On August 29, Donald Trump called Justin Trudeau to discuss a U.S.-Mexico trade deal excluding Canada, but Trudeau refused—despite no public engagements—amid speculation of election-year provocation. Meanwhile, Veterans Affairs Canada paid Christopher Garnier $100K+ for PTSD-related trauma tied to his 2015 murder, despite him never serving, while actual veterans struggle with underfunded programs like Legion halls. Critics like Lee Humphrey and Ezra argue Trudeau’s policies misdirect resources, risking trade retaliation and economic harm, contrasting with Andrew Scheer’s perceived pragmatism in handling U.S. relations. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, Donald Trump tried to phone Justin Trudeau on Monday, but Trudeau refused to take the call.
Does he actually want a trade war with America?
It's August 29th, and you're watching The Ezra LeVant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
You come here once a year with a sign, and you feel morally superior.
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Let me show you something shocking.
You know that on Monday, Donald Trump revealed that he has negotiated a very detailed bilateral trade agreement with Mexico.
Bilateral just means two sides, the U.S. and Mexico is in.
Canada is not part of it.
Well, Trump wanted to talk to Justin Trudeau about that.
I don't know what he wanted to say.
To invite Canada in to tell Trudeau the details, just to take a reading of Trudeau's own views on things.
I don't know, whatever.
I mean, it's a successor trade deal to NAFTA.
The huge treaty that Canada, Mexico, and the United States are in right now.
It was at the very least a courtesy call to Trudeau.
But a leader-to-leader call like that, who knows what would have been said.
What leader in the entire world would not take a phone call from Donald Trump, even if that leader hated him?
In fact, especially if that leader hated him, wouldn't you want to hear what he wanted to tell you?
I mean, China's President Xi, Russia's Vladimir Putin, North Korea's Kim.
Even if you have a disagreement with Trump, actually, especially if you have a disagreement with Trump, wouldn't you want to hear what Donald Trump thought was so important for you to hear that he wants you to hear it from him himself?
I can't imagine turning down such a phone call.
I can't imagine anything being more important or urgent, especially if, like Canada, we are dependent on the United States for trade.
We are so intertwined with America in every way.
Well, Justin Trudeau refused to take the phone call.
He refused.
Trump called Trudeau wouldn't come to the phone.
I'm not kidding.
Of course, I only learned about this from the foreign press.
Our own state broadcaster, the CBC, would never report something so embarrassing, so revealing about our dear leader.
This is from Bloomberg's White House reporter.
Look at this tweet.
Trump had wanted to speak to Trudeau this a.m. before the Mexico trade deal announcement at 11 a.m., but Canada said Trudeau had a schedule conflict at the requested hour, sources told me in Josh Wingrove.
A scheduling conflict, but that's not true.
Every day Justin Trudeau publishes his schedule.
This is his entire official schedule from Monday.
It's just, you know, private time.
He's got some meetings maybe, or maybe that's just code for him taking another day off work.
He's had more than 20 vacation days so far in 2018.
Now he calls those personal days, on top of regular weekends and statutory holidays.
But it's not like he was at an incredibly important function.
He had no public functions.
He was not at some critically important summit meeting.
He was not even in the House of Commons.
He wasn't traveling.
And even if he was doing any of those things, could he not really step out of another engagement for 10 minutes?
Just pretend he had to go to the bathroom or something.
I don't know.
Sir, I know we're having an important conversation.
You know, youth council of Papineau.
I know we're having an important conversation, dairy farmer of Quebec.
I just got the president of the United States on the other line.
How about you take a coffee break and I'll be back in 10?
Who on earth would say no to that?
Who on earth would be more important?
And even if they were more important, who on earth wouldn't understand the need for Justin Trudeau to talk to Donald Trump for 10 minutes in the middle of the after negotiation?
It is obviously not a real excuse.
Even if he were on a plane, which he wasn't, the Prime Minister's plane can take phone calls.
It is a lie that could not possibly be true.
The truth is that Trudeau was snubbing Donald Trump.
Well, Trump returned the favor pretty hard, I'd say.
This is what Donald Trump said at his announcement from the Oval Office on Monday with the Mexican president on the speakerphone.
Canada will start negotiations shortly.
I'll be calling the prime minister very soon, and we'll start negotiation.
And if they'd like to negotiate fairly, we'll do that.
You know, they have tariffs of almost 300% on some of our dairy products, so we can't have that.
We're not going to stand for that.
I think with Canada, frankly, the easiest thing we can do is to tariff their cars coming in.
It's a tremendous amount of money, and it's a very simple negotiation.
It could end in one day, and we take in a lot of money the following day.
But I think we'll give them a chance to probably have a separate deal.
We could have a separate deal, or we could put it into this deal.
That's stunning, but it's not surprising.
