous, actually.
I'm sort of excited by it.
Just the opportunity to be there.
But of course, I'm there on a grave mission to report what is said and done in that court and to report contra, the mainstream media, that will be lying.
And I tell you, they'll be lying because everything I know from Tommy, from personal observation from the year I worked with him, when I saw how the media were treated, it was a lie.
So I'm not just saying they have a different opinion.
They can have a different opinion than me.
I'm saying that it is fake news.
If you follow the Daily Mail or the Sun or any of the tabloids or even the Prestige papers of the BBC, the way they cover Tommy Robinson is false.
I think that's why Tommy had his wife and his other family members contact me and said, Tommy wants you to come to report.
I know why.
I know why.
Because he doesn't want it to be a wall of lies about him.
All right.
Folks, I hope you enjoyed the week.
I hope you enjoyed the day.
That's it for this week.
We've got some YouTube videos all weekend as we always do.
I'll be back on Monday.
Until then, on behalf of all this here at RoboWorld Headquarters, you at home.