Ezra Levant and Lauren Gunter accuse Canada’s government of sabotaging NAFTA talks, mocking Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland’s "childish" t-shirt and public anti-Trump stance while praising Doug Ford’s Trump hotel stay. Trudeau’s carbon tax and pipeline restrictions cost $60–$100B in lost energy investments, favoring rivals like Kazakhstan. Their critique extends to CBC Kids News’ indoctrination—marijuana, six-gender education—and Alberta’s politicized teachers, mirroring a "deep state" oligarchy resisting conservative policies, from Harper-era bureaucrats to liberal media. Canada’s economic and cultural trajectory risks long-term decline under such leadership. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, it's obvious Canada is actually trying to destroy the NAFTA negotiations.
I'll show you my evidence.
It's September 20th, and you're watching The Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
You come here once a year with a sign, and you feel morally superior.
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
I've got some new videotape clips for you today.
They're silly clips, childish even.
And childish clips on the internet are fun if it's children doing it, but it's a lot less fun when it's grown-ups like our foreign minister, Christia Freeland, back in Washington, D.C., making a fool of herself in the NAFTA negotiations.
I'll show you the new vids in a moment, but let me remind you of the trouble we're in.
It's been almost a month since the United States and Mexico announced their bilateral trade deal.
Bilateral just means two sides, the U.S. and Mexico, as in No More Three Amigos.
Canada was invited to be part of the negotiations, and we were for a while, but Trudeau just wouldn't shut up about weird stuff like feminism in NAFTA and global warming in NAFTA.
And even if you don't think that's weird stuff, you got to acknowledge it's weird stuff to put into a trade deal.
Trade deals are about, you know, trade, tariffs and taxes and things like that.
Why are you banging on about gender this and that?
So Mexico and the U.S. just started meeting on their own.
55 times, in fact.
That's pretty intimate.
I mean, you probably proposed marriage after fewer dates than that in your own personal life, I'm getting.
55 dates?
So they got hitched.
Mexico and the U.S. got the trade deal.
And this is the letter that Donald Trump submitted to Congress to let them know for their approval.
And right in that letter, Trump said, Canada can join if it wants, but pretty much Trump's fine if we don't.
As Manny Montenegrino told us, Trump actually wins if NAFTA fails because he can repatriate our auto industry back down to those rust belt states that he needs to win re-election in 2020, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, places like that.
Anyone who thinks Trump is bluffing seems to have forgotten that no one in Ontario can vote for Trump, but people in those U.S. states can move the factory there.
I mean, why wouldn't he please them by doing that?
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.
So that's the background, and it's been rough going.
Trudeau arguing in public with Trump.
And that's the thing about Trump.
He's all about massive retaliation, isn't he?
He's not into tit-for-tat.
He's into 10-to-1 tit-for-tat.
So he's been bashing and warning Canada all the time on Twitter, not in a mean or personal way, but in a tough way.
He actually has only criticized Trudeau by name twice that I can recall.
And he's never even mentioned Christia Freeland.
He's too busy, by the way, with bigger things.
It's a particularly Canadian inferiority complex that causes up to obsess.
We obsess over Americans who mention us.
But instead of getting serious, we've gotten a bit silly on our side.
In the last few weeks, as you know, Christia Freeland attended that anti-Trump rally in Toronto that labeled Trump a tyrant.
That's what they called him.
According to media reports today, that insanely poor decision has not gone unnoticed in the White House.
Why would they do that?
And Freeland just keeps getting weird.
She's weird.
She appeared in Washington last night wearing a weird homemade t-shirt.
On the front, it said, mama isn't chopped liver, as in she's not going to be pushed around.
I think that's the meaning of I'm not chopped liver.
And the back says, keep calm and negotiate NAFTA.
So I think that means that she won't be pushed around or to phrase it another way, she won't make compromises.
Either way, why the weirdness?
Why the t-shirts with messages on it?
Is it even conceivable that her U.S. negotiation counterpart, Robert Leithiser in the middle there, would wear a goofy t-shirt with messages about NAFTA negotiations or the impeccable Jared Kushner, that's Mike Pence there also.
I'm not saying that Christia Freeland shouldn't be able to wear a t-shirt on a night flight to Washington, D.C. I'm not picking on her fashion sense, though.
I really think she should take advice on her fashion.
But wearing a shirt, shouting weird, cryptic messages about a NAFTA negotiation when you're going to the NAFTA negotiation.
Isn't that a little touched?
Like her emoji negotiation weirdness.
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.
I'm embarrassed by that.
I'm not even kidding about this goofiness.
