Ezra Levant slams Andrew Scheer for failing to integrate Maxime Bernier—who quit after a 1% loss and launched his own party—calling it a missed chance to unite Quebec conservatives. Scheer’s ban on "rebel media" like Levant’s show, despite allowing activist groups tied to Trudeau’s M103 motion, exposes hypocrisy in freedom of speech claims. Alberta’s Prem Singh launches Canadians for Democracy and Prosperity, training advocates with tools like NationBuilder and hosting Tucker Carlson on Sept 22, pushing back against party suppression. Halifax Conservative Clinton DeVoe warns supply management—a 1972 Trudeau policy—hurts consumers by inflating dairy prices while risking NAFTA, but elite MPs ignore grassroots demands. Bernier’s exit may spark a conservative split unless Scheer confronts ideological cowardice head-on. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, the Rebel goes to the Conservative Convention in Halifax.
It's August 24th, 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 for why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Welcome from Halifax.
What a gorgeous day.
A little bit overcast, 26 degrees.
We are in town for the Conservative Party convention.
Leader Andrew Scheer started the convention with a bang, not fired from him, but at him by Maxime Bernier.
Maxime Bernier lost to Andrew Scheer in the leadership race 15 months ago by about 1%.
And Andrew Scheer never managed to absorb Maxime Bernier properly into the party.
That really is job one for any new leader in a contest is to do his best to mollify his rivals and if possible make them part of the team.
I think of Stephen Harper and how he fused Stockwell Day into his team.
Of course, you can go further back in time to see how Jean-Cretchen took Paul Martin and made him an important asset, at least for 10 years, till their détente fell apart.
Unfortunately, Andrew Scheer did not or could not or would not do that with Maxime Bernier.
And Bernier quit the party the day before the convention, announcing at a press conference in Ottawa that he was going to start his own party.
Here, take a quick look.
If we want conservative principles to win the bottle of ideas, we have to defend them openly, with passion, and with conviction.
That is what I want to do.
And this is why, as of today, I'm no longer a member of the Conservative Party of Canada.
I want to do politics differently.
I will find another way to give a voice to millions of Canadians.
And I will continue to fight for freedom, responsibility, fairness, and respect.
Well, as you know, I am sympathetic to Maxime Bernier for a number of reasons.
I find him charming and charismatic.
I like the fact that he has courage, especially on the subjects that so many other Conservatives are afraid of, whether it's extreme multiculturalism, open borders, immigration, or, of course, supply management, which is the sanitized name for quotas for Canada's dairy cartel.
Maxime did not win, though, and it was not his place to set key policy.
He was demoted earlier this year by Andrew Scheer, and it looked like he was heading for a firing, but he fired himself.
And my first thought was, that's a bad idea.
If your goal was promote your policies, do so within the infrastructure of the party.
Do so at the convention.
Do so at the policy debates.
Do so in the votes for little executives in this riding or that.
Put your own people in place and come to terms with the current leader, Andrew Scheer, to be a deputy of some sort, a deputy in charge of Quebec, deputy in charge of dairy cartels or whatever, if you can't, if you can convince him.
And how would that be a proposition that Maxime Bernier could lose by?
Because if Andrew Scheer won the next election, that would likely rely on a strong showing in Quebec, which would be to Maxime Bernier's credit.
And at the very least, he would be a senior cabinet minister.
And if as many people think, Andrew Scheer will not win the next election scheduled for last year, then Maxime Bernier would be the heir apparent even more so.
Right now, he's the obvious only other rival in the party for the leadership.
If he spent one year investing in the party, promoting it, promoting its ideas, he would be there to catch the prize when Andrew Scheer drops it.
Now, neither of those things will happen.
A lot of his policy energy has been taken away from the party.
His supporters are disheartened because he's abandoned the party and will split the right.
And of course, the idea of setting up his own party infrastructure is not only a daunting task, but it's a zero-sum game, I put it to you.
Every vote he gets will likely be taken away from the Conservative Party.
So that's the big headline.
There are other little details at this policy convention.
