The World Economic Forum’s 2018 Global Competitiveness Index ranked the U.S. first under Trump’s tax cuts and deregulation, while Canada fell to 12th despite Trudeau’s Davos virtue signaling—like climate change pledges over GDP growth (1.6% avg.) or business dynamism (13th). Critics like Barbara Kay and Ezra argue Trudeau’s focus on social justice over productivity mirrors Canada’s decline, while "trans activists" exploit sports fairness, risking legal backlash under human rights laws like C-16. Europe’s conservative surge—Orbán, Salvini, Farage—goes unnoticed by mainstream media, which labels opposition as far-right, ignoring their shared pushback against establishment overreach. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, a new report by the World Economic Forum says Donald Trump's America is the most competitive country in the world, but Canada has fallen to number 12.
It's October 18, and this is The Ezra LeVance Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
You come here once a year with a sign, and you feel morally superior.
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Have you heard of the World Economic Forum?
It's not a government.
It's more of a club where politicians and celebrities and business people and wannabes go for an annual party each January in Davos, Switzerland.
Maybe you've heard it referred to that way, Davos.
It's like a skiing party.
It's like the film festival in Cannes, France, but for bankers, really.
Of course, the hangers-on are thickest thieves because there's a lot more money at Davos than at Cannes.
Trudeau first went to Davos in January 2016, shortly after he was elected.
And if you believe the CBC, he made a splash.
Look at this.
Love letter from the state broadcaster Justin Trudeau's youthful pro-diversity pitch goes global in Davos.
PM's prowess on social media earned him fans around the world before arriving at World Economic Forum.
Yeah, that's pretty cringy to read now at the end of 2018, isn't it?
His social media prowess.
I guess that's what he was selling.
But even the media has gotten a bit sick of that.
It's been two years.
I mean, it's only so long.
You can pretend that being a mascot and dancing and social media prowess is the same as being a leader.
Back to the CBC article for a moment.
Scroll down a bit.
This is from 2006.
There's a picture of his socks.
Seriously.
Remember when some people still thought that was pretty fresh?
Pretty cool?
Scroll down to the end of this story a little bit.
There's a picture of Trudeau taking a selfie with a pretty girl.
Let me read the caption at the bottom.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau takes a photo with global shaper.
Did you know that's a thing?
Global shaper Rawan Abu Tairi from Saudi Arabia after a question and answer session of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Thursday.
She's very pretty, isn't she?
But she's from Saudi Arabia, which is a place that doesn't let her go out with uncovered hair.
But her purpose is just to put a pretty face on the dictatorship in Davos, and Trudeau and the CBC were happy to oblige in that PR.
So it's all shallow all the time, but the media loved it, or at least the CBC did.
God, they did a lot of stories.
Here's another one about celebrities who took Trudeau photos, selfies with Trudeau.
Here's Leonardo DiCaprio.
See him?
There's a picture.
Scroll down a little bit.
You'll see Trudeau with a Hollywood sex predator.
Kevin Spacey is on that page also.
The CBC was just thrilled to be done with that Squaresville guy, Stephen Harper.
No, we got a cool guy in Justin Trudeau now.
Trudeau gave some speeches at Davos too.
It wasn't just parties with aging celebrities.
But they were in the same sort of vein.
They were like the rambling clichéd speeches he used to give at teachers' conventions for 20 grand a pop.
Remember this?
But you need to take as much effort to talk to your sons, my eight-year-old boy and my two-year-old, still a little young still, about how he treats women and how he is going to be growing up to be a feminist just like that.
That's what he went there to say, and it was dreamy.
Oh, man.
And that was before the revolution came.
A revelation came out that Justin Trudeau actually sexually assaulted a female journalist in Creston, B.C.
So back then, it was just wonderful, though.
But basically a big party for Trudeau, but unlike his parties as a trust fund playboy growing up, and by growing up, I mean until his mid-30s, you and I had to pay for this trip.
He did give a substantive speech of sorts, including this line.
Take a listen.
We can fight climate change without sacrificing growth and prosperity.
In fact, our global push towards a low-carbon economy will produce new companies, new growth, and new prosperity.
I'm going to come back to that line in a moment because unlike most of his virtue signaling and his blather and his fancy socks, there was some substance there.