Freeland left the negotiations in Washington for something far more important.
A feminist meeting of feminist ministers from around the feminist world.
So basically leaving it for a feminist photo of feminism power.
I mean, if you're a feminist, have at her.
But is that really a good reason to leave the negotiations on NAFTA when we're down to the final days?
It's not just Trump that's moving on without Canada.
U.S. congressional leaders say they're running out of patience too.
They want a deal.
They want the Mexican deal.
And they're starting to feel like Canada is playing games with them, which of course, Canada is.
Now, the other day I showed you this beautiful moment of how a CBC reporter named Resh Minair was rendered temporarily speechless when an American professor dared to say that maybe Christia Freeland isn't as beloved in America as she is in Canada.
And they sent down Christia Freeland to negotiate, and she went out of her way to convey her contempt for Trump.
And that just struck me as about the stupidest thing you could do.
Unless, of course, you would be just as happy to see the whole thing fail.
Convey her.
Sorry, can you give that to me again?
What example do you have of the minister expressing her views on Donald Trump?
You don't love her?
She was like a deer in the headlights.
She couldn't believe it.
She's a fangirl, just like all those liberals were at the Trump as a tyrant malley.
But I think the worse things get for Freeland and for our NAFTA negotiators, the more our Palace Guard media delude themselves.
It's like Baghdad Bob when Iraq was about to fall to the Americans.
Oh, we've got the great devil on the run.
So here's the new video I wanted to show you today.
This is a video of Freeland landing in Washington, D.C.
Now, see, before she got on the plane, someone snapped this picture of Freeland.
That's her, you can see her white shirt.
And Gerald Butts, that's him with the beard.
They were in the airport in Ottawa.
You can see Freeland in her weird shirt drinking a nice glass of red wine.
So that photo got the media super excited about the shirt.
So the media, the CBC's camped out in Washington, there's like half a dozen of them.
They actually, and other media too, they actually drove to the airport in Washington to meet Christy Freeland when she landed at the airport.
And watch.
Now, watch this movie.
It's like the journalists are, you know, at teenage girls at an Ariana Grande concert.
Take a look.
I hear you have a great shirt.
We see how the battle it is.
You can shirt let me back my shirt.
You'll be wearing tomorrow.
Okay, that's great.
What's the meaning behind your shirt, Minister Freeman?
This shirt is a Christmas gift my children gave to me.
Oh, I thought it's so they had it made for me.
Yeah.
You think it'll be good luck for tomorrow?
I hope so.
What are you hoping to come out of tomorrow?
We'll be talking to reporters tomorrow.
Okay.
Oh, we'll see you there.
That's not a reporter, is it?
That's a fangirl.
That's actually wasn't the state broadcaster.
That was CTV.
Let me read to you just a tiny sampling of the Canadian media reaction.
Here's Josh Wingrove.
He used to be with the Globe and Mail and now he works for Bloomberg in Ottawa.
He tweeted, Classic Freeland.
The front of this shirt says, Mama Don't Equal Chopped Liver.
Her kids had it made for her for Christmas, and she wore it leaving the G7 II.
That's so classic.
She's the best.
Here's Rosa Huang of CTV who says, our camera was there.
We were there, guys.
I saw Reanda Grande.
Our camera was there when Foreign Affairs Minister Christy Freeland arrived in Washington tonight.
We're wearing the following message.
Mama don't equal chopped liver.
Keep calm and negotiating.
NAFTA.
I was there.
Hey, everybody.
I touched her.
I touched her.
She said the shirt was a gift from her children.
Here's a CTV which did a whole news story on it, but look at how they described it.
And ain't it the truth?
Foreign Affairs Minister Christy Freeland is in Washington for more NAFTA negotiations and generated buzz.
Hey guys, it was really buzzy with a t-shirt that references negotiations.
Yeah, I don't think that's, I don't think a couple of fangirl reporters making fools of themselves, I don't think you can call that making buzz in Washington.
I think that's just some Canadians just bored out of their minds and maybe they're drinking red wine and I don't know.
But is that really the kind of buzz you want your foreign minister to generate?
I don't believe it was buzzy.
But is that what you want?
She has a weird shirt about ongoing negotiations.
Negotiations she pops into and pops out of in between anti-Trump rallies and feminist rallies.
But look at the CBC.
So that was CTV and I showed you Bloomberg and whatnot.
But look at the CBC.
Just in full fangirl mode.
Here's a tweet from CBC Power and Politics.
Christy Freeland got some encouragement from bike riding Canadians in Washington today.
CBC Katie explains.