Alas, we're not there to cover the trivial minutia from within the party itself because Andrew Scheer, in his wisdom, has banned the rebel, but only the rebel, from reporting from inside the conference.
I've told you about this before.
It's really bizarre.
We have our disagreements with Andrew Scheer, as we do with Maxime Bernier, as we did with Stephen Harper, as we do with any leader on the right.
Obviously, there are far fewer disagreements we have with politicians on the right than we do with those on the left or the weird left like Justin Trudeau.
Yet we've never been kicked out of an event by the Liberals.
I should say Sheila Gunread was briefly kicked out of the Alberta legislature by an armed sheriff, but they backed down after the NDP was humiliated for their censorship.
Remember this clip?
He said there should be no problem.
What?
Sorry, why is that?
Three, why?
That's a bizarre pattern or precedent or role model for Andrew Scheer to follow.
Even more bizarre, given Andrew Scheer's public statements that he deeply, truly cares about freedom of speech.
This is a video he put out just this week.
I believe freedom of speech is coming under attack because sometimes it is inconvenient to certain people.
You know, certain people who have a political agenda don't even want there to be a debate about certain things.
Sometimes things are said that others disagree with them.
Sometimes it is maybe offensive or hurts other people's feelings.
But that doesn't mean that we can justify that to curtail or limit or infringe upon such a fundamental freedom.
It doesn't hurt my feelings particularly much to be kept out from meeting rooms where excruciatingly boring seminars are held.
In fact, I put it to you that most members of the party lounge around in the corridors kibbetzing with each other.
There are some exciting policy moments, debates, and there will be some keynote speeches.
But it's more the bizarreness of keeping the rebel out of the conference.
It would be akin to the Republican Party banning Fox News because of some trivial disagreement.
The excuses are ever-changing.
One time, the party said it's because we criticized them in 2017.
Another time they said it's because we're an activist group.
Well, there are 24 activist groups that are registered at the convention.
I say we're activist journalists, but in any event, that excuse doesn't watch.
But it's not actually about the excuses.
It's about a party that has its priorities wrong.
And that's the central thesis of my monologue today that I'm doing on the pier here in Halifax without notes.
Is that the key job for Andrew Scheer over the past 15 months was to unify the party behind him, a party that he just squeaked into the leadership of with less than 1% margin, or he got 51% rather.
That was his key job, and he did not do it.
What was bizarre to me about Maxime Bernier's statement at his press conference this week was that Andrew Scheer hadn't even talked to him in well over a week, despite daily eruptions between Bernier and other MPs.
I think that Andrew Scheer is risk-averse and he's passive and he lacks the kind of courage to make brutal decisions that are sometimes necessary.
And when I mean brutal, I mean demanding discipline from his own MPs, hiring, firing, promoting.
He lacked the courage to deal with the Bernier matter until Bernier took himself out.
I don't think that Andrew Scheer is any stronger.
He may have a tighter grip on the Conservative Party today, but it is a smaller Conservative Party.
Stephen Harper spent years to unite the right.
Andrew Scheer and Maxime Bernier, with their combined errors, have divided the right.
But I think the fact that Andrew Scheer has banned the rebel and the fact that he mishandled Maxime Bernier, and I say again, Bernier made the wrong decision in my mind for several points of view.
But the fact that Andrew Scheer let it come to pass and the fact that he banned us, I believe they are different manifestations of the same problem.
They both diagnose the same ailment.
And it's that Andrew Scheer is not yet the leader he needs to be.
And I want to give you a bizarre example, and it's from the media.
Like I say, we're here at the convention.
We're meeting hundreds of our fans and friends.
We're saying hi to anyone we want.
It's a love-in for us, like it was at the last Conservative convention.
We're having a hospitality party tonight where we're inviting hundreds of people of our SVP.
We see MPs.
We see senators.
We see staff.
I'll tell you one quick anecdote before I get to my main point.
I bumped into a candidate from the lower mainland NBC who said he was getting so much flack from his grassroots members about the ban on the rebel, and he showed me his phone that had all these messages.
