GM’s Oshawa plant—operating since 1918 and once employing 40,000 workers—will close within a year, laying off 2,800 despite $6B in taxpayer bailouts and USMCA promises. Unifor’s Jerry Diaz faces criticism for political campaigns over worker needs, while Bombardier’s 3,000 layoffs and $14B in written-off auto loans highlight systemic failures. Alberta’s oil producers face carbon taxes and pipeline restrictions not applied to foreign imports, exposing Trudeau’s inconsistent policies. The episode questions whether his media fund and regulatory overreach stifle dissent while ignoring economic realities, urging collective resistance against perceived government propaganda. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, just like Bombardier, General Motors took a taxpayer bailout, but now it's laying off 2,800 workers in Oshawa.
It's November 26th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
You come here once a year with a sign, and you feel morally superior.
The only thing I have to say to the government for why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
There's no good time to lose your job, but a month before Christmas has to be amongst the worst.
General Motors has announced that it will be shutting down all of its operations in Oshawa, Ontario.
Their plant will continue operating into the new year, but it's winding things down.
It'll be gone within a year.
There has been a GM plant in Oshawa for pretty much a century, 1918, if I'm not mistaken.
At its height, they employed 40,000 people in that city, a greater proportion than the Calgarians who work in the oil and gas industry.
The union that represents GM autoworkers, it used to be called the Canadian Autoworkers, now it's called Unifor.
They seem to have been caught by surprise by this.
They put up this press release late last night.
While the union does not have complete details of the overall announcement, we have been informed that as of now, there is no product allocated to the Oshawa Assembly Plant past December 2019.
Based on commitments made during 2016 contract negotiations, Unifor does not accept this announcement and is immediately calling on GM to live up to the spirit of that agreement.
Unifor is scheduled to hold a discussion with General Motors tomorrow and we'll provide further comment following the meeting.
So that was last night.
Now you know Unifor.
They've been in the news a lot lately for every reason other than they're auto workers.
A few weeks ago they launched a partisan campaign against Andrew Scheer, the leader of the Federal Conservative Party, saying they're going to be his, quote, worst nightmare.
Could be.
But the people losing sleep tonight are Unifor's own members, not Andrew Scheer.
The man in the middle of that picture there is the president of Unifor, Jerry Diaz is his name.
I suppose any union leader, especially of a large union, is a political figure by definition, but Diaz really seems to come across as someone who thinks he leads a political party, not someone whose chief job description is looking after the interests of his own dues-paying members.
Unifor is a private sector union as opposed to most union members in Canada who are government sector unions.
While I think it's safe to say most government workers tilt left, I don't think the same can necessarily be said about Unifor, at least all of its parts.
It actually represents, for example, thousands of workers in Alberta's oil sands.
My point being, the political party that Jerry Diaz wants to lead, it's in his own head.
He doesn't speak for his members.
Diaz loves Trudeau, but I bet not one in 10 of his Alberta members feels the same way.
Do you see my point?
It's a personal indulgence on his part at the expense of his members.
Sometimes Diaz is right.
His union represents thousands of journalists in Canada at CTV, Global News, the Globe and Mail, places like that.
They're obviously pro-Trudeau, I'll grant you that.
But Oshawa, you know, the federal MP there is named Colin Kerry, and he's a Conservative MP.
He's won five elections in a row going back to 2004.
By the way, the Liberals have come in third in Oshawa in every election since 2004, and they've never won in that riding provincially.
They got single digits there in the last provincial election, but Diaz is for Trudeau.
But if Jerry Diaz isn't campaigning for Justin Trudeau and campaigning against the conservatives, he's probably busy attacking, oh, I don't know, Donald Trump.
As part of his thank yous to Jerry Diaz for his support, Justin Trudeau appointed Diaz to be on an advisory panel during the rickety NAFTA renegotiations.
I mean, I understand the idea.
Uniforce members do a lot of trade with the U.S., especially on the auto side.
But unless I missed it, I didn't hear a word from Jerry Diaz about the auto industry.
It was all rants about the dairy cartel, which is odd, because dairy farmers aren't members of Unifor.