It's stunning because our best friend, the United States, is no longer our best friend.
But not surprising, though, because for nearly two years, Justin Trudeau's liberals, with the full support of our state broadcaster, the CBC, have done their best to pick fights with Donald Trump.
It's nuts.
Trump never really paid attention to Canada before, which was good.
He just took us for granted, which is good.
Like we take America for granted, I guess.
Trump always instead focused his ire on China and Mexico when it came to trade irritants, because we Canadians more or less have balanced trade with America.
That means we buy as much from them as they buy from us.
So Trump never really cared about us until Trudeau just started irritating Trump again and again so gratuitously.
Sometimes it was just personal attacks.
Remember this one right before Trump was elected?
I think, however, I've been very, very clear in my approach as a feminist, as someone who has stood clearly and strongly all my life around issues of sexual harassment, standing against violence against women, that I don't need to make any further comment at this time.
That was Justin Trudeau more or less accusing Donald Trump of physical violence against women.
A bit ironic now that we know that Justin Trudeau himself groped women.
But that's politically insane.
That's pretty much how every liberal in Trudeau's office thinks and talks, though.
And they haven't really muted it at all over the past two years.
Most of the time, Trump just didn't pay attention, or if he did, he didn't show it.
It's like a little mouse nibbling at an elephant's toes.
Trump did raise some objections about our 300% dairy import tariffs, but that's not huge in the whole scheme of things.
He raised objections to cheap, subsidized Chinese steel being dumped into the U.S. by coming through Canada.
But again, that's not even our problem, really.
It's just a small thing.
We just have to cut out the Chinese, which is Trump's real rivals.
But Trudeau was so irritating so often, and Christia Freeland, our foreign minister, was so irritating so often.
It had to be on purpose.
Like that speech that Christia Freeland gave earlier this year in Washington at the Foreign Policy Magazine in a real in-your-face way when she won a Diplomat of the Year award.
When people feel their economic future is in jeopardy, when they believe their children have fewer opportunities than they themselves had in their youth, that's when people are vulnerable to the demagogue who scapegoats the outsider, the other, whether it's immigrants at home or trading partners abroad.
So you're in a trade negotiation with Donald Trump and you fly down to his capital city.
You meet with a room of chattering class Washington insiders, lobbyists, pundits. to bash Trump.
Not very veiled bashing of Trump.
Was it really worth it, though?
Being called diplomat of the year.
It's sort of like those world's best dad mugs.
You know, you can buy it any souvenir stuff.
World's best dad.
I mean, it's not a real contest, right?
It's a joke, right?
I mean, if you're the world's best diplomat, first of all, you probably aren't known because the best diplomats achieve their goals for their country, not for their own celebrity.
You know who might actually be the world's best diplomat now that I think about it?
This terror, Sergei Lavrov.
You know that guy?
That's Vladimir Putin's foreign minister.
Putin invaded Georgia, and there were no real penalties against him from George W. Bush.
So Putin invaded Crimea and annexed it with no real penalties from Barack Obama.
Putin shot down a jetliner over Ukraine.
Remember that?
No real penalties.
Putin managed to get Angela Merkel to agree to buy a third of Germany's energy from Russia.
Putin managed to essentially take over Syria from Barack Obama.
Sergei Lavrov did those things.
He doesn't care about giving preening speeches.
He gets things done for Putin, awful things sometimes.
Can you name anything Christia Freeland has got done for her client that is us?
In fact, other than Iran or Cuba, is there a single country in the world that you can name that is more sympathetic or more supportive or more allied with Canada today than when Trudeau and Freeland took over?
I mean, just think of the big ones, Russia, China, India, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the United States.
Can you name a single country that we have stronger ties with now than before Trudeau and Freeland took over?
Diplomat of the Year, what a joke.
Well, our Diplomat of the Year was in Germany on Monday, giving the same anti-American speech.
Isn't that funny?
While Mexico and the United States were celebrating their new agreement, you know, as I mentioned the other day, the Mexican foreign minister has visited the White House 45 times and visited the house of Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, 10 more times.
That's 55 visits.
Trudeau's Trade War Talk00:10:54
No wonder he got a great deal.
In fact, I'm not sure how Mexico's foreign minister could really have been doing anything else with his time if he literally had 55 meetings in Washington.
I bet he's got to have an apartment in Washington.
He's probably, maybe he even lives there.
Obviously, this was the most important thing in his life and for his country's prosperity, and he acted like it, don't you think?
I haven't heard of him giving any speeches bashing America or getting a best diplomat mug.
He got a deal instead.
And I think it's a good deal for Trump, if I read it, right?
It keeps out cheap Chinese parts from Mexican-made cars being sold into America.
It requires higher labor costs at Mexican car factories so that they don't deeply undercut American factories.
That helps Mexican workers, but it obviously helps American factories be more competitive.