He said, Ezra, can I please have a selfie picture with you to send to my constituents to prove to them that I don't hate the rebel like Andrew Scheer does.
It was a funny exchange, and yes, of course they did pose with him.
Even Andrew Schears, some of Andrew Scheer's own personal staff had a friendly hello to us and we spoke at great length and they don't understand it either.
But I want to show you what's going on.
I'm going to read to you from a story in the Globe and Mail that was posted today and it was called by the Globe and Mail a top story.
So this wasn't a little trivial story.
This was not a little colorful anecdote.
The Globe and Mail literally called this a top story.
And I'm going to read it to you and it goes to both the banning of the rebel and the larger problem in the Conservative Party.
And you tell me if I'm right or wrong.
The story was written by one of the Globe and Mail's political columnists, but I really think she's more a gossip columnist.
Her name is Laura Stone.
And here's the headline.
You just got to, I love this.
Top conservative aide seen speaking to rebel media who are banned from party convention.
That's it.
It's like, oh, who did you pass a note to in gym class?
This is like childish grade school gossip.
But let me read a little bit more because I'm coming to my point here.
Conservative leader Andrew Scheer's national campaign manager was seen speaking with members of rebel media outside of the party's convention in Halifax, even though the far right website is barred from covering the event for being an activist group.
We're not barred from covering the event.
We're covering it quite well.
We're just barred from coming in their meetings.
Hamish Marshall, who will spearhead the Conservative Party's federal election efforts, was spotted speaking to members of the outlet, known for its anti-Muslim rhetoric, on a restaurant patio as the party's convention kicked off on Thursday.
The Globe and Mail was provided with photographs of the interaction.
Was it surveillance footage?
Did you hire a private eye?
We were sitting on a panel.
Let me read some more.
The right-wing outlet is banned from covering the convention.
No, we're not.
We're covering it.
We're covering it more in more fairness and more detail than the Globe is.
Banned from covering the convention, but some of its representatives, including founder Ezra Levant, he's terrible, are in Halifax.
I have been spotted here.
And we'll be hosting a party.
That's the worst.
Off-site on Friday night, Mr. Marshall was seen speaking with contributor Sheila Gunreed and two others, but not Mr. Levant.
This goes on for hundreds and hundreds of words.
Quote, we don't give media accreditation to activist groups.
Conservative Party spokesman Corey Hahn said, well, that's just not true.
Here's a list of 24 activist groups they've given accreditation to, including a group that promoted the M103 Islamophobia censorship motion.
So that's just not true.
And that's his third excuse in Europe.
But it's not about the excuses.
I'm going to get back to why his excuses is so funny in a minute.
Mr. Marshall was once listed as a director of the Conservative News Outlet, but has since been removed.
No one removed him.
He left.
He left to go work for Andrew Scheer.
And said he was severing ties with the organization.
He also shared Toronto office space with the company during the Tory leadership race, although he said he never discussed campaign management.
That's true.
When asked why he was speaking with members of the outlet, Mr. Marshall said he simply stopped by to say hello.
And they quote him, ready?
I just said hi to somebody on the street, Mr. Marshall told the Globe.
When asked if he thinks the group should be able to cover the convention, Mr. Marshall said he's not involved in the media accreditation process.
And anyway, I'm not going to go on.
It goes on and on and on and on.
And this was a top story that Hamish literally said hi to Sheila on the street.
This was a top story.
Here's why this story makes me laugh and makes me cry at the same time.
And here's why this story is more than just a vanity name check of me or just a goofy little colorful anecdote.
Here's why this story is important.
First of all, it shows the bad faith of the media.
This is allegedly Canada's newspaper of record, the Mighty Globe and Mail.
And they think a little, hey, hi, hi on the street between the Rebel and our friend, our former director and ally and buddy, is a top story.
That's fake news at its core.
I mean, it is accurate.
They did say hi.
But to call that a top story, isn't that the definition of fake news?
Why This Story Matters00:05:35
Who's covering the Conservative Conference better?
I grant you, they've got the hey, hi, beat covered better than we do.