A claim that fighting climate change creates growth and jobs and wealth and prosperity.
I'm going to come back to that.
By the way, Stephen Harper would occasionally attend some of these fancy get-togethers.
One year, I think it was before he was prime minister.
He went to the Bilderberg get-together in Europe.
One year, I think he went to the Bohemian Grove Secret Society in California.
These things are clubs and parties and hangouts.
I suppose some real work does get done of them, but they're not formal meetings.
You can get work done.
You can lobby.
You can meet other real people who are there.
Or you could show off your fancy socks and hang out with aging celebrities.
That's what Trudeau likes to do.
Oh, and it's also where he meets up with George Soros.
So maybe back in 2016, Justin Trudeau was still too green.
He'd only been prime minister for a few months.
Donald Trump hadn't yet become president, hadn't yet reshaped the world, including its economy.
So maybe Trudeau was just still in frat boy mode.
But listen to him two years later.
This is from January 2018.
Trump had been president for a full year, cutting taxes, canceling the UN Global Warming Treaty for America, renegotiating NAFTA, going full tilt with oil and gas and coal production.
But the main thing was Trump had just, if you recall, in January, cut taxes so deeply.
I think it was the largest tax cuts in U.S. history.
And the U.S. stock markets were roaring.
And he was really following through on his promise to make America great again economically.
I mean, I don't care what you say about Donald Trump's personality.
You must admit, economically at least, he has kept that promise jobs-wise, lowest unemployment in recent memory.
So what did Trudeau say in January 2018, when he was two years older and two years wiser, now a year into Trump's administration, in the wake of this massive tax cut?
Here's what Justin Trudeau used his platform to talk about.
I'd like to focus tonight on a fundamental shift that every single leader in this room can act on immediately.
One that I've made a central tenet of my leadership.
One that is core to this year's forum, thanks to the leadership of our seven exceptional co-chairs.
I'm talking about hiring, promoting, and retaining more women.
And not just because it's the right thing to do or the nice thing to do, but because it's the smart thing to do.
In Canada, like all over the world, much of the economic and labor force growth we've experienced over the last many decades is because of women entering into and changing the workforce.
Okay, we all like women just fine.
They do pretty well in Canada, from corporate leadership to political leadership.
Don't think there's any real barriers anymore other than if women choose not to do something.
We have the third governor general in recent years who's female.
We just had a female Chief Justice of our Supreme Court and Prime Minister.
It's not a big deal back here in Canada.
I mean, women's equality is a big deal in places like Iran and Saudi Arabia, but Justin Trudeau doesn't say a word about that.
He prefers virtue signaling banalities.
We should be encouraging women and men to make the best decision for their family situation.
This is the guy, I remind you, who hired not one but two nannies with taxpayers' dollars.
But here was the closest he was getting to a policy proposal.
He had the world's attention, or at least some of the insiders for a moment.
He was his big pitch to investors, so the economic masters of the universe, just days after Trump brought in the largest tax cuts in memory, Trudeau said this.
In Canada, we need more women in politics, more women on corporate boards, and more women in STEM.
So that's your big plan.
STEM, by the way, is science, technology, engineering, and math.
And by the way, liberals have been toying with the idea of forcing quotas on companies for women on boards of directors and obviously affirmative action in universities and scientific institutions.
So really, it was just the same as in 2016, just super cool feminist virtue signaling.
Nothing on competing with Trump's tax cuts, nothing on business.
He didn't really say anything substantive on NAFTA back then.
Just really more male feminism.
Which brings us to the news of today.
I just want to remind you what World Economic Forum was, what that Davos group was, because the World Economic Forum, the group that hosts these great parties each year, each January, where Trudeau goes to speak and makes promises of, what did he say again?
We can fight climate change without sacrificing growth and prosperity.
That's what he said.
He said, in fact, our global push toward a low-carbon economy will produce new companies, new growth, and new prosperity.
Remember, he said that?
Well, how did that all work out?
Because it's been a couple years now.
Did his feminism and did his carbon tax obsession and his global warming obsession, did that in fact bring new companies to Canada, new growth to Canada, new prosperity to Canada?
Did it?
Well, in addition to having big parties, the World Economic Forum does some economic studies.
They do some work the rest of the year, including a massive, comprehensive, deeply researched publication each year on global competitiveness.