These are interesting deals and complicated deals and detailed deals.
And there are other parts of this deal too, including on intellectual property.
And it goes much beyond cars.
And Trump said he's getting along so well with his Mexican counterparts now.
They're talking about continuing their talks on other sensitive issues like border security.
And if you've met someone 55 times, you probably get along with them pretty well by now.
I mean, how many times have you met any friends in your life?
That's, you know, both sides are obviously getting something positive out of it.
You know that it was a success for Mexico when that crazy Trump hater, I don't know if you know this guy, he's the former Mexican president Vicente Fox.
He is a kook on Twitter.
And here's one of his tweets.
This is translated by Twitter automatically into English.
He was tweeting about how important a deal this was for Mexico.
Today there is much to celebrate great triumph for Mexico for President Peña and his great negotiating team.
Bravo, great win.
You know, it's we all win.
Trade is always a win.
So this guy hates Trump.
He has in the past condemned this same Mexican government for dealing with Trump.
But then Mexico pulled a rabbit out of a hat for both sides.
I guess Trump has done enough deals in his life to know the best ones are ones where both sides can say they won something.
So Christia Freeland saw this and she hopped on a plane and flew from Germany where she was giving her Trump bashing speech.
She flew to Washington and listen what she had to say when she landed there yesterday.
Really paved the way for what Canada believes will be a good week is the fact that Mexico has made some significant concessions, particularly in the area of labor and of rural origin on cars.
For our government, good jobs for working people in Canada has always been our priority.
And these concessions really are going to be valuable for workers in Canada and in the United States who have been concerned for some time about their jobs going to lower wage jurisdictions.
So she's really trash talking the deal that Mexico got, implying that they really got taken advantage of by the Americans.
Boy, they were so dumb to do a bilateral deal instead of having Christia Freeland there to help them with the hard parts.
I think that's what she was saying there.
Well, here's the Mexican ambassador to Canada on TV the other day.
He sounds pretty happy.
Sounds pretty confident.
He's not spiking the football or anything.
I don't think so.
He's just saying, yeah, his country got a deal.
Take a look.
Actually, the Canadian government, the prime minister just a few minutes ago has said, and yesterday Global Affairs, that they welcome the progress made.
We hope that these breakthroughs that Mexico made with the U.S. will be positive and will be good for Canada.
So today, this morning, Christia Freeland was finally invited for a meeting with the U.S. trade representative.
And that's a special office with the top negotiator in America, Robert Lighthizer is his name.
He's not elected like Christia Freeland.
He's appointed.
All he does is do deals.
He's a pro.
He's not an ex-journalist like Christia Freeland.
So Freeland finally gets a meeting at his office.
And you know who else is coming?
Jared Kushner, the consummate Trump fixer, is there too.
As you know, he's also Trump's son-in-law.
In some ways, he's been Trump's secret weapon.
He's like, they call him the Trump whisperer.
He's the guy who gets tough deals because he's family.
He can speak candidly to the president in ways that no one else can because you can't really fire family.
And here's how that went.
Let me quote: Jared Kushner just walked in for the meeting with Canada.
The Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs is not here.
She is late.
Late.
But we know she was in town.
She flew in yesterday.
She was late.
How?
Did she get lost?
We saw the clip of her standing in front of that same office on Tuesday, so she knows where it is.
Did she just hit the snooze button on her alarm too many times and maybe her staff forgot to phone her at the hotel?
Did she have a more important meeting like Justin Trudeau claimed to?
Was this not the most important meeting in her entire public life?
And oh, also for the lives of, I don't know, 160,000 people who work in Ontario's auto industry who will get smacked by Trump if we get a trade war.
Late, late for a meeting with Jared Kushner and the trade rep. You know, that's a psychological tactic.
That's a dominance play.
I'm making you wait.
I'm more important than you, so you can wait for me when I'm good and ready.
It's the same bizarre move that Canada played last year.
Remember this trade deal in Vietnam when all of our other allies were there?
Remember Australia?
And you see that empty chair there with the Canadian flag in front of it on the left, bottom left of the screen there?
Canada just didn't show up.
We didn't just spite America.
We spited all those countries.
See the Japanese flag there?
No notice, no warning, no courtesy, no diplomacy, no explanation.
We just didn't show up.
By we, I mean Trudeau and his cabinet.
You know, you can do that kind of power move, I guess, if you're Donald Trump himself, but not even too often because then people think you're just unreliable.
Your word doesn't mean anything.
You're not a promise keeper.
Whether people love you or fear you, they have to know you mean what you say.
And not showing up at a scheduled meeting, that's actually not a sign of toughness.
It's a sign of unreliability, of unseriousness, of capriciousness.
And that doesn't work if you are Christia Freeland, who is already known for all of those flaws, and whose boss, Justin Trudeau, just refused to take a phone call from Trump on Monday.