That is correct.
The true policies and ideologies, not so much, the Globe.
So they're giving that their top story billing.
They're actually not covering news.
That is actually not news.
That is them attempting to deplatform us, deperson us, make it so that anyone in the party is terrified of saying hello to us.
They're going to have to do a lot more top stories because we, yesterday we had dinner outside the convention center just at some Mexican restaurant.
I was, I mean, you know me.
I like to snack a teeny bit.
I was on my feet probably 100 times.
It's the most exercise.
That's the first meal I've ever had where I lost weight because I was up and down and up and down and up and down saying hi to 100 people coming over to say hi.
There were even some hugs.
That's a top story for you.
My point is, that is not a real news story.
It is not real news that I said hello.
It's an attempt to terrify politically the Conservative Party from talking to people who they think have the wrong opinions.
It is not news that Sheila said hi to Hamish.
They're former colleagues, they're friendly enough.
There's no, even if they weren't, it's civil to say hello.
It is not a top news story to report that, but the purpose was not news.
The purpose was to say, we're watching you, conservatives.
And if you dare consort with A, our competitors at the Rebel, and B, our ideological competitors, we will shame you and name you.
So it's not even news.
But here's the second point, and this goes to the problem with Andrew Scheer.
Why did Corey Hahn, senior communications staffer, and why did Hamish Marshall himself feel the need to dignify this stupid fake news story with an answer at all?
Why wasn't their answer F off?
Or if they were being more communications professionals, that's a ridiculous question.
I'm busy.
Or probably the best answer is not even to reply.
Why did they feel the need to answer such an obviously bad faith, non-news, gossip, innuendo question?
Why did they feel the need to come up with talking points and to justify, well, we kept them out because they're an activist, or I swear I was only saying hi.
Please don't be mad at me.
Why did Hamish, who's a friend of mine, and Corey, who I don't know well, why did they feel the need to oblige such a stupid question from the media party?
And therein you find Andrew Scheer's chief problem.
Andrew Scheer's worst enemy in the 2019 election will not be Justin Trudeau, possibly the laziest man in Canadian politics, possibly the least articulate man when he's off a teleprompter, possibly the most thin-skinned man.
You've seen him lash out at that grandma the other week in Quebec.
You've seen him swear in parliament.
You've seen him elbow an MP.
Justin Trudeau himself is actually a weak candidate and his shtick dancing, the selfies, the costume, is wearing thin on Canadians.
Justin Trudeau is not Andrew Scheer's opponent.
The media party is.
That's what Maxime Bernier got right last week, calling CBC fake news, calling Rosemary Barton despicable.
And that's what Hamish and Corey got wrong in this stupid front page non-story in the Globe and Mail.
Sheila said hi and Hamish said hey.
Oh, I swear, I swear that's all we said.
I'm so sorry, Master.
I won't do it again.
Anyone who submits to the Globe and Mail, the CBC, the CTV, or the rest of the media party is assuring that they will not win the next election.
Because not only are they giving oxygen to those liars in the mainstream media, they're allowing their mind to be colonized by them and they're allowing their friends and enemies, their causes and platforms to be governed by them.
The day that Hamish and Corey and Andrew Scheer himself can look the CBC in the eyes, can look the Globe and Mail in the eyes and say, go to hell, you fake news liars, is the first step on their victory in the election.
And if they continue to hide under the bed and do what they're told, they will lose.
Covering the Conservative Convention from Halifax, I'm Ezra Levan and you stay with us because we've got a couple of interesting interviews by our Sheila Gunry.
Well, we're out here in Halifax on the Atlantic coast, but we have lots of friends from the entire country here, especially from the West.
Grassroots Activism Pushes Boundaries00:11:56
Sheila caught up with Prem Singh to see what she's up to in terms of grassroots conservative activism.
So joining me right now is Alberta Conservative activist Prem Singh.
Now, Prem, you're a longtime Conservative activist, but you're not just an activist, you're sort of starting influential movements where you see a void.
For example, you helped found Alberta Can't Wait, which started the Jason Kenney juggernaut.