I don't even, some of them are United Food and Commercial Workers Unions, but many of them are just not in a union.
But boy, was Jerry Diaz prepared to fight for the dairy cartel.
Hi, it's Jerry Dyers.
I'm at the Canadian Embassy.
I just left a meeting with representatives from the Prime Minister's office, Ambassador McNaughton, Minister Christia Freeland.
We had a good discussion about how things unfolded last night and this morning.
The facts are as 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 Schearer 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 Scherer believe that all disputes in NAFTA should be handled in U.S. ports?
So, Andrew, what exactly do you want us to capitulate on here?
You should be ashamed of yourself.
Other than Canadian oil exports to the U.S., the auto industry exports are by far our most important sector.
But Diaz was in lockstep with Justin Trudeau's weird strategy to ignore the important stuff and focus instead on weird ideological pet projects like feminism and global warming or whatever, things that have no place in a trade deal.
I suppose the biggest mistake was Diaz agreeing with Trudeau's dangerous strategy to insist on doing a deal with Mexico, a three-way deal, rejecting Donald Trump's sensible proposal that America and Canada do a quick renewal of NAFTA between the two of them, and then Trump can go battle it out with Mexico later.
Why wouldn't we have agreed to that?
We have no natural trade quarrel with America.
In fact, we're actually a higher cost producer than them.
Our jobs and factories move south, not the other way around.
Trump has no beef with us.
Our trade with America is pretty balanced dollar for dollar between what we buy and sell to each other.
I think Trudeau liked the romance of being a savior to Mexico.
Remember this three amigos meeting?
I think Trudeau loved the idea that he would selflessly come to the aid of a poor third world country run by a socialist.
The irony is Mexico had more than 50 private meetings with U.S. negotiators where Canada wasn't in the room.
And then Mexico and America did a bilateral deal first.
If you look at what we were forced to sign after, and Trudeau waited till literally hours before the deadline, it actually capped the number of cars that can be made in Canada and sold in the States and put other restrictions on our auto industry that we didn't have before.
It was a setback for our auto industry.
Not a big one, but a setback.
That didn't stop the Trudeau media from saying it was the bestest trade deal ever.
And that Christia Freeland, who Trump personally called out as being irritating on the negotiating team, well, the mainstream media says she's the bestest foreign minister in the history of history.
So, you know, it's settled.
But that's life inside the Trudeau bubble.
And then this morning reality hit pretty hard, didn't it?
Let me read from the Wall Street Journal, because these days, if you want honest reporting about something in Canada, you can't really trust Canadian media because they're all in on the payroll of Justin Trudeau or are about to be with his $595 million slush fund.
So this was printed on the Yahoo Finance website, but as you can see, it was written by the Wall Street Journal.
Headline, General Motors expected to shut down operations in Oshawa, Ontario.
Now the story says that GM is cutting costs in a lot of places, including in the U.S.
But let me read to you a line that I haven't seen in the CBC or CTV or any other Trudeau media outlet.
Canada's auto industry, which is concentrated in southern Ontario, has shrunk over the past decade as more factories move to the southern U.S. and Mexico, where labor costs are cheaper.
Canadian policymakers had hoped the United States-Mexico-Canada agreement, reached in late September with provisions requiring more work be done by higher wage workers would help the domestic industry.
Today, Canada is among the most expensive countries in the world to build cars and the highest cost market for car assembly in the North American Free Trade Zone.
Here's what Buzz Hargrove, a past president of the Canadian Autoworkers, had to say.
He lived and breathed autoworkers for years.
He didn't hang out quite as much flying around on Justin Trudeau's private jets in his day, the prime minister of his day.
Here's what Buzz Hargrove said in the sun today.
He said former Canadian auto workers head Buzz Hargrove told the Sun news of the closure, left him reeling.
I'm shocked, he said.
It seems like Trump's strategy is working beyond belief.
Exactly.
And who do you think is going to get better?
Do you think it's going to get better or worse when Justin Trudeau's national carbon tax kicks in?
We're talking about costs of production here, aren't we?
