David Menzies examines Hudson’s Bay dropping Ivanka Trump’s line, blaming either weak sales or backlash from groups like Peeved Beavers, which protested in 2017 over perceived misogyny and Canadian values conflicts. Lauren Gunter links Greyhound’s exit to government-mandated routes and competition, while Mark Murano attributes Canada’s rising CO2 emissions to failed green policies, contrasting the U.S.’s fracking-driven decline. Menzies mocks progressive critiques of Wyoming’s "cowboys" slogan, dismissing them as hypocritical attacks on Western identity. The episode reveals how activism and regulation often clash with economic reality, reshaping industries and cultural norms under ideological pressure. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, the Hudson's Bay is dropping the Ivanka Trump clothing line.
Was this a business decision or progressive bullying?
It's July 17th.
I'm David Menzies, and this is The Ezra Levent 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.
Attention Hudson's Bay shoppers.
The Ivanka Trump clothing line is heading to the clearance bin.
Yes, the Bay is phasing out this high-end haberdashery.
But what is responsible for its demise?
Is it poor sales or is it mounting pressure by the usual suspects?
So the Hudson's Bay chain is the latest retailer to axe the Ivanka Trump line of clothing.
Hey, it is the Bay's right to sell or not to sell anything it so chooses.
No argument there.
And in a Toronto Star story, a Bay spokesperson had this to say about the Ivanka Trump merchandise.
Quote, Hudson's Bay is phasing out this brand through the fall based on its performance.
As part of our regular course of business, we review our merchandise offerings and make appropriate changes, end quote.
So there you have it.
It's all about performance or is it?
Now the Bay doesn't have to divulge sales figures and to be quite frank, if the chain was axing any other clothing line, I wouldn't give a Rotom's rectum.
But because there's a Donald Trump hook to this story, well folks, my spidey senses are tingling.
After all, those suffering from Trump derangement syndrome continue to wage war on anything associated with the president.
In the case of the Ivanka line of clothing, Nordstroms and Sears ceased to carry the line last year.
But again, I'd love to know if this eradication is due to lackluster sales, as claimed, or if this is all about bending to the will of progressive bullies.
After all, more than 40 companies and organizations are listed on the hashtag grab your wallet boycott list, either because they carry Trump products or they have some sort of indirect connection with the president.
So one must ponder if this pressure got to the bay.
And if the bay is indeed caving to such pressure, let's just consider the caliber of people that the chain is indeed acquiescing to.
You see, in February 2017, we ventured out to Toronto's flagship bay store to cover a protest over the Ivanka Trump merchandise by a group called the Peeved Beavers.
Yeah, the Peeved Beavers.
And in case you missed that report, here are a few highlights.
Oh, you're one of the Pea Beavers, right?
I am.
I'm a Peeved Beaver indeed.
Now, what's peeving you off, man?
Oh, boy.
So much is a heavy time.
I don't believe that Canada has the values that we're seeing be allowed, I guess, such big voice in the States under Donald Trump.
It upsets me that Hudson's Bay has not taken a stand, as Nordstrom has, to not support Ivanka Trump and her line of clothing.
When you think of all the things, I guess, facing women in so many countries around the world, is this really such a big deal?
Absolutely, it is.
I mean, you have to start somewhere.
You have to fight all forms of oppression.
This is oppressive.
The message from the Trump government and Ivanka, because she's his first lady, you know, is...
I don't think she's a first lady, right?
She's performing the duties that a first lady normally does, and this is well documented in the press.
Yeah, so Ivanka is the first lady, or is at least performing the duties of the first lady, which has been well documented in the press, so it must be true, right?
Yikes.
But wait, folks, there's more.
Like, Trump is a misogynist, right?
So if I protest against his daughter and that brand and that information that they support, then I am fighting for women's rights and the rights of everyone.
When I look at a country say Saudi Arabia, a woman can't drive, can't vote, has to completely cover herself in a fabric.
I mean, to me, that seems far more misogynistic than anything coming out of the White House.
Oh, I disagree entirely.
Oh, absolutely.
Grab her by the pussy.
You think that's acceptable?
That was locker room talk.
By the same token, you're calling yourself the Peave Beavers.