Take a look.
Something very funny actually just happened, Vashi.
A couple of Canadians on rental bikes just drove, walked by with their bikes and said, go, Freeland, go.
So they knew exactly what's going on here at the Red Bricks in front of the U.S. Trade Representative's office.
And they walk out.
I said, are you, obviously you're clearly Canadian.
They go, yay, and then kept on going.
Hey, you lonely hearts out there.
You got to find yourself someone who looks at you the way a CBC reporter looks at Christy Freeland.
You find someone in love like that, you hold on and you never let go, okay?
That was CBC's Kate Simpson, who just stands around down there in Washington.
Sometimes she badgers the Americans.
Let me show you the American of interest, the American of the day here, Ambassador Lighthizer, the U.S. trade rep, professional trade negotiator.
That is all he does.
Now, I'm sorry, he's not wearing a ratty old t-shirt.
He's not wearing anything goofy or cool or buzzy.
He's wearing a nondescript blue business suit.
And listen to him rant about Trudeau.
And I'm kidding.
He doesn't rant.
This is how a professional trade negotiator acts when accosted on the street.
Is it going to be?
Can you tell us whether this week is a deadline, sir?
Do the auto tariffs come off to the NAFTA deal?
Now, he wasn't being rude.
In case you think he's being rude, don't take that as rudeness.
Take that as professionalism because any word he said at all could be interpreted as substantive in the negotiation.
When it's all over, I'm sure he'll have a lot to say, but not while he's in a tense negotiation.
He's not the kind of guy who blabs or puts messages on his shirt.
He's a professional.
Just a couple more points.
The head of a major Canadian union called Uniform is actually part of the Canadian Advisory Board on these NAFTA negotiations.
Okay, fine.
You'd think he'd be working hard to protect the auto sector because Unifor represents auto workers, but I haven't seen that yet.
I have seen a lot of bluster and shoutiness.
I don't know.
Maybe that works in union negotiations.
I don't know.
But I'm not sure if it works on foreign trade deals with that Robert Lighthizer we just saw.
Anyways, the head of the Unifor Union is in Washington too.
And he recorded this rant from the roof of the Canadian embassy.
Hi, it's Jerry Dyerson by the Canadian Embassy.
I just left a meeting with representatives from the Prime Minister's office, Ambassador McNaughton, Minister Christian Freeland.
And we had a good discussion about how things unfolded last night and this morning.
Unifor's Washington Rant00:14:50
The facts are the federal conservatives are not helping at all.
When Andrew Scherer makes statements that we should be capitulating, basically, this should have been done a long time ago, he really doesn't know what he's talking about.
So what does Andrew Scheare suggest we should capitulate on?
Should we walk away from supply management?
Should we throw the dairy farmers in Ontario and Quebec under the bus?
Should we be saying, listen, we don't care about our cultural exemption?
We should be saying that to Quebec, that we don't care about your culture.
I think that's ridiculous.
Should we be allowing Fox TV to buy the CBC?
Should we be getting rid of Canadian content?
And then, of course, there's the whole issue.
Does Andrew Schearer believe that all disputes in NAFTA should be handled in U.S. courts?
So Andrew, what exactly do you want us to capitulate on here?
You should be ashamed of yourself.
So that's Jerry Diaz.
Now, maybe he's right.
I don't know.
But if he is, why is he giving his comments in public?
Why is he negotiating in public?
Has Robert Lighthizer done that?
Why the fuss?
Why the noise?
Why the bluster?
But he's bashing Andrew Scheer for wanting a deal and implying that any concession to get a deal is un-Canadian.
So is that the official Canadian negotiating position?
If so, why is it a labor union boss saying the position in public?
Why is someone on the official team mouthing off?
Is this part of the negotiation?
Does he speak for the negotiators?
Now, I don't know.
Either the Canadians are being really bad at negotiating.
I mean, really bad.
Tone deaf.
No social grace is kind of bad.
Either they have no skill or they have skill, but just want this thing to fail.
Tough to tell.
I think some of them want it to fail.
And others, especially in our state-run media, like the CBC, they just don't have the ability to think outside the official narrative.
The fact that anyone could be critical of Christia Freeland or Justin Trudeau is just, they haven't been able to think that thought.
But Doug Ford, the new Conservative Premier of Ontario, he's worried.
As well, he should be.
Ontario is the province that will be hit the worst by a failure to renew NAFTA.
That's where most of the auto industry is in Canada.
So Doug Ford is actually heading down to Washington to see if he can help.
Now, I haven't seen him rant and rave against Donald Trump and the Americans.