In the past, when negotiating with teeny tiny Belgium, you know, the country that's famous for making chocolate, Christia Freeland thought crying would get her a trade deal.
Do you remember that?
The Canada has really worked, and I personally have worked very hard.
But it seems evident for me, for the Canada, that the European Union is not capable now of having an international agreement, even with...
a country that values European, like Canada.
In other negotiations, Freeland didn't go for the tears.
She thought sending cute little email emojis, you know what I'm talking about, those little smiley faces, that would do the job.
Remember that?
The European Trade Commissioner, Cecilia Malmstrom, and I call each other sisters in trade.
We sign our emails, hugs.
Do you actually do that?
Yes, we do.
We sometimes send each other smiley faces in particularly difficult moments.
Yeah, that didn't even work with the chocolate-making superpowers.
I don't think that's working with Donald Trump.
You know, that looks weak and pitiful, but even that was better than the pure disrespect of not taking phone calls and not showing up for a meeting.
Hey, let me ask you something.
Do you think Donald Trump actually means it when he says he wants to put tariffs on our auto industry?
I think he means it.
Manny Montenegrino convinced me of this this week.
Trump has already put tariffs on Canada for certain things.
He's in a huge trade war with China.
That's why he smacked our steel for the Chinese steel that's being put through Canada.
Trump just, I think it was today, his last quarter's GDP growth was revised upwards to 4.2% on a quarterly basis.
His economy is so strong right now.
Remember, they're 10 times larger than us.
He won't even notice a bump in the road if Canada retaliates.
I think Trump actually wants a war.
Manny convinced me of this, so that Trump can bring our Canadian auto industry back down to the United States.
And once you move those factories there, they ain't ever coming back.
I actually think Trump wants a trade war to relocate those factories.
The crazy thing is Trudeau is behaving like he wants a trade war too.
Justin Trudeau already killed off Canada's oil and gas and pipeline industry with the help of Rachel Notley, $100 billion gone.
Now he's gunning for Ontario's auto industry.
Trudeau!
I think his strategy is exactly what Stephen Harper warned us about.
Trudeau wants to run against Trump in the 2019 Canadian election.
If that really was your strategy, you would refuse phone calls.
Pope Francis' Silence00:12:19
You would show up late for meetings.
You would give insulting speeches too, wouldn't you, if you were trying to scupper the deal?
I'm sorry, my friends, unless something changes in the next 48 hours, which is what Trump says the deadline is, I think we are heading into a deep recession in this country, courtesy of our diplomat of the year and her man-child of a boss.
Stay with us for more.
Well, I am loathe to criticize the Catholic Church, and you know why?
It's because it's a hobby of the left.
They hate the Catholic Church, at least when the church lives up to its creed, church morality, such as on abortion or other matters touching on social issues.
The left hates the church, and my view is if they're doing something wrong, they don't need me to pile on.
More often, it's the reverse.
Christians are persecuted.
It's one of the reasons we went to Iraq last year, to help those Christians there.
But there is a scandal within the Christian church, within the Catholic Church, and it is growing.
And when Catholics who love the church join the criticism, I think perhaps it's time to give them a listen.
And one of those is Michael Knowles, the host of the Michael Knowles Show on the Daily Wire, and he's an ally of our friend Andrew Clayman.
He joins us now vice versa.
Michael, great to see you again.
Thanks for coming back on the Azure Evans Show.
It's nice to have you.
Good to see you.
Thanks for having me.
You know, I really don't like criticizing the Catholic Church because it's criticized so often and in such bad faith.
But you have a very interesting article today about the 11-page letter written to Pope Francis by the former nuncio, that's the church ambassador to Washington.
So a senior member of the church, I think by any measure, he doesn't have an axe to grind.
This is not some scheme or scandalmongering.
And he outlines some serious accusations about sexual molesters in the church, but worse than that, what appears to be a cover-up at the highest levels.
Why don't you tell our viewers what the facts are?
So this is a little opaque, I think, to people who are not within the Catholic Church, and it's probably opaque to people even who are Catholics.
The way to think of this is this ex nuncio, Carlo Viganeau, is an archbishop.
He's a high-ranking official.
He's retired, so he's not a member of the College of Cardinals.
He doesn't have anything personally to gain from this.
But this was the Vatican's representative to the United States.
The United States and Germany fund the Catholic Church.
This is a major, major position.
And what he has said in this 11-page testimony is that the Pope covered up for an abusive priest, Cardinal McCarrick, who was thrown out in disgrace just a few weeks ago.
What the testimony outlines is that the abuse of McCarrick's abuse against other priests and seminarians was brought to Pope Benedict.
Pope Benedict basically isolated him, took him out of public ministry, said, live your life out in prayer and penance.