They rank the countries of the world by dozens of different criteria.
I'll take you straight to the executive summary on page XI.
Let me read how they describe it.
They say, covering 140 economies, the Global Competitiveness Index 4.0 measures national competitiveness defined as a set of institutions, policies, and factors that determine the level of productivity.
And look at that.
Right on top there, the United States of America.
And then Singapore.
And then Germany, and then Switzerland, then Japan.
That sounds about right to me, doesn't it?
But look at Canada.
We've dropped two slots in the past year.
We're number 12.
I mean, that's still great.
But Finland is now ahead of Finland?
Are you serious?
Now, if you skip to page 143, that's the detailed report on Canada.
You can see it country by country.
You can see what went into our country rankings.
So this wasn't like figure skating judges that have an element of subjectivity.
There's dozens of factors, each of which itself is measured as carefully as can be done.
They're trying to be scientific here.
Now, just hold up on this big chart on the screen for a moment.
I'm going to take you through it.
So this is at the top of the Canada page.
Do you see all those colorful bars?
Those are different measures for competitiveness.
On the far left, it says overall competitiveness.
You see that?
And then the country name at the top of the bar, it says USA.
That says which country is best.
So that says USA.
And since this is the Canada page, the number at the bottom shows our rank.
So hold this up on the screen for a bit.
There's a lot going on here.
Let me just walk you through it for a minute.
So on that bar on the left, that's the overall ranking.
We're number 12.
America's number one.
The next four bars that are pink there, those are all called enabling environment.
That's broken down into things like institutions and infrastructure and other things like that.
And each of those is broken down further and further and further.
So you can see we're actually tied for number one on macroeconomic stability.
I don't know if you can see that.
That's the last pink line on the right there.
We're tied for number one.
That means our banks are not failing in Canada.
Our dollar is not plunging into nothing like Venezuela, let's say.
Now, not a lot of credit to Trudeau for that.
That's our banking system that survived the 2008 crash in the U.S.
And Stephen Harper and Joe Flaherty brought in some.
Jim Flattery brought in some changes there.
So we're doing okay for institutions.
Now the next category is called human capital.
That's in orange there.
The first one is health.
The next one is skills.
Again, we're doing pretty well.
You know, 12th place, 11th place, no problem.
No one's saying we're a basket case.
Even slipping two notches from 10 to 12 isn't a cataclysm.
But we're going in the wrong direction under Baron Vaughan novelty talks, aren't we?
Well, the tyrant Donald Trump has taken his country into number one.
Now I'm going to speed up here.
I'm just trying to show you that the overall number is made up of a lot of different parts.
It's not just a subjective thing.
And each part has parts.
So this is sort of scientific.
Now over on the far right, in, I guess what's that color?
Turquoise.
You can see business dynamism.
That's second from the right.
And innovation capability.
Dynamism really means entrepreneurial spirit.
Cutting red tape, stuff like that, getting it done.
It's no surprise the U.S. is number one for that.
And innovation, for all of Trudeau's talk, we're just in 13th place for that.
No surprise, Germany's number one there.
But now scroll down a bit.
I want to show you the line at the bottom there.
You see that line that says 10-year average GDP growth, and it's just 1.6%.
That's bad.
Now, of course, Stephen Harper was prime minister for seven of the last 10 years, but that included the worldwide Great Recession.
How are we doing these days?
Well, not much better.
You know, the predicted GDP growth for Canada is only about 2%.
I mean, now the TV bank says that all this marijuana business will boost it to 2.2%.
Yeah, I guess.
I wonder how much damage to the GDP that stone drivers and stone workers will cost.
So I'm skeptic.
But my point is, we're growing at just around 2%.
That's pretty lame.
Well, Donald Trump's America just clocked double that.
And of course, their economy is 10 times bigger than ours anyways.
I want to show you a few more details on where the World Economic Forum says we're weak.
And you might disagree with them, but I want to show you their measurements because I know you won't see this anywhere else.
So give me a couple more minutes, okay?
Look on page 144 of the document.
30 Countries Better Than Us00:03:13
Do you see it says budget transparency?
And you see it says ranking out of 140 countries they measure.
We're ranked 61.
So there are 60 countries that are more honest in their government budgeting than Canada is.