I haven't seen him wear an anti-Trump shirt or attend an anti-Trump rally.
I just hear he's going to go down to see if he can help the negotiations.
And the left-wing media are roaring their disapproval.
Here are the government comedians from Trudeau's State Broadcaster, the CBC.
This is the comedy account called 22 Minutes.
Doug Ford is heading to Washington for the NAFTA negotiations.
How do you think this is going to go?
Ha ha!
Well, guys, hey, how could it go any worse than it is now?
But I think it could go better.
I mean, Doug Ford has actually run a business in his life.
He's done some real negotiations before.
He's done something in real life before, other than just giving pious speeches.
I think he probably has more of a natural rapport.
Just guide a guy with Donald Trump than Christia Freeland and Justin Trudeau do to politically correct scolds.
I saw this story in the Toronto Star, left-wing paper.
Doug Ford dines at Trump Hotel on his NAFTA visit to Washington.
That was in the paper yesterday.
This is written as if it's a scandal.
You think so?
Don't you think that's actually a small but smart, symbolic thing to do?
If you're in a negotiation to get a deal, like if that's your goal, you can stay at any hotel you want in Washington, D.C. There's a ton of hotels, and they're all pretty expensive, let me tell you.
But if you stay at Trump's Hotel, which is a new hotel I hear, it's very nice.
I haven't been.
If you choose to stay at Trump's hotel and the word gets out, you let the word get out, you're at Trump's hotel, even if you just eat a meal there, which I guess is all he did.
I don't think he stayed there.
Trump will hear that you stayed there, or his people will hear that you stay there, and they'll say, oh, this guy isn't a Trump hater.
The left will say, oh, Trump is counting his money.
He'll like the fact he's getting rich off it.
What, did Trump personally make $1 from that?
He's a billionaire.
Did he make $1 off that?
No.
It's a signal that you're not a Trump hater.
Do you think Justin Trudeau or Christia Freeland would be caught dead at a Trump hotel?
The Toronto Star would mock them about it.
But Doug Ford knows you do that.
It just sets the table a little bit for your meeting.
It sets the mood a little bit.
It builds a tiny rapport, a tiny piece of trust or friendship.
I mean, let's say if Justin Trudeau had an ounce of entrepreneurial skill in his body, and let's say he had a restaurant in Ottawa, Trudeau's, you know, a lot of cheese.
Wouldn't every diplomat go to Trudeau's and make sure they were seen to be there?
Just to signal, yeah, I like you, man.
When I come and negotiate for something, I'm on your, just to curry favor.
I'm not, I'm just talking about human nature, common sense.
The fact that the left-wing Canadian media ridiculed Doug Ford for even trying to get a deal and for behaving himself and maybe even ingratiating himself by eating lunch at the Trump Hotel.
Oh my God.
Well, I think Doug Ford's probably already doing better than Christia Freeland just by having lunch there and not being mean to the other side in the negotiation.
But hey, if this whole NAFTA thing fails, at least Christia Freeland will have her shirt.
While 160,000 Ontario auto workers lose theirs.
Stay with us for more.
We need to be able to build resource projects of all different types with the appropriate social license.
And Canada is doing that in a way that is laying it out in a clear path.
This is the way the world is going.
And if we can demonstrate clarity and certainty for business through the processes, through the investors, we will be able to get more built.
But it's thinking about the longer term and not just this project right now that has to be front of mind.
It's not just this project that matters.
It's the future of resource development in Canada that is on my mind.
I wonder if Justin Trudeau actually thinks about what he says and actually believes what he says.
He says that there's now clarity and certainty in Canada.
Has that ever been less true, especially in the wake of the court case smashing the Transmountain Pipeline expansion?
He says that we are building in accord with social license.
I can't think of any major project that has been built, let alone approved, under Trudeau.
The Northern Gateway Pipeline, Trudeau himself killed.
Energy East, Trudeau himself killed.
Kinder Morgan, they just panicked and sold to the government.
I wonder if he believes that.
That video calls to mind an excellent column in the Edmonton Sun, and I'd like to now introduce you to the author of that, my friend Lauren Gunter, who joins us now, Vice Cape Lauren.
Great to see you.
Good to see you.
I'm just boggled by, I'm still running through my mind what Trudeau just said there.
I'm sorry, I'm distracted by how oblivious he is.
But let me just mention your headline, and then I'd like you, because you wrote a great column about this.
Your column is called Canada is quickly losing its economic advantages.
And you mentioned that Canada has traditionally had a highly educated workforce, abundant natural resources, and access to the U.S. market.