Whereas Donald Trump is actually cutting taxes.
And he says, if anything, he's going to cut taxes more and reduce red tape more for the auto industry.
Remember, he's been talking about getting rid of the extremely expensive fuel efficiency standards that's forced on Detroit.
Now, this is happening on Justin Trudeau's watch.
It seems to happen a lot with him.
Here's a story just two weeks ago about Bombardier, the company that has received literally billions of dollars in bailouts from Canadian taxpayers.
Let me quote from this story in the star.
Bombardier said about 3,000 jobs will be cut in Canada with the majority of those in Bombardier's home province of Quebec and 500 in Ontario.
Like Bombardier, GM was the recipient of billions of dollars in taxpayer largest.
Actually, GM got, and the auto sector in general, got far more than Bombardier.
And in fairness, Stephen Harper was part of that decision a decade ago as part of the massive auto bailout done in conjunction with Barack Obama and the province of Ontario.
So a lot of people were involved in some bailouts.
Here's an article from a few months ago, though.
This is from June.
Nearly $14 billion shoveled into the auto industry and much of it has just quietly been written off by the Liberals.
Here, let me read.
Ready?
The Liberal government appears to have written off a taxpayer loan to the auto industry in March, but is refusing to say how much the loan was for or to provide any other details.
Ottawa has been carrying large stagnant loans to the auto sector on its books, and repayments have been past due since at least 2010.
Why?
I mean, a child is a better negotiator than that.
Much better.
If you've ever had a child try to haggle with you to stay up a little bit later, kids can be pretty good negotiators.
I say we put eight-year-olds in charge of our Canadian business negotiations, whether it's NAFTA or Bombardier or General Motors.
I really don't know how an eight-year-old could make it worse than Trudeau has.
I mean, just months ago, he forgave GM a massive debt and obviously got nothing in return.
They just shut down their Oshawa plant months after Trudeau gave him a free billion or whatever it was.
Maybe there's no way to have kept GM here, maybe.
But when the feds gave $10 billion to the auto industry a decade ago and Ontario taxpayers gave billions more, surely there was a quid pro quo.
And if it was just to squeeze another decade out of a factory, well, That's more than a billion dollars a year for a factory with 2,800 people in it.
You could have just cut every worker a million dollar check and have been ahead of the game.
It'll be interesting to see what Justin Trudeau and Bill Mourneau and Gerald Butts say and do today and in the days ahead.
I mean, on the one hand, they and Catherine McKenna have always railed against the fossil fuel economy.
They've always talked about phasing out gasoline-powered cars.
Maybe you think they didn't mean it?
Or do you think they only meant it when it came to the oil industry itself, but not the people who burn oil in their cars, you or the factories that make the cars?
Here's Gerald Butz.
I love showing this clip because it's the truth.
It's right out there.
It's right on the internet.
I don't have a secret source.
Here's Gerald Butts just a few months before quitting his anti-oil sands lobby gig to be Trudeau's right-hand man.
Truth be told, we don't think there ought to be a carbon-based energy industry by the middle of this century.
That's our policy in Canada, and it's our policy all over the world.
You can choose to fight this fight on locking us into a high-carbon economy for five decades.
And I think that's a very reasonable perspective to take.
In fact, it's one we do take.
So we don't think that we think that the oil sands have been expanded too rapidly without a serious plan for environmental remediation in the first place.
So that's why we don't think it's up to us to decide whether there should be another route for a pipeline.
Because the real alternative is not an alternative route.
It's an alternative economy.
Well, you heard the man.
He wants an alternative economy.
No more of this gasoline fossil fuel business.
Now, that alternative economy is not here yet, but maybe he can hasten this coming utopia by destroying the society we have now, shutting down some factories.
I mean, it's not funny.
It's sad for 2,800 families, and it's not going to be the last.
Here's an interview from May of this year with Magna, the big auto parts manufacturer, great Canadian success story.
Let me quote Don Walker, their CEO.
I'm worried about what's going on in Canada, Walker told employees and shareholders gathered in Markham, Ontario, on Thursday.