I think that's a problem, don't you?
There's another one on there called efficiency of legal framework in challenging regulations.
That's another one we're doing poorly in ranked 25th.
Finland's number one again.
So that says, you know, that says we're ranked where we are, but I think we're going to do far worse next year.
Just ask anyone who's been following the oil and gas pipeline fiasco, trying to get the Transmountain pipeline built.
Here's the next one.
Burden of government regulation.
We're in 53rd place.
52 countries are better than us.
Can you imagine that?
Singapore is the best in the world.
Skip down the page.
Labor tax rate.
We're awful.
All our payroll taxes.
That means someone comes in the door and says, I want to work for you.
You say, I want to hire you.
Yeah, well the government's there, well, we want CPP and we want EI and we want payroll taxes and OPP and all that.
So we're ranked 50th.
49 countries are better than us.
That's a big deterrent to employment, of course.
Here's one.
I don't know how they measure it, but they call it attitudes towards entrepreneurial risk.
They measure that on a scale of one to seven.
Seven's the best.
We're only at 4.4.
We're ranked just 31 in the world.
30 countries are better than us.
I believe it.
Why would you risk things in Canada?
to be an entrepreneur.
The government will just tax you, regulate you, ban you, scold you, make it tough for you, even compete against you.
Maybe Americans are culturally bolder than us, probably.
But I don't blame our Canadian people.
I blame a system that punishes and even demonizes entrepreneurs, you know, like this guy.
So there could be a cut for small business.
We'll probably have things to say about it, but we have to know that a large percentage of small businesses are actually just ways for wealthier Canadians to save on their taxes.
Yeah, when a millionaire trust fund boy who never had worked a day in his life till his mid-30s calls millions of small business people tax cheats, why would you risk everything?
Why would you mortgage your house?
Why would you put your life savings into a business just for him to come and take half the profits if you succeed and blame me if you don't?
But here's my point.
We were told time and again that Trudeau's social justice obsessions, that feminism, that global warming, that diversity, that people-kind stuff, whatever, we've been told a hundred times by Trudeau and his cabinet and their stenographers in the media that it would all pay off big time.
Lots of money, apparently, to be made when a carbon tax is put on you.
Lots of money to be made by affirmative action for women and engineering companies.
Lots of money in it.
I don't know, the thinking being that greedy capitalists, people who actually work for a living and run businesses for a living and love profit and love prosperity, they don't know how to hire and they need trust fund layabouts to tell them how to run their business.
All they needed was for Trudeau and his gurus to tell them how to run their companies and then the economy would improve.
Transgender Advantages in Sport00:15:16
No.
We're running at just a half the GDP growth of Trump's America.
I guess the only question is, is that good enough for Canadians?
Stay with us for more.
I make the argument both that there's no scientific evidence that trans women have a competitive advantage.
There's no relationship between the naturally produced endogenous testosterone and performance.
And that sport is a human right, according to the IOC.
and that we have to promote inclusive sport.
Everyone has a right to compete.
I think sport is becoming increasingly inclusive.
I think those opposing inclusive sport are on the wrong side of history and that the victories that we have made are not going to go away, but there's no guarantee that we will get to where we want to without continuing to fight.
That is a man, born a man, who has decided to become a woman, calls himself Rachel now.
And as I said yesterday in my monologue, if someone says you really should treat me like a woman, you really should call me Rachel.
In a personal setting, in a real life setting, I don't think I would quarrel with them.
Why would you want to embarrass someone?
Why would you want to fight with someone if they really, really, really believe they're a woman?
Why disabuse them of that?
A few years ago, this was considered a mental illness until a vote by the American Psychiatric Association at a conference just decided that it was no longer an illness.
That's all fine.
I'm not looking to embarrass anybody.
But if a man who presents as a woman can then enter a sports competition and crush biological women, because he is a biological man, and despite what he says there, men obviously have a physical advantage when it comes to power and strength.
Do we have to go along with that too?
And the reason I say that is that Dr. Rachel McKinnon, as he calls himself, did win a championship bicycling competition.
There he is in the middle there.
And I'm sorry, he looks, you can see physiologically he is different than the two women he beat.
And of course, you can't see the other woman who was displaced because he came in first.
These women were pushed down to second and third.