Frankly, two out of three of those have, one is being killed, the energy industry.
NAFTA is about to make our access to the U.S. market tougher.
And you mentioned that Stephen Harper brought in low taxes, and that's being undone too.
Tell me your, expand on your argument.
Well, you know, we have had, as I said, three traditional underpinnings for our economic success.
We have a lot of resources, not just oil and gas, but we have mining and timber and other sorts of natural abundance.
And that's always been, you know, oh, for years and years and years, the trendy thinkers have said, oh, we don't want to be hewers of wood and drawers of water.
Well, actually, there's a lot of money to be made in that, and there's some really good jobs in it.
It's not easy to do any of that stuff.
You need to have very sophisticated workforces with high minds in finance and law and all sorts of other areas.
It's not just people with shovels digging rocks.
And so that's number one.
We have abundant natural resources.
We do have the skilled laborers and the mental intellect to deal with all that very effectively.
And we've had great access to the U.S. market in one way or another, and particularly since the North American Free Trade Agreement, or even in 88, the Free Trade Agreement just between Canada and the U.S. Since 88, we've had really good access to the American market.
And because of a bunch of virtue signaling by the Prime Minister, we're going to lose all of those.
We've lost our abundant, at least the advantage of our abundant natural resources.
Thankfully, they're all still there in case someone comes along in the future who's a better economic manager than this prime minister and this government.
They're still there for us to take advantage of.
But on the resource side, they brought in a carbon tax, which has scared off a lot of investment.
We're looking at, according to provincial budget numbers and stats can numbers, somewhere in the neighborhood of $60 to $100 billion in lost investment.
Some of that is, of course, because of the worldwide price decline in oil, but a lot of it has come back to other countries.
Kazakhstan, for instance, has an oil boom going on.
The United States has an oil boom going on.
Egypt has an oil boom going on.
And despite its location in the world, it's not been known as an oil country before.
Lots of countries are seeing tens and hundreds of millions of dollars of spending and investment and planned investment, but we are not.
There's a company called Woods McKenzie, which follows energy investments around the world.
It estimates that over the next three to five years, there will be in excess of $300 billion of energy investment by major companies around the world.
And we're going to get a tiny fraction of that if we get any of it, simply because oil companies, energy companies around the world look at the fact that Trudeau, the same time he talked about, well, we're trying to set up a stable market or a stable regime for approving energy projects.
He's expanded the amount of time it takes and the huge cost it's going to take to get any kind of market access approved, any kind of pipeline, any kind of oil sands project.
And the very same week he said all of those things, he said, well, we have a real problem in our energy sector because we don't have gender equity.
Only 23% of the jobs in the energy sector are held by women.
What in heaven's name does that have to do with anything?
Are there legal barriers to women taking jobs in the energy sector?
Are CEOs constantly standing up in front of their tall towers in Calgary and saying, oh, women, hey, you babes, don't come here.
We're not hiring any of you.
Yeah, maybe young women don't want to go up and work in the boonies in a field camp, you know, 20 days on, 10 days off.
Maybe it's a choice thing.
But what's his alternative, to buy OPEC conflict oil with 0% women?
Exactly.
I mean, in Iran and Saudi Arabia, they don't even allow women out of the house.
So he's created all of these barriers to investment, new taxes, new environmental regulations, and most importantly, these add-ons that he's put in the way of approval of new projects, add-ons that have very little, if anything, to do with the environment or with energy, but they're all part of his virtue signaling social agenda.
And so companies all around the world are looking at Canada.
They used to look and they say, hey, stable government, well-trained workforce, smart financial people, great access to the U.S. market, pretty good, you know, fairly competitive taxes compared to a lot of European countries.
And hey, let's put some money in there.
There's a good chance we'll get our money out.
Now they're looking and they're saying, man, it's just so complicated.
And you can't get anything into a pipeline.
We had the major oil sands companies the other couple weeks ago say they're not going to expand after that federal court of appeal decision that killed Trans Mountain.
They're not going to expand their projects because they don't know whether or not they can get what they produce to a market.
So these are all the things Trudeau has done.
And look at the way he punished, he and Bill Mourneau, his finance minister, punished small business owners by increasing the taxes considerably on small business.
This is a very anti-business government.
You know, you mentioned oil prices.
They're artificially low in Canada because of the pipeline restrictions.
I saw just the other day Rick Perry, the U.S. Energy Secretary, talking about a strategic plan to have American oil exports displace conflict oil.
I think he was referring in particular to Russian energy.
So America isn't just producing more than ever.