I get very frustrated when I see the decisions being made that put undue administrative costs and inefficiencies on our plants, specifically here in Ontario, because we have to compete.
We're not going to get business if we're forced to be uncompetitive.
If I look at after-tax returns, the U.S. now has an advantage, he said.
So if we have two equal projects, Jurisdiction A and Jurisdiction B, and in Jurisdiction B I get more after-tax dollars, that's where we're going to start to allocate more dollars.
We have to think about what the tax burden is on companies operating in Canada.
Industry Moving Away?00:09:40
So he said that back in May.
Do you think that problem is going to get better or get worse when Justin Trudeau brings in his carbon tax full tilt?
When Ontario power prices keep going up because Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne signed 20-plus year deals with green lobbyists to buy their ultra-expensive, unreliable solar power and wind power.
Yeah, this GM plant isn't the last to go.
Now, as I say this, Trudeau, you know, he got up at the crack at 10, and about a quarter to 11 this morning, he put out some little tweets saying he's deeply concerned.
That's another difference between him and Trump.
Trump never stops working.
I've never seen Trump take a vacation in two years, have you?
Other than maybe the odd golf game, but he plays less golf than Obama did, and Trump actually owns golf courses.
I think Trump only works.
I think that's all he does.
And you can even see him tweeting about things after midnight and at 6 a.m.
He just works.
Justin Trudeau, he's taken a month's worth of personal days this year, and he didn't get around to weighing in on the auto thing until almost noon.
Now, what's he going to do?
Now, I know that he'll be emotionally available.
That's really his strength, isn't it?
He'll talk about how much he really cares.
What's he actually going to do?
What can he do?
Another bailout of the bailout?
Will he give General Motors another billion dollars to keep that factory open just for one more year?
I mean, maybe, maybe just enough to get Trudeau through his 2019 reelection.
Then again, Oshawa votes conservatives, so maybe those 2,800 unemployed families will be treated the same way as the 100,000 or so unemployed Alberta oil and gas families.
In other words, Trudeau really just doesn't care.
Trudeau will give billions to dairy farmers because, well, they're simply better.
Quebecers are better than the rest of Canada because, you know, we're Quebecers.
Our oil and gas industry is down and out.
Our auto industry is failing.
But don't you worry.
You'll only get happy news about all this because the most important people in the entire economy, more important than oil men or auto workers, are the political journalists of Canada.
And the one thing Jerry Diaz can take credit for is a $600 million slush fund for Canadian reporters.
So that's my best advice for these 2,800 hurting families.
Make yourself feel better.
Just read news from the CBC or the Toronto Star or the Globe and Mail.
Their journalists will tell you that it's not that bad at all.
In fact, it's pretty great.
I mean, just think of the carbon emissions we'll save.
You'll be just fine.
That's what the uniford journalists will say, anyways.
Coming up, we'll talk to Manny Montenegrino about this.
Stay with us.
As we negotiated the USMCA, as we made sure that we were doing the right things for Canada, the right things for Canadians, and the key thing on that is always listening, learning, talking about how we're going to build for a better future.
and thinking about that future with the long term, in terms of your jobs until you retire, but also your kids' jobs and your grandkids' jobs.
That kind of focus needs to be at the center of it.
Well, that's Justin Trudeau at a Chrysler plant in Windsor just last month, saying that he had not only secured the jobs of the workers there, but their children and grandchildren.
That's a 50-year promise.
Unfortunately, it didn't quite last 50 days.
That Chrysler plant is still fine, but as you just heard in my monologue, General Motors is shutting down its Oshawa plant completely.
There has been an auto factory in that city for one century.
It's down to what you could call a skeleton crew, down to 2,500 plus 300 other contractors.
2,800 people used to be, oh, about 40,000 working in Oshawa.
No longer.
Joining us now to talk about this is our friend Manny Montenegrino, who was our guide during the NAFTA renegotiations.
Manny's the president of Think Sharp.
It's great to see again, Manny.
No one is happy about this.
That's 2,800 families that have been put on notice that they're going to be unemployed.
It's sad, but it is also a day of politics because there's always politics when it comes to the auto sector, isn't there?