Yeah.
Well, isn't that a slur word for female genitalia as well?
I guess we're co-opting the name.
You know, I think I can actually feel myself getting dumber as I listen to this stuff.
And as the day wore on, folks, it only got more bizarre.
Just listen to this surreal chant.
The eye of Sauron is upon us!
Did you catch that?
She actually referred to Donald Trump as the Eye of Sauron.
Yeah, the villain from the Lord of the Rings.
I see you.
Oh, little Hobbit, what nonsense you spew.
Bottom line, if indeed the Bay was coerced by the likes of the Peave Beavers to drop the Ivanka Trump line of clothing, then this surely falls into the category of not knowing your audience.
From what I can tell, such progressive protester possesses simply aren't into high fashion in the first place.
Government-Mandated Bus Routes00:11:51
Meanwhile, those who are Trump supporters, which is a very sizable number, I would suggest, might just find themselves royally peeved off now.
And I should think that the Bay had better hope that these people, i.e. their customers, don't demonstrate their discontent by taking all of their department store business elsewhere.
Stay with us.
More of the Ezra Levin show coming up.
Well, it's the end of an era.
The iconic logo of the Greyhound Bus Company won't be seen on the roads of much of Western Canada as the company plans to end service in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and most of British Columbia come October.
But the question arises, what led to Greyhound abandoning these markets in the first place?
With more on this story as Edmonton Sun columnist Lauren Gunter, welcome to the Ezra Levent Show, Lauren.
Thank you very much.
Always great to have you.
And Lauren, you recently wrote a superb column about the demise of Greyhound in the West.
And while more people are driving cars these days and using discount airliners, it appears that Greyhound was also burdened by just too much government regulation.
Can you elaborate on that?
Sure.
I mean, I think it's interesting that Jagmit Singh, the NDP leader federally, has called for funding for Greyhound to keep it going when what's needed is for the provincial governments where it operates to all get out of the way of creative solutions.
So Greyhound is by its own decision, kind of married to big buses, to overbuilt terminals with regular schedules, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
So part of it is a business decision.
But part of it, too, is that provincial governments, with the exception of Alberta, which deregulated buses in 2011, most of the rest of the provinces that are affected by this pullout dictate to Greyhound that it must run certain routes, that it must have certain buses, that it can't abandon X and Y village, that it has to stop everywhere, regardless of whether there's been a passenger there or not in the last 15 years.
So Greyhound has an awful lot of baggage to carry, literally and figuratively, and that's one of the big reasons why it's not profitable.
Well, clearly, Lauren, it seems to me from what your column states, the government isn't really good when it comes to the bus business.
Maybe it's not good in any business for that matter.
And, you know, I think you nailed it in one of the paragraphs.
As an example, you said, for instance, a government might decree that there had to be a full-size bus leave town A at least once a day, headed for big city B. Didn't matter whether there was enough business to turn a profit on that route.
The government felt there was a valid public policy reason for the service, so it commanded Greyhound to do so.
Well, Lauren, the question begs, if Greyhound was, why would the government mandate Greyhound to run a full-size, say, 53-seat bus when there wasn't enough people to even fill one-third of that bus?
They could get by with that edict at maybe a profitable basis if they ran a smaller shuttle, but you're telling me they weren't allowed to.
Exactly.
And one of the examples that proves that point, David, is that about six years ago, Acadia Bus Lines, which was the Greyhound equivalent in the three maritime provinces, it decided that it was going to fold because it could no longer be profitable with its model, which was also big highway buses and built-up terminals and the standard old-fashioned bus model.
And everybody, well, not everybody, but lots of people in the three maritime provinces wrung their hands and moaned about the fact that they were losing this bus service and people wouldn't be able to get to medical appointments and poor people wouldn't be able to get to jobs and et cetera, et cetera.
The same arguments that are being made now with Greyhound.
But what happened was the three maritime provinces then had to accept Maritime Bus, which was a much more flexible private sector bus service, which sometimes runs vam from one town to the next when there's not enough business for a big city bus.
And it will cut back on the schedule during off-peak periods of the year and off-peak periods of the week.
You don't have the same schedule every day.
You don't have the same schedule every month or every season.