It's now exporting it and it's competing with Russia and other conflict oil.
That should have been us, Lauren.
That should have been us five years ago.
That should have been us saying, hey, India, take our oil instead of Iran's.
Hey, China, take our oil instead of Iran's and Saudi Arabia's.
I want to ask you a question about that clip that we played of Trudeau, which I'm sorry, I was stunned by it.
I want to show you a newly stunning clip.
It really is.
Go ahead.
No, no, go ahead.
I said it's absolutely shocking.
I mean, the complete economic cluelessness that the prime minister has.
America's Oil Advantage Lost00:04:16
Well, that's the thing.
I feel like he's still using his campaign slogans from 2015, and here we are three years later, and they're not working.
And when he said we're building with social license, he ain't build a thing.
And it's like when he says, energy and the environment and the economy.
You need both.
Well, we don't have the economy part.
Let me play another clip for you that is sort of similar and it goes to obliviousness.
Do these guys know that their cliche-o-matic message tracks that maybe worked for a bit in 2015 in the election?
They sound crazy now.
Here's Bill Mourneau, right after that Transmountain Pipeline court case.
Well, here, let's just let him do the talking.
Take a look.
Taken together, today's decisions from the Federal Court of Appeal and from Kinder Morgan shareholders are important next steps in getting this project built in the right way for the benefit of all Canadians.
Lauren, that was a scripted comment where he said that this court case stopping the pipeline is an important next step.
And by the way, the company that owned that, washing its hands of it, is an important next step in getting it built, Lauren.
You know, earlier on, you said that Kinder Morgan got spooked and ran off.
Kinder Morgan didn't get spooked.
They saw the kids coming.
They knew what a dog they had.
And they said, oh, you'd like to buy a dead dog for a billion dollars over the ASCII price?
Oh, by all means, go ahead.
That's an ex-parrot.
That parrot is ceased to be.
Exactly.
And, you know, I remember when Donald Trump was fresh in office and scrapping global warming meetings was high on his agenda.
I remember after he announced, I remember his saying, he said, I was elected by Pittsburgh, not Paris.
I just love that.
It was just such a that exactly summed it up.
And I remember watching Catherine McKenna, the environment minister, go on Evan Solomon's show.
And I respect Evan.
I don't agree with him on everything, but I think he's one of the few reporters in Ottawa that asks firm questions of these liberals.
And he said, aren't you worried about getting out of sync with America on energy and carbon taxes?
She said, oh, no, the carbon tax train is taking, we're on the train.
And even Evan Solomon back then said, are you sure?
I mean, Trump's going in this direction.
And now you add Trump's tax cuts.
I think these folks thought that Hillary Clinton would win and they would harmoniously be global warming, carbon taxing, you know, eco-extremists.
Instead, they're still on that path as if Hillary Clinton won.
And Donald Trump doesn't even have to try.
He's just sucking all the money and investment back down to him.
And if we're not careful, he's going to take our factories too.
Well, and I think it's worse than that, though, with the liberals.
And that is that they really, it's not as though they're pretending that what they promised in 2015 is still happening, even though they know it's not.
They don't know it's not.
Like they still believe their bum.
They still believe their campaign slogans.
They still think that there's a magic wand out there that they can wave with, provided they use enough taxpayer dollars.
And suddenly this carbon-free economy will spring into existence and we won't anymore need jobs as welders on pipelines because we'll have great jobs installing solar panels on all the playground equipment or something.
They just have these fanciful ideas because you could see that in Ontario, right?
A lot of the people, you and I have talked about this before, a lot of the people who run the federal liberal government now used to run the Ontario provincial government, the liberal provincial government.
And they ran that economy into the ground.
They spent a decade and somewhere close to $60 billion trying to force this alternate energy economy into existence.
Never even came close.
Ran up the largest non-national debt of any government in the world and did nothing.
The Prime Minister's Photo Op Armor00:04:50
But none of this really surprises me with the prime minister when I take a step back and I think about what he did before he became an MP and for a long time after he became an MP.
His job was to be a motivational speaker.
He would jump into usually a public sector union convention, deliver a speech for $10,000 or $20,000 or $30,000, telling them what marvelous people they were and how essential they were to the kind of Canadian community that we should all be trying to build.
It was all very touchy-feely, all very amorphous.
And then he would leave.
And that's really the depth of his intellect.
Yeah.
Well, you know, that's a great observation.
And he himself admits it.
I think you and I have talked about this before.