Yes.
Yes, absolutely.
And it is very sad, but it is foreseeable.
It's pretty simple that businesses look to improving their bottom lines every year for the shareholders.
I mean, that's a fact that cannot be overlooked.
This plan by GM started two years ago.
They look to improve their shareholder value.
Oshawa, I mean, if you add what's happened in the last few years, the accelerating costs of electricity by the Liberal government, the provincial liberal government, the imposition of carbon taxes, the inability for the federal government to match the corporate tax rate of America.
I mean, we had our fiscal update, and the finance minister says we won't do that.
Well, that just is another impediment for businesses to stay or these multinational businesses stay in Canada.
So when you put it all together, and GM is making a decision, it's made decisions in other areas of the world.
It's made decisions in America, but about 40 to 50% of its decision is in Canada, reducing Canadian jobs.
That's a big number when you look at Canada only being one-tenth the size of the United States.
So General Motors really picked on Canada or their Canadian operations the most in their restructuring.
And that has to do with all those factors that I just mentioned.
Yeah.
What scares me is I was reading back in May, I just dug it up, the CEO of Magna that does a lot of auto parts.
It's not obvious.
Magna is fairly well known, but not as well known as GM or Ford.
And the CEO couldn't have been clearer.
And this was in May.
He said, if you look at the tax cuts that Trump brought in in January, it just is more expensive to do business up here.
So if a company is going to shut down a plant, they're more likely to shut it down up here.
If they're going to restructure, they're more likely to move things to the states.
And he was, what scares me, Manny, is that this could be a domino and other dominoes may fall.
And God forbid, other factories, Magna, I think the industry is moving away like the Western Canadian oil industry is moving away.
Well, exactly.
I mean, when you talk about domino, it isn't just the auto sector.
The domino began, in my opinion, in the oil sector, in the pipeline sector.
A great example is Transmitland Pipeline.
There was an election in 2005, I believe it was, in BC, where there was opposition.
The prime minister did absolutely nothing for a year and a bit until he received a basic threat from Kinder Morgan, 30 days, and then acted by buying the pipeline, not putting in a clause, not putting in an appeal.
This is telling the business community at large, we're really not open for business.
So if you look at it, every aspect of it, if you look at the business confidence index in America versus Canada, America is up 30 to 40 percent since Trump got elected, and we're down about the same amount, 20 or 30 percent, in business confidence.
So when you're looking at, I mean, humans are making decisions.
They're around the board table.
They're looking at the increasing taxes in Canada.
They're looking at the carbon tax.
They're looking at the direction of the government.
They're looking at the business confidence.
I mean, these people talk to each other.
The oil industry guys talk to the, if you're the CEO of a big oil company or your CEO of General Motors, they're talking to each other.
They know what's happening.
And you look at the totality of everything, and you look at what's happening in America where businesses are invited and businesses are being attracted.
Where are you going to make the decision?
So, General Motor, I mean, so you have to look at the totality of it.
And what you have, and here's the big, big, big difference, Ezra.
And I've advised big business CEOs in my legal career.
There are people that are looking for that one day, I'll say, approval, and they're people who plan for a long term.
Our prime minister is simply, and there's too much evidence not to agree with this point, is simply looking for how can I get through this one day, this media one day, to look good.
Whereas down south, the president is thinking, how do I plan a one, two-year plan to make sure businesses come here?
And his plans by reducing taxes, by cutting regulation, by cutting burdensome carbon taxes or carbon regulations.
This frees business.
And of course, businesses are going to be attracted to there.
Trudeau's Media Game00:10:31
And in Canada, all this prime minister needs to do is, how do I get by this news day by saying something fluffy?
What he said in your clip, we listen to business.
Well, you clearly didn't listen to GM.
They've been talking about this for two years.
It's clear that all business, you have the oil patch leaving.
The oil rigs are leaving Alberta.
70, 80% are now down in America.
Pipelines are not being built.
You're not listening to anyone.
I mean, clearly, that is what is happening in Canada.
Yeah.