You started having those conversations before even he did, before we knew that he would be the guy.
And you also were influential in starting Save Calgary, which fills an amazing void where I think there's a real deficit of accountability in municipal politics, where Conservatives have sort of walked off the field.
But you're starting something new.
Yes, we are.
What we learned from Alberta Can't Wait was, look, both the party and the party establishments were against unity.
And sometimes you have to go against what establishment wants and you have to break that up.
And that's what we did.
We facilitated and started that structural change and now we have the UCP.
And with respect to Save Calgary, yeah, it's a municipal grassroots watchdog.
And so I thought what we need to do is have a federal grassroots movement.
And we're a pretty diverse bunch.
I'm the oldest person.
And our job and what we'd like to do is train young people.
And we had our initial training program where it was very, we trained them in political theory, but also practical training.
They've learned about Nation Builder.
They are all Nation Builder certified.
They've learned about social media and just advocacy.
What we would like to do is educate Canadians across the board, regardless of their partisanship, on issues that they do want to learn and talk about.
Education, electricity, the energy, our resources, our forestry.
All of these issues talk about borders, talk about immigration, all the issues that people on the street, everyday people, want to talk about.
This whole, you know, maybe our Prime Minister is half right when he says diversity is strength, but he's missing the boat on something.
It's diversity of thoughts is our strength.
And we can't suppress ideas and we can't surround our parties with sycophants.
We need to be able to have new ideas, fresh ideas, break up the establishment, let the next generation come in.
And these politicians and our parties, they don't, they work for us.
And we seem to have it the opposite.
So it's up to us as grassroots to unite, become educated, become engaged.
It doesn't matter what party or what stripe you are, but we all have to get active and be engaged and hold our politicians and these parties to account.
I do think that when you have fresh new ideas and you're able to talk about them instead of suppressing them, the best always rises to the top.
And that's how we're going to be able to create change and have bold ideas and bold policies.
So we're also doing a speaker series and we'll have special guests from across the world.
We're excited about our first one.
It's going to be Tucker Carlson on September 22nd.
So we're pretty excited and we will have guests from all across the spectrum.
We'll probably have for a year.
And yes, our biggest thing in, sorry, I forgot to mention what it's called, Canadians for Democracy and Prosperity, because I do believe that Canadians from all walks of life all want democracy and we all want prosperity for everybody.
We think it's important to have the grassroots involved and I think it's important for this to be a self-sustaining endeavor.
It might take us a bit of time to get there, but that is our goal.
Now, what I really hope that your organization does is it, as a Conservative, I hope it changes the fact that within this convention today, there are the official conservative types that think that there are things that we cannot talk about, that we simply cannot talk about, like immigration levels, like supply management.
To punch back against this idea that diversity of colour is our strength as opposed to diversity of ideas.
Do you think that you'll be able to sort of reset the official conservative types when you do this?
Because you do have a history of sort of forcing official conservatives to hit the reset button.
That is our goal.
I don't think that we need to be afraid to speak our mind within reason.
We're not out here just because I have a different thought than you.
That doesn't make me a racist or a xenophobe or everything else that they're going to be.
No, Prem, you're a white supremacist.
So, you know, we have to get over that hump.
We have to stop apologizing and being afraid.
Because right now, we've created our language as a minefield.
And whatever we say, we're afraid that we're going to say something wrong that's going to upset somebody.
And then we're apologizing.
We need to stop, as Canadians apologizing.
Stop apologizing for our resources.
We need to stand up for ourselves.
We have to, we're at a crossroads.
Our country is.
And we do have to make a change if we are going to be competitive in the world.
And we have to look out for our own security, our own economy.
We can't leave it up to the politicians.
We have to demand these things.
So, Prem, how do people get in touch with you?
How do they support your new endeavor?
And how do they get to go to Tucker Carlson?
Well, they could email us at info at democracyandprosperity.ca.
And otherwise, you can get a hold of me through Alberta Can't Wait or Save Calgary.
Great.
Thanks so much, Prem.
Good luck.