And so that has allowed bus service to re-establish itself wherever there's demand in the three maritime provinces without the government having to come in and either subsidize the old service, which was Acadian, or start up its own service.
I'll give you a very good example.
In Saskatchewan, until May of last year, May of 2017, they owned their own intercity bus company.
It was called Saskatchewan Transit Company.
And lots of people, very sentimental about the way they are about the CBC or about Canada Post.
We must have these things.
We've always had them.
They're so much more reliable and fairer than the private sector.
Well, the Saskatchewan government owned STC until May of 2017.
And finally, the Brad Wall government got rid of it because they calculated that on most routes, the subsidy per passenger per trip had climbed to between $90 and $100.
So every time somebody got on the bus, taxpayers had to pay $90 to $100 to take them from where they got picked up to where they got dropped off.
And that's basically what's been happening to Greyhound indirectly through all of these government regulations.
So if the governments in BC, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Manitoba would just get out of the way and allow private sectors to start up.
It might just be Dave with a van.
It might just be Lauren with the big station wagon.
But there will be a service and it will match what the demand in Pump Handle Saskatchewan is.
Well, you know, Lauren, here's a hypothetical question for you, and it's this: Is Greyhound really serious about this pullout?
Or is this to use a Trumpian phrase, the art of the deal?
And what I'm getting at is: did they make this announcement to get a reaction from government for government to come back to Greyhound and look and say, listen, you can't leave there.
You know, there's still significant demand.
What can we do with the regulations to change them to make this more profitable for you to remain as a bus carrier in Western Canada?
Yeah, I don't think so.
Western Canada is such a small market for Greyhound now.
It's almost lost, it's lost almost 50% of its ridership in Western Canada since 2010.
And as you said in the intro, the big reason for that is there's now discount airlines.
I looked this up the other day when Greyhound announced it was pulling out.
If I wanted to go from Edmonton to Winnipeg on Greyhound, it would cost me over $170.
If I wanted to go from Edmonton to Winnipeg on WestJet, it would cost me $270.
So for about $100 difference, I can get there in two hours versus 16 to 18 hours.
Well, there aren't many people who won't make that choice.
Even people on low income are choosing that kind of convenience over the ordeal of going on the bus.
There's not that much romance.
I remember people when I went home from university about nine hours, a one-way trip, four or five times a year on Greyhound from Edmonton to Madison Hat.
And you had to stop in a bunch of little towns and you had to have a two-hour layover in Calgary while you switched buses.
And it wasn't particularly convenient.
But at the time, nobody thought different of it because there were no other alternatives.
I couldn't drive.
There wasn't a flight that was affordable.
And so you just took the bus.
That's what it was.
And sometimes people then were kind of nostalgic about, oh, I had this great long discussion with this lady who was going to visit her child and blah, blah, blah.
You know, all those sorts of, you've heard all of that stuff.
And there's still some of that nostalgia, some of that, that fuzzy feeling about Greyhound in the reaction to this announcement.
But from a utilitarian standpoint, more people are driving, more people are taking flights, and it's just not profitable for Greyhound as it's structured to do it.
Greyhound just built a brand new terminal in Edmonton.
It's not fancy, but it got moved out of its downtown location by our new hockey rink.
And so they built a new rink.
Or a new rink.
They built a new terminal out by the freeway.
And now they're backing away from that because that kind of model just doesn't work for bus companies anymore.
One last question then, Lauren.
What do you think of the politicization of this Greyhound withdrawal from Western Canada?
Example, it's being floated that people in rural areas, native reserves, they're going to be forced to hitchhike.
This will particularly put women at risk.
And I noticed earlier today, Prime Minister Trudeau made some announcement, nothing concrete, but he wants Mark Garneau, the transportation minister, to look into remedies.
So I guess what I'm asking you, sir, is how do you see this playing out?
Or is it just come Halloween?
That's it for Greyhound in Western Canada.
Well, I do think that the feds, because they're progressives, and most of the provincial governments in the West, including the Alberta NDP, who are progressives, will try and come up with some sort of government solution to this.
But that's because progressives have no imagination.
Whenever there is an issue that comes forward, the only solution they ever see is a government solution, a taxpayer-funded solution.