You know, if I think of Justin Trudeau's key moments to talk about his economic vision, I think, for example, when he spoke at Davos, Switzerland, right after Trump announced his tax cut, so January this year, it was his chance to talk to the masters of the universe, you know, the big CEOs.
And he didn't, like you say, he didn't address the amazing comparative advantage American businesses now have on taxes.
He led with his male feminism again.
I want to show you a clip from Trump.
And frankly, you could pick this, you could find 20 clips from Trump in the same vein.
I'm just going to show you Trump.
This is from last year.
Just talking about autos.
He talks, you know, everyone knows the motto, Make America Great Again.
But other than that, I think his most common saying, his catchphrase is, buy American, hire American.
And he's obsessed with getting factories back into the States.
Here's just one clip.
And Manny, I could give you 20 clips like this.
Take a look at this.
Already we're seeing jobs coming back.
Since my election, Ford has announced 700 new jobs coming back to their plant in Flat Rock, Michigan.
Fiat Chrysler has announced that they will create 2,000 new jobs in Michigan and Ohio.
And just today, breaking news, General Motors announced that they're adding or keeping 900 jobs right here in Michigan.
And that's going to be over the next 12 months.
And that's just the beginning, folks.
Now, Manny, as we said at the top, there are some GM cuts in the States too.
But my point for showing that clip is, sorry, Trump is obsessed with bringing factories back.
It's all he talks about domestically.
I mean, it's why he won so many Rust Belt states.
Trudeau doesn't send those same symbolic messages to companies that you will find a great home here.
He talks about feminism and carbon taxes, and they don't want to hear it.
Right.
And you know what?
We have to be honest about our review of the Prime Minister and the President of the United States.
The Prime Minister is, in my opinion, unconcerned about industry of any sort in Canada.
I mean, he will attend to it.
He gets the photo-ops.
But his major concern, and it's clear in his beginning of his NAFTA discussions, which is a big trade deal, it was five virtue signaling causes.
He's concerned about virtue signaling on every aspect, every tweet, every message, every he's off.
If you look at his tweet to going to Argentina, he talks about getting women in the workforce.
Every tweet, his focus is that.
And that's where his mind is.
The president's focus is on jobs, is on businesses, and that's why their GDP is so much stronger.
That's why jobs are created so much more in America.
And so that's what's happening.
So Trudeau is getting, the Prime Minister is getting exactly what he wants.
He wants that daily coverage that he's sitting there on virtue signaling clauses and really unconcerned.
And we can talk about many industries.
It is the oil industry.
It is, I mean, Bombardier, we gave a bunch of money and they've fired a lot of people.
So it isn't just the auto sector.
It is all general business malaise.
You know, if you're building something, if you're touching something with your hands, he's not interested.
The prime minister is not interested in those jobs.
He's interested in those fancy jobs and not the kind of blue-collar job.
Whereas the president is interested in the blue-collar jobs, and those are what builds countries.
Yeah.
And by the way, a lot of those blue-collar jobs pay very well, I should add.
Oh, yeah, right.
I have one last question for you.
When I was reading some more about this GM closure in Oshawa, it looks like they'll close down over the course of the next 12 months.
So the families are getting the bad news now.
They will really have one year to wind things down.
That's enough to get Trudeau through his next election campaign.
There will not be the images of the plant actually closing, I don't think.
Do you think Trudeau's going to try and bargain with them and say, listen, I'll give you a billion, just keep it open a little more?
Do you think he's going to try and give them more subsidies to keep them afloat?
Or do you think he's just going to commiserate with them in a photo op and just not talk about it?
I think he's going to ignore it.
And I think he can ignore it because no media is sitting there.
And I tried to do this.
As you know, I'm retired.
I'm going through a bunch of information.
I tried to count the number of jobs.
Near Ottawa, we had a couple major plants in our suburbs left to America.
The media is not saying how many jobs are going to America as a result of the policies of the Liberal government.
I know that 60, 70, 80% of the rigs are gone from Alberta and they're in the States.
We know the pipeline jobs, there's 8,000 jobs are off.
You know, no one's doing a count.