Then when Pope Francis was elected, he restored the prominence of Cardinal McCarrick, sent him as an envoy to China, and put him back out in public.
It is worth pointing out that what the testimony alleges is that Pope Francis knew of his abuse against other priests, not against minors, though the cardinal has been accused of molesting minors as well.
What's amazing about all of this, an analogy would be, say, if Nikki Haley made these accusations about the president or John Bolton or Secretary of State or something like that.
It's that high a post.
Not many things are unprecedented in the history of the Catholic Church.
2,000 years of history means everything has precedent.
This is unprecedented.
A high-ranking official not only accusing the Pope of knowing about this, but of calling on the Pope to resign.
And the Pope, just as he has done with all of the other criticism during his pontificate, is refusing to give an answer.
He is dismissing the concerns of very high-ranking, very credible, serious people.
He's dismissing them.
He's referring to answer.
And another appointee who seems to have been backed for cardinal by that disgraced Cardinal McCarrick, a man in Chicago named Cardinal Kupysch, he has responded on the Pope's behalf and said, the Pope has other things to talk about.
The Pope has bigger plans for the environment, for illegal immigration.
He doesn't want to talk about all of the abuse and the cover-up that he's implicated in.
It is outrageous.
The statement from Cardinal Kupish on the Pope's behalf is stunningly tone-deaf.
It is perhaps the most tone-deaf statement since Marie Antoinette's apocryphal let them eat cake statement.
And this demands an answer, and this demands that heads must roll.
It's funny you mentioned the Pope's other priorities.
And again, I'm Jewish myself, and so I don't like picking on Catholics because they're picked on too much in my view.
But when I was in Iraq, I thought, where is the Pope?
He's talking about the environment.
He's talking about global warming.
He's talking about political matters.
There's this one image I can't get out of my mind.
I'll put it on the screen right now.
It's the Pope meeting with Muslim migrants in Europe.
And here's a picture that Pope Francis kissing the feet.
Now, I know enough New Testament, even though I'm Jewish, to know that Jesus washed the feet of travelers hot in the desert.
And that would be just a real mercy because it's hot and dry and sweaty or whatever.
But I don't think Jesus kissed the feet.
I think he just washed them.
Here's Pope Francis kissing feet, but not of a Christian martyr, not of a Christian refugee fleeing the region, but of a Muslim migrant.
And I thought, you know, there's a billion Muslims in the world.
There's more than 20 Muslim countries.
There's Saudi Arabia.
The Pope should focus more on Popish things.
I don't know.
When you say the Pope deferred to environmental concerns, that pricked me because that frustrates me.
I think this is a Pope, a matter for the Pope, this Cardinal McCarrick.
Yes, you know, this pontificate has bred a lot of confusion.
It's very frustrating because we need clarity now more than ever, and it's bred a lot of confusion, not just on certain matters of state, not on certain political matters, but on matters of 2,000-year-old doctrine.
There are a litany of examples of this, and the Pope has been very unclear.
I don't mind the Pope humbling himself and making a humble gesture toward Muslims.
I think that's all well and good, but it has to be more than a performance.
Or is it a performance or is it the real thing?
This Pope has called for transparency.
This Pope has called for an end to clericalism.
This Pope has said that bishops should retire and leave when it's time for them to leave.
And yet, what are we getting from the Francis Pontificate?
We're getting obfuscation.
We're getting what appears to be the height of clericalism, the height of bishops covering up for one another, of refusing to speak to the media, of refusing to answer not just questions from the press and secular authorities, but refusing to answer questions raised by their own cardinals, the height of clericalism, and a refusal to engage with critics.
If the Pope wants to make these gestures, that's all wonderful, but they have to be backed up with reality.
They can't just be a performance for the cameras.
And there is a lot of confusion, and a lot of answers are being demanded right now.
The Catholic laity are up in arms.
This is absolutely horrifying, and the behavior has not gotten any better.
It's wonderful to go around to Ireland and say, please forgive us, please forgive us.
You have to put a seriousness behind those words, or else they're just words, words, words.
We're not getting that from Pope Francis, and I wish he would answer it, because what the rest of us in the Catholic laity are seeing is nothing but stonewalling.
And the Catholic laity are going to vote with their pockets.
You know, I think it's perfectly fine to keep contributing to your parish and keeping the lights on.
But I don't think a Catholic should donate a single penny to bishops' appeals, to the various charities related to the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops, until we get answers and until people are held accountable for this.
Wow, that's heavy duty.
You know, not all of our viewers, I mean, only a certain portion of our viewers are Catholic, and only a certain portion would probably be regularly practicing Catholics.
But I think there are wider implications.
And my proof of that, let me show you.
It's the New York Times weighing in on the subject in defense of Pope Francis criticizing conservatives who were pouncing.
It's almost a comical headline.