And so will they try and come up with some money, maybe?
But at the very most, that will only prevent the inevitable from happening.
They simply have to get out of the way and let local entrepreneurs figure out what it is.
There's going to be somebody in almost all of these communities, or somebody in a region of one of these provinces, or over all three provinces.
There's going to be someone who says, look, there's a bunch of buses now that I can get for pennies on the dollar from Greyhound.
I can run them.
If I also have some vans, 12-passenger vans, I can run those too, and we'll provide a service.
That's going to happen.
There is just too many people in Western Canada who need to get to oil rigs and into the bush, you know, into logging operations and things that there isn't enough.
You know, there's clearly enough business for some sort of transportation like this, but it's not on the Greyhound model and it's not on the regulated model that governments are thinking of.
And so somebody coming along and deciding to give taxpayer dollars to keep Greyhound alive is merely funding a system that's inevitably going to collapse.
Well, there you have it.
And Lauren, maybe, like you said earlier, if government does get out of the way, maybe with my minivan and your station wagon, we can be the new carriers of people in Western Canada.
China's Massive Energy Investments00:11:31
Might not be a nostalgic ride, but it'll be a ride to Point B to nevertheless.
I'm old enough now that I'm full of Nostell.
Hours I'm one about Nostell.
Well, people tell me I'm full of something too, but I can't say it on a family show.
Lauren, thank you so much for weighing in on the Greyhound issue.
Much appreciated.
Don't worry.
Thank you.
And folks, keep it here.
More of the Ezra Levin show to come right after this.
Well, the most recent global report card rating CO2 emissions has arrived, and the results are eyebrow-raising for...
For example, just check out which country had the largest decline in CO2 emissions.
Well, it was none other than the United States of America.
But on the flip side, just check out which country made the top 10 list in terms of having one of the largest increases in CO2 emissions.
Well, it's Canada.
But how can this be?
Haven't we been led to believe that the Trudeau liberals are climate change crusaders, whereas the Trump administration doesn't give a darn about the environment?
Well, joining me now to make sense of it all is Mark Murano, the founder of ClimateDepot.com.
Thanks for coming on the Ezra Levant Show, Mark.
Thank you, David.
Happy to be here today.
And the U.S. leading the way on fighting climate change under Donald Trump.
Trump is the climate hero.
But you know, here's the thing, Mark.
How did this come to be, given the narrative right off the bat?
What factors have led to the U.S. actually having the greatest decrease in carbon emissions?
Well, it's been the simple answer is fracking as it replaces coal for electricity use in the United States.
Fracking is just so much more cleaner, efficient, lower CO2 burning, not that clean and CO2 go together, but just in a lot of other pollutants.
And it's becoming ubiquitous and cheap.
So what's happened is they don't want to credit.
When I say they, I mean the environmental groups, the media doesn't want to credit fracking.
So originally they were trying to say, well, this is because of the great recession of 2007 and 2008.
And by the way, you may have seen some of the extreme weather we're getting here now.
But they tried to blame it on the big stock market and recession we had 2008.
And they tried that for years to say, oh, well, it's just a leftover of that.
In fact, they were so optimistic that I would go to United Nations conferences and climate activists like Kevin Anderson at the UK and other UN officials were calling for planned recessions in order to lower emissions and fight global warming.
That's how convinced.
But the problem now is that argument no longer holds any water as we go forward here because the U.S. economy is doing very well with record low unemployment and very steady, robust economic growth.
And we're still leading the way.
It's because of the energy revolution in technology, not because of regulations, not because of treaties.
We're pulling out of the UN-Paris Agreement and we're going full steam on fossil fuels and we're still leading the world.
It just goes to show you this is about technology and about unleashing and allowing the energy sector and the free market to go out and get that energy, which is what's happening mostly in the United States.
We still have states like New York that won't even allow fracking.
Well, you know, Mark, I find that incredible that people on the other side of this issue actually advocate for a recession as being a good thing.
But, you know, I guess we're used to that kind of inanity from some of those progressives.
But tell me, I guess from what you're saying, it seems to me that it's deregulation that is leading the U.S. toward what some call the fracking miracle, with the exception of New York, of course.