No one in the media, and there are thousands of people in the media that can sit there and say, what's it cost with our direction, the Liberals' direction with the gender budget and with respect to virtual signaling?
How many jobs does that cost?
And no one's done that.
I did do one analysis, and I'll share with you.
And it's called, the Prime Minister talks about how good the unemployment is, the unemployment rate in Canada.
Well, that's a false figure.
I never look at unemployment.
I look at participation rate.
Participation rate is a better number.
It tells you, it's scientifically a better number.
It tells you how many people are working in the population of able-bodied people.
And it doesn't mean, because the unemployment rate, once you're off UI, you're not counted, although you're able-bodied and willing to work.
Our participation rate since the prime minister has been in power is down 0.5%, which is about 170,000 jobs.
And we're adding many more immigrants.
So the population is increasing and people and less people are working.
Whereas in America, the participation rate is up.
So that tells you what's really happening in the job market.
We are not creating the jobs to sustain either immigration or normal growth in Canada.
Yeah.
Well, it's very sad.
I mean, between the oil patch and the auto industry, those are two key industries in Canada.
And I fear that we have yet to see the worst in each other.
But we're going to have a booming journalism industry.
It's going to be supported.
Jobs are protected there.
And at least that industry is somewhat protected.
You're right.
You're talking about that $595 million slush fund for journalists.
Well, I just want one journalist, one journalist, to go through the number of jobs that have left Canada to America as a result of the last two-year plan, just if there's one out there.
And I might even pay for it myself.
Yeah, well, you know, it's probably a project for us at the Rebel to try and compile that.
I wonder if a think tank's on it.
Manny, as always, it's great to catch up with you.
Thanks for your support.
Great to see you.
Thank you.
Review things.
It's great to see you.
Well, there you have our friend Manny Montenegrino, the head of Think Sharp, and he was one of our guides through the whole NAFTA renegotiation process.
Stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
Hey, welcome back on my monologue Friday about Justin Trudeau being protested by 2,000 people in Calgary.
Robert Wrights, Trudeau and Butts are just laughing at them.
They have no intentions of getting the pipeline built that Alberta needs.
Like TransCanada said, if C69 passes, no pipeline company in the right mind would propose building a pipeline.
Yeah, I mean, gender analysis, emissions analysis.
We import oil from Saudi Arabia and Algeria via tanker ship.
There's no tankership ban for their tankers.
And we import a lot of oil these days.
I don't know if you know this, by rail from the United States, including from the Bakken Geographical Region Geological Region in North Dakota.
Did you know that?
We actually import oil from America.
And what's the commonality between American oil and Saudi oil?
Neither of them has to pay a carbon tax in Canada.
Neither of them has a gender analysis or a carbon analysis, but they're allowed to come into the Canadian market.
Trudeau puts those analyses on our own domestic producers.
He actually treats Canadian producers worse than foreign producers.
That's just weird.
Alright, instead of a noose shirt, he should have worn a Celine Dion skull shirt.
Then all would be sweetness and light.
Al, you're so right.
I tell you, I can't get some of those Celine Dion images out of my head, especially the little demonic babies.
What is she thinking?
I don't know.
But you're right.
I mean, if we're going to start having the RCMP investigate people with shirts, and the RCMP did, from what I understand, I saw reports of the RCMP were investigating that shirt.
True North Initiative Projects00:05:54
Are we going to shut down every college kid who wears the Shea Guevara shirt or the Mao shirt?
Because to tell you one thing, it's a joke when you say, oh, come on, we've got to hang Trudeau.
But it's no joke.
She Guevara and Mao Tzaitong were murderers, and in Mao's case, it was in the tens of millions.
On my interview with Gabe Desjardins about residential schools, Don writes, I'm sure the policy of sending native children to residential school was made with good intentions.
I also believe that there were abuses at some schools, but it certainly wasn't every student in every school, as we are constantly told.
I believe there are many people who are successful today who would not have been if they had not attended a residential school.
Well, you're exactly right, and that's exactly what I've been told now by two families that went through the residential school process.