And the New York Times is not a particularly Catholic newspaper.
It's sort of their religion is secular liberalism.
They are standing with the Pope.
I think it's like their support for John McCain.
They liked John McCain when he was an enemy of Donald Trump.
I think the New York Times hates the Catholic Church, but they're standing for Pope Francis because they don't like his more moral or conservative critics.
That's my theory.
What do you think?
It's amazing how they weigh in.
It's also amazing because of their blithe ignorance, which I suppose we shouldn't be surprised at at this point.
They're trying to portray Archbishop rather, ex Nuncio Vigano, as a conservative, as though this were a civil war in the church that is strictly along partisan lines like we have in the United States.
That isn't the case.
There are theological disputes with Pope Francis, and more traditional Catholics might be called conservative or something like that.
But the question here is about rank corruption in the highest echelons of the Catholic bureaucracy.
That's what this is about.
This is not fundamentally about theological issues, though it is a strange coincidence that all of the, virtually all of the high-ranking prelates who have been involved in these cover-ups seem to eschew, or seem to rather put forth a progressive Catholic theology and sense of the liturgy and sense of the church that goes against 2,000 years of teaching.
Another aspect that the New York Times might want to point out, they talk about the conservatives and the progressives in the church as though these are two equal parties, as if they have moral equivalence or something.
When you're talking about an institution that we Catholics believe was divinely instituted with the immutable teachings of the incarnate Lord, there is not a moral equivalence between people who want to conserve that and people who want to change that.
You know, when it comes to the Catholic Church, really, there ought only to be conservatives because we are conserving our institution and our doctrine.
Of course, the New York Times doesn't know any of that.
And so for them, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
But it really makes a great point because for how long did the New York Times hit on the Catholic Church, beat up on the Catholic Church for sexual abuse scandals and for not being clear enough and for not being transparent enough?
Now the Catholic laity and some as high ranking as the Ex Nuncio Vigano are calling for that transparency and what do they do?
They play petty politics because they don't care about the sex abuse scandal.
They don't care about transparency.
They don't care about justice for victims.
What they care about is pushing their own left-wing agenda and it's repulsive.
Well, there's a lot to chew over there and I am an amateur of this subject.
It's not something I immerse myself in, so you've certainly given us a lot to think about.
For those who want to delve a little deeper, may I recommend Michael Knowles' column on the subject, which you can find at dailywire.com.
Thanks so much for being here today, Michael.
Thanks for having me.
Good to see you again.
All right, likewise.
Well, there you have it.
Michael Knowles, he's the host of the Michael Knowles Show on the Daily Wire.
Great people there, Ben Shapiro, Andrew Clavin.
Veterans Affairs Controversy00:11:25
He hosts that show every Monday to Thursday.
Stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
First of all, why are we still fighting against certain veterans groups in court?
Because they're asking for more than we are able to give.
Well, that was Justin Trudeau telling a wounded veteran that veterans are just asking for more than he can give.
I mean, come on.
Well, news comes of someone that Veterans Affairs under Justin Trudeau has all the money in the world for.
The strange thing, though, is he is not a veteran.
I'm talking about a convicted killer named Christopher Garnier.
He was convicted of second-degree murderer, but he's not a vet.
He's not a soldier.
And yet, he is receiving payments from a Veterans Affairs program for soldiers with PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, which is by virtue of the fact that someone else in his family was a veteran.
Joining us now to talk about this incredible story is our friend Lee Humphrey.
We've had him on the show before.
Of course, he's the president of James International Security Consulting, and he's now a Conservative Party of Canada nomination candidate for Calgary Center.
Lee, welcome back to the show.
This is so crazy.
Can you confirm the facts I've just read to our viewers here?
Because I just want to make sure I'm not getting this story wrong.
It sounds too crazy to be true.
A non-veteran is getting PTSD money meant for veterans, and he's a murderer.
How?
How?
Yeah, well, what they've done, Ezra, is they've taken an incredibly important program, which was set up to ensure that the families of veterans who are suffering from PTSD, and often it's the families who bear the brunt of the outrage and of the anger a veteran may display as he's working his way through his PTSD issues,
that would allow those family members to get treatment as well and to help them deal with understanding the veteran and understanding the issues he's going through.
They've twisted that in the sense that the gentleman that we're talking about, the convicted murderer that we're talking about, his father served as a military policeman and I understand was diagnosed with PTSD, which I must presume was service-related because that is the criteria.
And as part of that treatment, somehow they extended it to his son, who is now claiming to suffer from PTSD for the nightmares he's experiencing related to killing a Halifax police officer, strangling her to death.
That's not PTSD.
That's called grief or guilt or remorse.
Remorse or something.
And that's the craziest fact here.
So the murderer, not a veteran, murders a cop, and his own murder is his own source of stress.
Am I getting it?