Do I have that right, Mark, that there's fewer regulations that are preventing the energy companies from going out there and getting this energy to market?
Yeah, I mean, I've been toured several different fracking sites.
It's amazing.
It's not just deregulation.
I mean, it's deregulation, but it's also just that incentive.
You know, I was in Pennsylvania, and it's amazing to see the amount of drilling they're able to do, the amount of oil, the amount of small, like small-time operators that are able to just start up companies and start and make money, and the landowners making money.
So what's happening is there's become a glut, if you will, and that's actually helping to keep energy costs down in the U.S.
And it's also helping to lower our emissions, if that's your goal.
And it is ironic because even the New York Times this week had an article from a Notre Dame professor calling essentially saying that we need central planning and capitalism is the root of all this evil in order to fight global warming.
And this was a guy lamenting that he had his daughter saying that he doesn't know why he would be contributing to the horrible state of our earth and given all the stuff we need.
I mean, they openly advocate the opposite from what works here, the climate activists do.
And that's what we're facing.
Another irony here is that Europe, which is much further along on the road to socialism or central planning, if you will, are doing much, much worse.
They're right in the middle of the pack of the countries doing poorly with rising emissions.
So the irony here is you have all of the French, the French President Macron, other European Union nations and Europe leaders looking down on the Trump administration with their, you know, their noses held high as though we're some kind of scientific rubes because we're not involved in the UN-Paris agreement.
Meanwhile, in real world data, we're kicking their rare ends in terms of lowering our emissions.
Again, if that's your target and goal, and I don't even think it should be with CO2.
But it's amazing because they're trying to make shame us, in the words of John Kerry, global shaming for not being part of the UN-Paris Agreement.
But we're showing we don't even need it if you care about emissions.
No, you're quite right, Mark.
And the numbers bear you out.
I have here that EU emissions were up 1.5%.
And it really kills me because aren't these European countries typically where these UN climate change summits are hosted?
Aren't these the great leaders, the progressives trying to tell us how to do things?
And yet here we have them up 1.5%, whereas the U.S. is down.
Do you have any other insight into what's leading that trend?
Well, in Europe, they've tried a whole series of green energy mandates.
And if you remember, the whole premise of this, going back to Al Gore's film and all these environmental activists, if they want to essentially ban energy that works and then mandate energy that's not ready for prime time, it may never be.
I mean, we don't know.
Solar could have huge breakthroughs.
You never want to be against science or technology.
Wind has been around since what, the 13th century and still hasn't progressed to the point where it can take over on any large scale.
So what's happened here in Europe and in Germany is that they're failing spectacularly and then they're being forced to rely back on the old standby of coal and other forms of energy because they're not, all these projections that they had of green energy just filling in the void and coming over isn't happening.
So we're finding that they haven't unleashed the market.
They haven't deregulated.
They've actually gone the opposite in trying to follow UN mandates or trying to centrally plan.
And they're finding that it's just not, you know, it's not working out for them.
And those numbers you're giving are sound, they sound low, 1.1.5%.
But if you look at these as long-term trends, Europe's doing terrible.
The U.S. has had significant declines because these add up.
And again, I don't know going forward, it's going to be interesting to see how this happens because the cleaner and more technologically advanced you become, the lower our emissions.
And the bottom line is China is going to probably continue to go for decades before they peak in their emissions.
And of course, they're not doing it really squat when it comes to the UN-Paris Agreement in India and all these other countries.
So it really is, as the UN climate official Eden Edenhofer had said years ago, this really is not about the climate, energy, or environment.
It's about redistribution of wealth and it's about empowering the United Nations.
In the words of the other UN climate chief, Christina Figueres, the former chief, it is about a central transformation that will make life on planet Earth very different for everyone.
They really don't care ultimately about the emissions.
They care about who's in charge and who's centrally planning this.
No, I think you're right, Mark.
And by the way, since one last question, since you did mention China, that was the other finding of the report card I noticed.
Together, China and India accounted for nearly half of the entire total global carbon emission increase.
These two countries.
Yet these two countries, they always seem to be getting a pass from the progressives, don't they?
Yeah, not only do they get a pass, but China will set up windmills and cities that turn into ghost towns of all these windmills that no one uses, but they get all this credit.