Here in Toronto, we've just heard about a sexual assault at an elite boys' school called St. Mike's.
I'm not blaming the Saint part of St. Mike's.
I'm not blaming the Mike's part of St. Mike's or the Toronto part or anything.
I'm just saying these things sometimes happen.
It's been tagged to the entire residential school that they were all abusive and it's being hung around the neck of the church.
I think that's some excusology to defame the church, but also to revise the past so that it's only a narrative of grievance.
And none of those things are healthy.
On Trudeau's $595 million media slash fund, Bill and Barb, right?
You stressed several times that the Rebel is the only source in opposition to the mainstream media and not taking or wanting government money, part of the scandalous $595 million.
I'll grant that you are the largest and I'm sure the most effective, but you are not the only one.
You have to agree that the Truth North Initiative and Spencer Fernando also do great jobs and do not get funded.
Even the National Citizens Coalition does a certain amount, but not on the scale of the Rebel.
Keep fighting for freedom, but don't overclaim.
That's a very interesting point, and I did indicate that Blacklock's reporter is also refusing to take handouts.
And I went to get a subscription on Blacklocks, but I saw it was $314 a year.
And I want to show them some love, but I don't want to pay $314 a year, so I'm not going to do that.
But yeah, I follow Spencer Fernando.
I think he's great.
Frankly, I've invited him to do some work with us, but he says he's too busy.
He's a great commentator.
I don't think he goes out and breaks news.
I don't think he does access to information requests.
I don't think he covers events.
I don't think he's, I think he's more a commentator on other news.
Now, he's great.
I follow him closely.
And obviously, he would never take money, but I don't know if I would call him a news network.
I'd call him an independent freelance pundit.
And I don't think he would be offended to be called that.
True North Initiative, obviously, I'm a super fan.
That's Candace Malcolm, and Andrew Lawton is with them now.
And not only am I a fan of theirs, but we actually help crowdfund their flights to London to help report on the Tommy Robinson case.
I have to say, though, that was probably the first time they went out into the field to do that kind of journalism.
Now, Candace obviously does very important journalism, including breaking international scoops at the Toronto Sun.
And so, again, I'm not disparaging, I'm just distinguishing between the Rebel, which has a couple dozen staff, we have on-air personalities, we have researchers, we have video editors, web editors, we have 1.1 million YouTube subscribers, we have hundreds of thousands of clicks every day.
I don't know the exact number, it goes up and down.
So I'm not saying there are no other voices, and the National Citizens Coalition from time to time, frankly, they're not very active these days.
I'm not saying there's no one else, but I don't know if the True North Initiative would call itself a news organization.
And I think Spencer Fernando, he's definitely an opinion commentary journalist, but I just don't think they're in the news gathering reporting full-time, full-tilt business.
You know, maybe I'm sounding defensive.
I'm really not.
There's other groups out there too.
There's Ontario Proud and now BC Proud and Alberta Proud.
And they actually do some on-the-ground filmology a little bit these days, and I hope they grow.
I'm trying to think of some other groups, but those groups are more about Facebook memes where they have a pithy saying and put it on Facebook and get a lot of people to like.
That's just a little bit different, I think.
I'm not disparaging.
I'm just saying it's different.
You tell me, am I sounding too defensive?
I love all those.
Every group I've just listed, I admire, I click on, I retweet.
But, you know, I think that the actual journalism, it's the rebel.
Let me just put it on the record.
I hope those other groups grow mighty and help fight back, because Lord knows we need the help.
One more email.
Eric writes, just subscribed to help the rebel.
Keep up the good fight against the bought and paid for propaganda media.
Gimmell.
We always do.
And so do those other groups.
So does Jeff Bollingwell and Ontario Proud and so does Cannabis Malgum and True North Initiative and so does Spencer Fernando.
All of a sudden I'm feeling bad that I said they weren't big and mighty media groups.
They're just not.
But I hope they do grow.
And let me just say we're very open to doing anything with them that they find in their mutual interests.
I mean we have done some projects with True North and I'd be interested in doing anything with Spencer Fernando.
That's it for today, my friends.
And until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, see you at home.