And then there's someone we'll never know who came in fourth who's not on the podium.
Joining us now via Skype from Montreal is Barbara Kay, a columnist with the National Post to talk about this.
Barbara, great to see you again.
Good to see you too, Ezra.
You know, I don't want to fight with anybody.
I don't want to pick on anybody.
If someone is uncomfortable in their own skin, if someone has a problem with themselves, I don't want to make it my business.
As I said on my show yesterday, there is a tremendous amount of mental anguish that goes along with transgenderism.
And suicide attempts are 50% or more.
If these young men go on hormones or have surgery, the suicide attempts go up to 55 or 60%.
It's not a case for anger.
It's a case for sorrow and trying to help.
But this guy's pushing aside actual female athletes.
And he's claiming it's his human right to do so.
What do you make of that?
Well, you know, human, all this talk of rights, inclusivity, that's all very well, but this really is about sports.
Sports is very much based in the body.
And I'm not surprised that Dr. McKinnon takes this angle of rights and inclusivity because we have been made to use the word woman to change the definition of woman from biological to feelings, people's identity.
So that's, as you say, it's all very well if you're just in polite conversation or in a classroom or whatever.
But when you are dealing with sport, which is very much about biological capacity, the inclusivity has to stop right there because this is not working.
It's not only testosterone that gives biological males the advantage in a sporting situation.
It's muscle mass, its body shape, its size, all these things.
It doesn't work the other way because women who think that they are men, who have gender dysphoria, so women who identify as male, they're not going to have that advantage no matter how much testosterone they have.
In most sporting situations, it's going to be very unusual or one that requires great strength, like cycling does.
It's going to be very unusual for a biological female to beat a male.
So this is all baffle gab, this talk of rights and inclusivity.
And I always said sports is where the rubber is going to meet the road on the trans issue because sooner or later, the women who are being displaced, who are being erased, whose biology is being erased, are going to get the message and say, no more, we're not standing for this.
And frankly, if I were a female athlete and that happened to me, I would go on strike.
I just wouldn't compete against biological males.
And I would say, start a new category for trans women.
And let's compete against each other.
Yeah, have a trans league.
You know, it's not just sex, it's age.
There's a reason we don't let 16-year-old boys, young men, play hockey against 10-year-old boys.
It's not, I mean, I suppose we are in the technical sense of the word discriminating, but it's discrimination with a valid basis because the 16-year-old's going to crush the little kids.
It's a reason we have, in boxing, we have different weight categories.
I suppose that is discrimination, but it's because we don't want, you know, a brutal Mike Tyson to crush a featherwing.
So yes, this is discrimination, but it's based on, as you say, the nature of sport.
It's not sporting for a man to beat up a woman.
It's not sporting.
It's like that Seinfeld episode when Kramer goes to taekwondo against all the little kids, and he's so proud of himself because he beat all these little kids.
That's not sport.
No, it isn't.
And that's why we have why sport is a metaphor for fairness.
And it's why people are supposed to have honor in sport.
When you play tennis, when you call a ball out, if it's in or in or if it's out, people look at you.
Just the most terrible thing you can do is to cheat in any game.
And this is cheating.
It is cheating.
So, you know, the sporting associations, the IOC, they've been slow to respond and to come up with policies because they're a little bit paralyzed by the ideology.
These are all liberals.
These are all people that want to be in good standing in terms of being good citizens and having the right attitudes.
But they're baffled and upset by this because they know very well in their heart that speed, power, all these attributes are biologically based and no amount of identifying with the other sex is going to change that situation.
And this idea that only testosterone counts, sorry, that's not on.
It just isn't.
And real athletes know that that is not the only distinction.
Yeah.
I think one of the reasons why sports heroes are treated with such admiration, regardless, by the way, I'm going to mention of their race.
I mean, in the sports, the field of professional sports in America, whether it's the NFL, the NBA, the Major League Baseball, is a field where black Americans, especially, have excelled because it's a pure meritocracy.
Because in fact, racism, if there was a team out there that would be racist and not hire a black player, they're going to lose to the team that hires the best people regardless of race.
But the flip side of that, Barbara, is there's no affirmative action either.
So you know if you're the best basketball player in America, if you're the best baseball player, you earned it and everyone in the stadium saw it with their eyes.