China's investing X amount of dollars.
Oh, China's way ahead of the U.S.
I don't begrudge them because in terms of their emissions, because they need massive development, India and China, and they're going to continue this way for a long time to come because they're in dire poverty, particularly throughout Asia and all these in the developing world.
So they need to develop.
The immorality comes here where the developing world, white, wealthy Westerners are telling people of color in Africa and Asia, South America, that they can't develop the way we can, that they need to have, in the famous case,
The UN climate chief was touting solar panels on huts made of dung as a way for people to have energy, instead of actually touting real coal power and nuclear or gas to come in there and actually give them infrastructure and clean up their rivers and clean up the air they breathe so they don't have to burn wood and dung and huts made of dung.
So this is, you know, it's a, it's something where we should applaud what China is doing.
China is about 1880 and uh, with the, with the United States and the industrial revolution, they have a long way to go to industrialize and then they'll eventually stabilize, clean up their air and eventually their emissions will lower.
But you know, I don't begrudge them that, but I do begrudge all these greens out there trying to tout China as the green energy role model when they're building coal plant after coal plant on a weekly basis.
Yeah, you know, and and i'll leave it at that market, it reminds me uh, last month in Toronto, we had the annual naked bicycle ride and the ostensible policy reason for this was it was a protest against big oil.
And yet uh, two things.
One is that all these bicycles, um well, they were manufactured in China uh, which meant they had to be shipped over here, and it wasn't dilithium crystals powering the ships or the manufacturing process.
And it's really nice to do a naked bike ride in Toronto when it's plus 30 in june and not minus 30 in january, where they would need all those uh, uh polycarbonate materials that they wear to uh keep them warm.
So the hypocrisy and the delusion is off the charts.
Cow People Rebranding00:03:10
I guess that's where I was getting with that anecdote.
But Mark, thank you so much for weighing in to make sense of this.
Uh, really appreciate your time.
Thank you David, appreciate it.
Thank you Mark, and folks, keep it here.
More of the Ezreal event show to come right after this.
Well, lots of comments on my video about the University of Wyoming getting slammed by the usual PC suspects for their new marketing slogan, namely, the world needs more cowboys.
Apparently, the world needs more cowboys is not inclusive enough and therefore that apparently makes the term cowboy both racist and sexist.
No, i'm not making this up, folks.
Harold writes, remember cowboys and Indians?
Well, today it's bovine management personnel and first nations peoples.
Yes indeed Harold, the language continues to evolve, or is it devolve when it comes to what is and is not acceptable in 2018?
And who knew that Cowboys Cowboys is the new C-word, at least according to all the progressives out there.
Hey, forget about the controversy over the Washington Redskins nickname and logo.
Maybe it will be the NFL's Dallas-based franchise that will have to change its name soon.
And Maurice writes, I've met many cowboys in my life.
Every single one of them has been sexist, misogynistic, homophobic, racist, Islamophobic.
Even the black female Muslim ones.
Cow people, on the other hand, well, maybe that is the solution, Maurice.
To take the boy out of cowboy, just like removing man from mankind.
Maybe if we were to refer to cowboys as cow people, then such a gender-neutral term would lead to more sensitivity and more inclusive behavior.
One thing is for certain, Justin Trudeau would surely approve of that rebranding.
And Lee writes, I hate to burst anyone's bubble, but after 24 years of living in Calgary, I can easily think of a hundred or more Stampede rodeo competitors who were Aboriginal or black or otherwise non-white.
And of course, some of them won the championship.
And I'm not even that much of a rodeo fan.
Oh yes, the truth can be so inconvenient sometimes.
Yes, Lee, I have seen those types of cow people too.
Here's the problem.
Do you think that any progressive would be caught dead at a rodeo, an event that actually celebrates Western heritage?
Looney leftists tend to stay cocooned in their safe spaces, tucked away in their ivory towers, far, far removed from reality.
In the meantime, let's just hope the University of Wyoming sticks to its guns and resists the pressure to drop its slogan.
That would be the cowboy way of doing things after all.
Well, folks, thanks so much for tuning in to the Ezra Event Show, and I will see you here tomorrow night.