Well, one of the policy issues that has divided the Conservative Party, and in fact was the chief issue cited by Maxime Bernier when he quit the party, was Andrew Scheer's support for the dairy cartel in Canada, which has a sanitized name.
It goes by supply management.
Sheila Gunread spoke with Clinton DeVoe about that issue.
It's the very first afternoon of the Conservative Party convention here in Halifax, and I found someone who wants to end supply management.
Where are you from, and why can't you stand supply management?
Well, I'm from the Halifax area, and I split my time between Ottawa and Halifax for work, and I'm not connected in politics as far as a career goes.
But why are you against supply management?
So I'm opposed to supply management because it charges, as a consumer, we face inflated prices on basic food items like eggs, milk, poultry.
It limits our choice that's available on the grocery shelf.
And for those reasons, it's just not conservative.
It's a terrible policy.
It was brought in by Pierre Elliott Trudeau in 1972, and no real Conservative, in good conscience, can support supply management.
So I see that you've been giving out buttons.
What has the reception been like for you as you stand outside this conference where it is official policy of the Conservative Party to support supply management?
Well, the reception has been absolutely phenomenal.
So there's two types of reception.
The first one is from the general membership of the party.
I've actually emptied out three bags like this one.
This is my fourth one.
And we're just a couple hours into this.
We're just a couple hours into this.
And anyone that's connected to the party structure, I like to call the elites of the party, they just snub your nose and don't want to look at you and ignore you.
And what about the regular people?
Regular people love it.
They've been buying, they've been not buying, but they've been taking the buttons, they've been putting them on their jackets, their backpacks, just running around with them.
They really, really love them.
So there is a motion about supply management that may or may not make it to the floor.
What have you heard about what's going on with that motion?
Well, the feeling that I've been hearing from the regular members is that the process, unfortunately, sounds like it might be a fixed process because they only allow 10 policy resolutions to come to the floor.
And supply management is number 26 or 27 on the list.
And they give you a maximum of three hours to debate policy, which means there's a good chance that the clock will be run out and supply management won't even make it to the floor.
So we just heard this afternoon that Max Bernier, the biggest, I guess the biggest activist within caucus against supply management, has left the Conservative caucus.
And it sounds like so far he'll sit as an independent.
What effect do you think that's going to have on the movement both within the party and outside the party to end supply management?
Well, I think that the grassroots membership is ready to end supply management.
The problem is the party, for whatever reason, doesn't want to end it.
And what I see the effect of that is it's going to tear the party apart.
And I think that it's becoming more and more likely that we are going to see a new conservative party that's most likely going to be created as more and more members from Newfoundland to British Columbia give up if the party's not prepared to move on these basic conservative ideas.
You know, as an Albertan, I would really hate to see that.
We just spent 10 years wandering in the wilderness with a fractured Conservative Party.
Do you feel like there is something that could have been done before today to prevent supply management from becoming such a divisive thing, both within caucus, but even in our trade deals with our friends in the United States?
Most definitely.
So in regards to the United States, they've made it very clear that unless Canada phases out supply management over five years, there will be no NAFTA deal.
And you're from Alberta.
Alberta and Saskatchewan's energy business depends on trade.
If we start seeing a tightening of the border and trade agreements being thrown out the window because of egg and milk farmers, that is going to do great harm to Saskatchewan and Alberta's energy sector.
Most of the membership of the Conservative Party, as far as elected representatives, not all, but a lot of them are cowards and they're afraid to speak out.
And unfortunately, the membership has to accept a party that wants to give corporate welfare to General Motors, corporate welfare to Bombardi, wants to protect a cartel like supply management.
They want to endanger things like NAFTA.
So if you're a small government free market conservative, it doesn't leave you with a lot of places to call a home with the three old line parties.
And so it might be time to start looking at creating a new party if on a policy front there's nowhere to call home.
You know, I understand your point, but I hope that there are enough conservative members from within and maybe some conservative party MPs that are emboldened enough to listen to the grassroots to make some change.
And I want to thank you so much for taking the time to discuss supply management with me today.