Because that is the cherry on the icing on the cake of crazy.
So it's his own murder that has caused him the stress for which he is being paid by the veterans of is that just the final chain link of crazy here, Lee?
It is in the sense that this does not belong in the realm of Veterans Affairs Canada, which has a very limited budget that is very much needed to deal with legitimate cases involving veterans and their families to help them recover from service injuries and wounds, mental or physical.
What we have here is something that, you know, Corrections Canada does involve counseling to help prisoners come to grips with the fact that they have committed a crime and to help them get to that point where they can be remorseful and they can understand the feelings that they have and how wrong they were and what they did was wrong.
And I guess as part of their rehabilitation, move on from that.
But this has nothing to do with veterans affairs in any way, shape, or form.
It only takes money away from actual veterans and actual veterans families that need this money and this help desperately.
Yeah, that's so frustrating.
You know, I was reading some media stories, including on the CBC.
Now there's been various versions, but one of the stories that I was reading on the CBC, and it may have been updated since that moment, I searched for keywords, liberal, Trudeau, Seamus O'Regan, that's the Veterans Affairs Minister.
I think it may have been added in a subsequent version, but there was no mention of this when I first checked it.
And this happened.
I mean, the murder itself happened in 2015 and the Veterans Affairs payments subsequent to that.
So this was under Trudeau's watch, and we just saw Trudeau saying vets are asking for more than we can give.
And if this had happened under the tenure of Justin Trudeau and, sorry, excuse me, of Stephen Harper and the Conservative government.
Lee, I am absolutely certain that the word Tory or Conservative or Harper would have been in the headline.
And the blame would have been placed on the political decision maker, the cabinet minister, the prime minister.
But because this is under Justin Trudeau, this is my own theory here.
The state broadcaster is just saying Veterans Affairs made the mistake.
They're not even calling him.
Veterans Affairs made the decision.
The government made the decision.
And they're doing their best to, like the headline I see here in the CBC, Veterans Affairs stands by policy, paying for PTSD help for murderer who never served.
And I see now that in a subsequent version that Seamus O'Regan's name is added lower down in the story, I find that frustrating, that there's the political nature of this has been bleached out of it.
Absolutely.
I mean, the CBC, you know, loves to use the word government when there's a negative story, as if we forget who is in charge of that government.
It is Prime Minister Trudeau.
And in the case of Minister O'Reagan being added, his name is only added in the sense of the Conservative Party critic calling on him by name to intervene in this case and review it at the very least.
But this should be canceled immediately.
Veterans Affairs is not responsible to fund the mental rehabilitation of a murderer who didn't serve with us.
And twisting this program, you know, which was meant as if this young man had been somehow influenced by his father's PTSD, which would be a legitimate use of those funds.
That just isn't the case.
And we need to be really clear about this, Ezra.
The Trudeau government made a decision to provide limited Veterans Affairs Canada funding to a convicted murderer while at the same time denying that they have sufficient money to give veterans what they actually need.
That's all this is.
It's plain and simple.
And they can dress it up any way they want, but it doesn't change the hard facts.
Yeah.
You know, earlier this year, I went on a short speaking tour and I did it in various Legion halls across Canada, which is great.
I love going to the Legions.
And in every single Legion Hall I went, they were a little bit run down.
And we were talking about Omar Cotter getting the $10.5 million payment from Justin Trudeau.
And I thought, I mean, I remember going to the Legion Hall in Mississauga.
I thought this place hasn't had $10.5 million spent on it by any government, conservative or liberal, in the last 20 years.
Like the building was fairly run down.
I just wish one day Justin Trudeau and the Liberals would treat our own Canadian forces and vets as lovingly as they treat Christopher Garnier, second-degree murderer and Omar Cotter.
I find it very frustrating their priorities.
Last word to you, Lee.
Yeah, well, I have to agree with you there.
I mean, you know, I founded a Facebook page called Veterans for the Conservative Party of Canada, and we have about 32,500-odd supporters now.
And next to the Omar Cotter settlement and the video of Mr. Trudeau admonishing the young PPCLI corporal in Edmonton, this has really hit a nerve with our supporters.
They are viscerally angry about this misdirected use of funds that are clearly meant for veterans and their families, and they want it stopped and they want it stopped now.
And I hope Mr. O'Reagan and Mr. Trudeau are listening.
Mr. O'Reagan has a Veterans Town Hall tonight in St. John's, and I'd be shocked if this is not brought up and he is forced to address this because people are angry about it.
Very interesting.
We'll have to keep our eyes peeled.
Hopefully there'll be some video footage of that.
I bet someone in the audience will have a cell phone camera at the very least.
Well, Lee, it's great to have you back on the show.
Thanks very much for your time today.
All right.
Thank you, Ezra.
Anytime.
All right.
There you have it.