You didn't get a head start because you were this race or that gender.
One of the reasons why people can, I think, admire sports heroes is because they see the pure achievement and it's fair.
It's not head starts.
It's not quotas.
It's not tokenism.
And this destroys the essence of sport.
This is something philosophical too.
It's not just biological and political.
This is not what sports is.
I totally agree with you.
And I think I would love to see what really bothers me is that the biological males who are winning in women's sports, they know that even if you gave them all the testosterone they wanted, they would be middle of the pack or much further back in competing against men.
So, you know, the reason she's posting all over the internet, you know, social media, oh, this is a world record.
This is new.
And nobody's getting excited about it because people in their hearts know that this so-called record is meaningless.
It's as meaningless as somebody who wins any other competition when they're on steroids.
Or that's why people don't want drugs in sports because, you know, you want a level playing field.
And I'm sorry, lowering the testosterone may reduce the capacity somewhat, but it is not the whole story.
So female athletes, they have to speak their minds and not be political correct about this.
I want to show you two images from social media.
First is the biography that Rachel McKinnon puts on his.
And you know what?
I'm sorry, I don't want to say her.
I don't want to go along with the Emperor Has New Clothes because this person is making an issue out of it.
So on his biography, he says, strident feminist, strident feminist.
And then show the Instagram picture again, because here's the point I want to make.
So in the picture, not these hashtags, show the image itself, if you please.
Because you have Rachel McKinnon, which is the transgender man, standing between two women.
How long until all three people on the podium are transgender men?
I'd say not long at all.
Because it won't be long.
You know, that's a good point.
That's a good point.
And how is that a strident feminist?
I'm sorry, that's not a strident.
That's a wolf in sheep's clothes.
That's a Trojan horse of a feminist using the word feminism to destroy women's sport.
When all three people on the podium are transgender men, who the hell is going to watch that?
Who the hell is going to enter that sports league?
It's just absurd.
It's ridiculous.
And slowly but surely, look, you have transgender men, women going into women's prisons, you know, into rape shelters.
You can't keep pushing this idea of inclusivity and this idea of a social construct.
You can push it so far, but no further.
This idea that gender and biology are completely detached, it's going to show up in women as a category, as a biological category, becoming totally erased.
And you know me, Ezra, I'm no feminist, but I'm on the side of the radical feminists on this one.
They feel themselves being erased as a unique category, a biological category, and they are.
And actually, you bring up a very good point.
One day we will see three trans women on the podium, and that will be the end of women's sports.
That'll be the end.
Unless they do something about it now.
I want to close with a point I made at the beginning, and you saw that little clip, where, oh, this is not about sport, this is about human rights.
I hear two things there.
I hear, first of all, a subtle legal threat.
Because what's a right?
A right is something that you have that you can take action on, that you can execute, that you can seek, you can have a grievance, your right has been infringed, you have a grievance, you can go and get equity, you can get some court to set you right.
I take this as a threat that if any lead were to speak, because if it was about sport, this Rachel McKinnon is going to lose the argument every time, because we're not stupid.
Just because he says, oh, no, men don't have an advantage, no one believes that.
It's like Elizabeth Warren saying she's Aboriginal.
No one believes it.
But in this case, at least Elizabeth Warren isn't saying, I'm a Cherokee Indian, and if you don't believe me, I'm going to take you to Human Rights Commission.
That's the other, that's the punctuation mark.
That's the exclamation point at the end here.
I'm a woman.
This is fair.
This is a human rights case.
And if you don't agree with me, I'll see you in court.
That's the unspoken threat.
That's what I think, because that's popping up all over Canada, these absurd transgender demands to go to aesthetic salons and be born.
Yeah.
And our own parliament is encouraging that by passing bills that are very vague in their meaning, like C-16, which incorporates gender expression as a human right.
And what does gender expression mean?
Does it mean the right for biological males to compete against biological females?
You know, we don't know because nothing was specified.
So trans activists have taken heart from this.
And this is the language of human rights courts, too.
You know, you remember the stupid case of the trans woman who wanted the Brazilian wax, the Manzillian.
These are the kind of cases that show just how ill-defined this whole idea of what gender expression really means.
Yeah.
Well, it's out of control.
And it's very rare that you're even allowed to have this conversation.