When he was convicted of breaking the conflict of interest law four times, the ethics commissioner in her report called the Trudeau Report, if you want to find it, noted that Trudeau's defense for taking this $100,000 free vacation on this billionaire's island was, oh, sure, he might have, that billionaire might have been lobbying for huge government grants at the same time he was giving me a gift, but I didn't know what he was talking about because I never get into the details of any file.
I'm just there for relational reasons, backslapping, make sure you okay?
Hey, how you doing?
You okay?
Okay, you guys do.
Like he basically, his excuse for breaking the law that the commissioner did not accept was, I don't know what anybody's talking about.
I just spout the cliches and then I go do a photo op.
I don't even, you know, I'm an unfrozen caveman lawyer.
I don't know about these, what is this cell phone?
It's pitiful, but I actually think I've always said he should have been the governor general because he loves the photo ops.
He's handsome.
He speaks English and French.
He actually has in his bones a love for Canada.
Let's acknowledge that.
Oh, absolutely.
He should have been the governor general.
He gets all the perks and none of the people.
He's a little selfies taken in different places in Canada than any other individual in our history.
So he's the shirtless selfie champion of all of Canadian history.
So clearly he loves the country.
I don't doubt that for a second.
He should have been Governor General.
And, you know, who's the former astronaut, Mark Garneau, should have been the Liberal leader.
And, you know, he had a little respect for the military.
He's a former Air Force man himself, if I'm not mistaken.
An astronaut, in fact, obviously a smart dude.
That's how history should unfold, Lauren.
But instead, we've got the selfie boy running us into the ground.
Last question to you.
Sorry, what did you used to call him?
The shiny?
The shiny pony.
The shiny pony.
Because he's got that beautiful hair.
Hey, Lauren, I got a question for you.
One of the things that has depressed me over the last few years was the feeling that I and others like me, and I put you in this category, were Cassandras.
That is someone making an awful prediction about the future, but no one would listen to us.
And are we mad?
People think we're crazy.
Is everyone else crazy and we're sane?
Like, are we the only people that see this?
And I'm starting to detect some chips in the armor that maybe not everyone is going along with this.
Doug Ford's election win in Ontario was a major symbol and sign that maybe not everyone's going along with this left-wing gobbledygook.
And do you have hope?
Is there reason to hope?
Because I didn't have a lot of hope until Doug Ford won.
I thought we were fighting a retreating battle.
What do you think?
Yeah, and I still think we are.
The latest polling that I saw, in fact, I think it came out in the middle of the night last night from Abacus Data is that the Liberals are the only party that still has a positive approval rating.
And the Prime Minister is the only political leader who has a positive approval rating, meaning more people think he's doing a good job than think he's doing a poor job.
So, you know, if you can capture Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, and Vancouver in a federal election, and I think the Liberals will, you are well on your way to a victory.
You had in Atlantic Canada, where they're still very, very strong.
And you don't need Toronto outside of the GTA plus the Prairie West.
You don't need them, and you'll still win a majority.
And so unfortunately, I'm still very pessimistic about the 2019 election.
But in the longer term, no, I think we'll see a return to some sanity.
Yeah, well, I hope so.
I hate to recall the fact that Pierre Trudeau was the prime minister for almost 16 contiguous years.
Wedge Between Child and Parent00:04:14
There was that Joe Clark.
The son is not as big an acorn as the father, so I think that he will fall more lightly from the tree.
He'll be gone sooner.
Lauren Gutter, great to talk with you.
Thanks for letting me keep you.
And thanks for chewing over these crazy subjects with us.
Great to see you again.
Good to see you.
All right, there you have it.
Lauren Gunter.
His article, by the way, if you haven't read it yet, it's in the Edmonton Sun.
It's called Canada is Quickly Losing Its Economic Advantages.
And I hate to say it.
He's dead right.
It makes me sad.
Stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
Hey, welcome back.
On my monologue yesterday about CBC launching a new propaganda channel at your kids called CBC Kids News, Bill writes, the CBC is the conduit for liberal government-funded child exploitation.
Now, you know, the world child exploitation implies a sexual molestation, so I'm not going to use that word because I think it has a special meaning.
But targeting children for political brainwashing, that is gross.
And that is a tactic of the authoritarians in history.
You know, many authoritarian, I don't want to misquote Hitler, but he said something like, give me a child at age eight.
I mean, there was the Hitler Jugend, the Hitler youth.
In the Soviet Union, they had the young pioneers.
I told you about Pavlik Morozov.
If you can make a child's first loyalty to the state and turn the child against the parents, you've destroyed the family as an alternative source of power and trust to the state.
Forgive my digression for a moment, but I knew some Soviet émigrés who came over from the former Soviet Union in the late 70s to Calgary, to many cities in Canada.