Lee Humphrey, of course, has been on the show many times as an expert commentator on matters of international security and counterterrorism.
And he is the Conservative Party of Canada nomination candidate in Calgary Center.
Stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
Hey, welcome back.
On my monologue yesterday about Senator John McCain passing away and why the left suddenly likes him now that he's dead.
Robert writes, you have to admire the fact that McCain had the guts to strap himself into his jet and fly over Hanoi, risking being shot down by Vietnamese surface-to-air missiles.
It is a pity that he spent his final days as a vengeful sore loser.
That's my take, too.
We must salute the most heroic thing he ever did in his life, which I would say is not even flying a jet into a war.
But when he was captured and tortured, to willingly decline to be let go early.
As you remember, his father, the admiral, was actually the commander-in-chief of the entire war in Vietnam.
So the Viet Cong wanted to release him early.
Imagine saying, no, I will stay and continue the beatings and torture and starvation that I have because I'm not going to let myself out earlier than these other guys.
That, I think, showed character.
Andrew Scheer's Dilemma00:04:45
But once he got back to America, he was just a typical politician, not even typical.
I think he was worse than most.
But let us remember his finest hour now that he has passed away, and that was what he did in Vietnam.
On my interview with Anthony Fury about Donald Trump's trade deal with Mexico and Canada being left out, Paul writes, Trudeau's strategy of running against Trump is a very stupid strategy.
I also don't think Canadians hate Trump as much as the left think they do.
The auto industry will only be the first to go.
Count on that.
Well, you know, I think you're right.
I have some liberals in my family.
I'm not going to name names.
We all have the black sheep in our family.
And I always say, I don't bring up Trump because it's just going to lead to an argument, but I always say, other than his personality, can you name a single thing that you object to?
And they stammer and they can't because, oh, well, he said this and he said that and he was mean here.
They don't have a substantive argument.
And it's just that they've been conditioned through repetition by the media party to say Trump bad.
I hate Trump.
Drump, you know.
I think Canadians have it worse because we get all the late-night talk shows from America that's completely anti-Trump.
We get the CBC completely anti-Trump.
We're supposed to be anti-Trump.
So people just say, oh, I'm anti-Trump.
I don't think they could tell you a reason why.
And I think that to be pro-Trump in Canada is to invite being punched on the street.
And so I think that number is a false number.
It's telling pollsters what they want to hear.
Are you against Trump?
Oh, yes, I'm against Trump.
I think Trump is fighting for America first.
So he, in fact, may come to be an enemy of Canada.
He may, in fact, throw us into a recession, but it's not through hostility.
It's through defending his own interests.
And if Trudeau insists on standing with the dairy cartel, I remind you that Donald Trump is the one who has revived the Keystone Excel pipeline, the only pipeline to the oil signs that will be built during Trudeau's tenure.
Keith writes, what if Andrew Scheer gets into the PM's office and is as liberal as Trudeau?
Voting him in just to rid ourselves of Trudeau is not a plan.
We keep doing that and we never get good government.
Well, I think that even a left-wing, wobbly Andrew Scheer would be better than Justin Trudeau.
I just think so, not just because Andrew Scheer himself is not as corrupt as Trudeau.
We don't emphasize how corrupt Trudeau is.
Remember, he's the first prime minister to be convicted of breaking the conflict of interest laws four times.
His whole party is full of graft and corruption in small and large ways.
I think how Gerald Butts billed more than $100,000 just to move from Toronto to Ottawa.
You can't even, I don't even know how you do that, but that's how much he charged for the move.
So there's all sorts of corruption.
I don't think you'd see that with the Conservatives.
I don't think that Scheer would be as insanely left-wing.
But yeah, he would, if he is what he is now, he would be liberal compared to Stephen Harper, for example.
Certainly compared to Maxime Brunier.
But my beef with Andrew Scheer is not that he would be worse than Justin Trudeau.
He would not be.
It's that he won't win as a half conservative.
I was watching the other day, and we should put it up in full on our website, Doug Ford's speech at the Federal Conservative Convention.
And he had a whole section on don't let the media scare you.
Don't let the media bend you from your path.
That was Doug Ford's secret to success.
It's what he told the delegates.
My objection to Andrew Scheer being so soft on things is not just that I don't want him to be soft on things.
It's that I know he's not going to win if he is.
All right, folks, that's the show for today.
I don't understand what kind of weird game of chicken Justin Trudeau and Christia Freeland are playing with America.
I just don't think it's going to end well for Canada.
I just don't think that we're a big enough dog in the fight to survive a fight.
And I tell you, if Donald Trump called me, I just, I would never be able to come up with an excuse powerful enough to explain not picking up the phone call.
What possibly could Justin Trudeau have said?
And don't think Donald Trump missed that message.
And I think he's going to wreak his vengeance on our economy.