I have seen no other issue, Barbara, not even Islam.
It's very difficult to have an honest conversation about Islam in most media.
You get shut down, you get called an Islamophobe.
But the transgenderism issue, my observation just by following media and politics is that there is even less tolerance for politically incorrect comments.
In fact, the conversation you and I have here, I don't think it would even be allowed on most other media.
Let me close on that note.
Do you agree with me that the viciousness of the mob on this issue is the harshest anywhere, even more than on Islam?
Rare Conversations00:04:32
Absolutely.
I've never, I follow it on social media, and it is vicious.
These trans activists are scary as hell, and you're quite right.
Most media do not want to touch it, and I have to be extremely careful what I say about it in my normal publication outlets, and I am very careful about it.
But even so, I can just feel the tension around it.
Every time I do write about it, I know that there's a lot of nervousness in case there's blowback.
And boy, are they ever organized?
Yeah.
Well, I just think that this will, like you say, reach a breaking point.
And I stand by my prediction.
It'll be a matter of months, years, if not months.
Well, I hope it comes soon because then it'll force the issue.
In a way, you should hope for that so that we can truly see the emperor has no clothes, you know, and reveal this movement in all its absurdity.
Yeah.
Barbara, thanks for taking the time with us today.
I appreciate it.
Thanks for having me, Ezra.
All right, there you have it.
Barbara Kaye, a columnist with the National Post.
Stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
Hey, welcome back.
On my monologue yesterday about a transgendered man winning a women's sports event, Tammy writes, female athletes should be more vocal and demand their governing bodies intervene and put a stop to this and do it now.
Well, I agree, Tammy, but they're going to be sued.
You heard Dr. Rachel McKinnon, this is a human rights issue, which when I hear that, having been prosecuted by the Human Rights Commission for publishing some cartoons a decade ago, I hear you're going to be sued.
And do you doubt?
Do you doubt there'd be a lawsuit?
Dan writes, way to stand up and call a spade a spade on the ugly and embarrassing transgender scam in sports, Ezra.
Well, look, as we talked with Barbara Kay today, let there be a league for folks like this.
And I thought she made a good point.
There's a reason why we love sportsmanship.
There's a reason why we don't like doping.
There's a reason, as I put it, we have different weight categories and boxing, different age categories, because we want it to be fair sport.
We want it to be fair.
That's why we don't have adults competing against kids, because it's not sport then.
It's shooting fish in a barrel, man.
That ain't sport.
And he writes, why would any woman even participate in this competition given the evident man size of their competitor?
Well, that's the thing.
I mean, don't tell me there's no biological, physiological difference.
That's just kooky crazy stuff.
I mean, I understand what a transvestite is.
That comes from the word to dress differently.
I understand transgenderism as well, but you cannot change your innate DNA and biology.
You cannot do it.
And if you cut things off and inject yourself with hormones, you are still a man.
I'm sorry that you can't change yourself innately.
It's something we all wrestle with in life, isn't it, in one way or another.
On my interview with Alessandro Bocci, Andrew writes, the rest of Europe can learn a thing or two from Italy.
I think you're right, I tell you, Italy, Victor Orban in Hungary, Sebastian Kurz from Austria, even Nigel Farage in the UK.
He's just a member of the European Parliament, but he did win the referendum.
Marine Le Pen in second in France, Geert Wilders second in Holland, the Alternative for Deutschland getting seats in Bavaria this week.
I think there's a move afoot, and you wouldn't know it if you watched the CBC.
If you got your news from the CBC, the Global Mail, the Toronto Star, you either would not know about Matteo Salvini and the Italian government.
You either wouldn't know about it, or you would be told that they're racist, anti-Semitic, far-right, blah, blah, blah.
What was so interesting for me in Alessandro's interview was that she said it was a coalition between the right and the left, the ant establishment right and left.
And I learned that.
I didn't know that.
I followed this Matteo Salvini on Twitter.
He's a riot.
He's like following Trump on Twitter.
You've got to do it.
But yeah, I think I want more reports from Alessandro.
I'm talking to her a little bit.
I like her style.
She's smart.
She's contrarian, but not too far out there.
And she speaks great English.
So hopefully we can get some more reports from her from Italy.
Anyway, that's the show for today on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters to you at home.