And one of them told me that he, maybe I told you the story before, but just give me a minute.
He told me that he joined the Boy Scouts, which was the young pioneers.
And, you know, I joined the Cub Scouts and the Scouts in Canada, and you have your sash and you have your different pins and badges.
And they all wore a little lapel pin, and on the lapel pin was the face of that boy we showed yesterday, Pavlik Morozov, who was given the title Informant Number One for turning in his parents to Stalin's KGB because they criticized Stalin's forced collectivization of farms.
So understand what that does.
You tell the child the highest honor, the highest level of service, the highest ideal is to love the Communist Party so much that you'll actually turn in your parents if they speak ill of the party.
And could you imagine being a parent and dropping, like dropping your kids off at Girl Guides or Cub Scouts?
That's a great pleasure.
They're learning things.
You're excited.
They're learning skills, some outdoorsy stuff.
Imagine you're dropping your kids off.
And yeah, I bet you the young communist pioneers learned those fun Cub Scout skills too.
But the whole thing had a political purpose, drive a wedge between the child and the parent.
Now I'm not saying that CBC Kids News is quite as diabolical or as extreme as that.
But when you are having child actors read grown-up propaganda in childlike language, designed to speak to children around their parents about extreme issues like marijuana use and six-gender sex ed and criticizing American refugee policies.
I'm sorry, that is not news, that's propaganda, and it is in the style of the young pioneers.
All right, let me move on.
Deb writes, they are so open about this indoctrination, even in our schools.
They really want generation after generation of new liberals.
How dare they go after our children?
Well, yeah, you know, we just did a video.
It wasn't on my show, but you can find it elsewhere on the website, about Sappora Berman, the hardcore left-wing anti-oil extremist, used to work for Greenpeace, works for a U.S. lobby group called Stand Earth Right Now.
Harper Man's Monologue00:03:04
She was invited by the Alberta Teachers Association to speak at a teachers' conference.
What are you doing?
Well, of course, I know exactly what she's doing.
She's trying to turn the teachers of Alberta into anti-oil activists to propagate her message into their classrooms.
Not that they need a lot of encouragement, the Alberta Teachers Association is far left-wing.
So yeah, it's the move.
On my interview with James O'Keefe about Project Veritas' new videos exposing the deep state in America, Paul writes, this couldn't have come out at a better time.
While the Democrats are pushing the deep state to help them influence the election.
Yeah, and of course, Donald Trump has ordered the unredacted release of an enormous number of deep state memos on the national security side of things for touching the FBI and all those, that whole Russia gate business.
It'll be fascinating.
It's interesting to me how many liberal journalists are against this.
They love getting selective leaks from their CIA or NSA sources.
But when Donald Trump says, you know what, forget the leaks.
I'm going to release every single thing.
Let the chips fall where they may.
They're panicking.
Why is that?
I've never seen journalists reject more documents and more information before.
I wonder why.
Peter writes, there is a deep state in Canada too, but it is not called that.
Much of the federal bureaucracy is liberal and actively worked against Harper when he was in office.
Oh, you are so true.
I don't know if you remember.
There was a song in the last election by a bunch of civil servants in Ottawa called Harper Man.
And it was an anti-Harper song.
It's all these civil servants, if they're singing Harper Man while going to work for Harper the Man, you know that they were slow walking everything and foiling everything they could.
As you know, we put out a shirt called I'm a Harper Man.
We say, you know what, I'm a Harper Man.
So we turned it into a positive, but absolutely.
And the coalition and the coalescence between bureaucrats and diplomats and lawyers and law professors and judges and the media and even pop culture comedians.
It's just, it's one big, the Japanese had a word for it, karitsu.
It's like a, it's an oligarchy.
It's a permanent class.
Yeah, we got it in Canada bad.
Well, folks, that's my show of the day.
And you know what?
I got, I thought it was an interesting monologue myself and I got some positive feedback about it.
People were shocked about that CBC Kids News thing.
So we put that monologue on YouTube, the whole thing.
We do that, as you know, about once a month or so.
We put about a couple of interviews a month on YouTube.
And we put the CBC Kids News World one on YouTube.
I love doing it because I love to get these things watched by tens of thousands more people than just subscribe every month.
But I want to keep the good stuff for you, the folks who pay $8 a month, to be premium members, because it is your payment of that $8 a month that keeps us strong.
So I want to keep the good stuff for you.
But once a month, we'll put something outside the paywall.
And we did that with that one.
All right, folks, until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, see you at home.