Ezra Levant’s episode exposes polls showing Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party tied with Conservatives amid voter backlash over unchecked immigration (450,000/year), $595M journalist bailouts, and $50B pipeline losses. He critiques media propaganda—like CBC’s fangirl coverage of Trudeau or romanticized portrayals of Omar Khadr post-$10.5M settlement—and argues the government’s climate policies, including carbon mandates, ignore economic reality while enabling surveillance tech like Apple Watches and Facebook. Ultimately, the episode frames Trudeau’s support as media-driven, detached from public concerns over jobs, deficits, and privacy. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, two new polls show that the only Canadians who love Justin Trudeau are in the media.
It's December 17th, 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 about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
I've got a little flicker of good news today in the form of two new public opinion polls.
I'll get to them in a moment.
But first, I want to talk about the nature of bad news.
We talk a lot about bad news on The Rebel.
Sometimes people email me to that effect.
It's not because we like bad news, it's because we don't like it.
And we report bad news because other media ignore the bad news or are actually in collusion with bad news.
And look, someone simply has to tell the other side of the story.
You're going to see a lot more of that fake news good news now that Justin Trudeau announced he's going to spend $595 million to bail out the few remaining private sector journalists in Canada.
Get used to CBC-style propaganda from everywhere.
Can I show you just two examples from the past week?
Look at this.
What about the Battle of the Ryans, Ryan Reynolds or Ryan Gosling?
I just saw Ryan Reynolds' gin ad on his sense of humor is just awesome.
And I've met both of them.
Ryan Gosling is lovely and calm.
But Ryan Reynolds just makes me proud to be a Canadian.
You may have a career as a diplomat.
You're walking the line beautifully.
Did you see the banner at the bottom there?
PM Justin Trudeau's first live interview at the end of the year.
Prime Minister's Live Interview00:02:49
That's amazing to have him on live TV.
So you've got the prime minister for a year-in interview.
That's amazing in itself.
But it's live.
So if you put something difficult to him, he can't get out and say this interview is canceled without humiliating himself.
So you've trapped him there.
There's nowhere to run.
You could ask him anything.
And instead, your question is, what's your favorite Ryan?
I don't know.
Is the excuse because they're a daytime TV variety show, not a heavy political show?
I don't think that's a good excuse.
But there's no excuse for CBC's star political correspondent, Rosarie Barton.
Look at this.
If you could do any other job and you have cancer, what would it be?
I'd be a schoolteacher.
I knew you were going to say that.
I know.
That's such an aspirational.
But it's what I am.
Aspirational.
Something you haven't done.
No, it'd be that.
it'd be maybe, maybe running a school.
Something at the UN, something at the...
Oh no, if I'm, once...
Once I'm done politics, I'm done politics.
She asked him what podcasts he's into, what books he's reading.
Why?
You know, we took that interview there and we put a love song over it.
And then we focused on, and this is all their footage, but we just edited it to focus on the body language.
It was the first date.
It wasn't accountability journalism.
Let's take a look at his body language.
Just like me, They long to be close to you.
Why do stars fall down from the sky every time you are by just like me?
They long to be close to you that you and the ancient stars together and decided to create a dream come true.
Last Pipeline Impact00:13:57
You know, there's more than seven people, seven billion people in this world and there's a lot of lonely hearts out there thinking, am I ever going to find the one for me?
Am I ever going to find the one for me?
It's tough, but I tell you, if you find someone, I don't care what station in life they're from, where you find them, you find someone who looks at you the way Rosemary Barton looks at Justin Trudeau.
You grab hold of that someone and you never let them go.
That is a love that will never burn out.
All right?
If that Tinder ad, dating ad, a reality show, you know, if that soft porn is the alternative to telling you bad news, I'll skip it, thanks.
I'm not a PR man or a stenographer or a weird cheerleader or like a first speed date gal.
I'm a reporter.
This is that same Rosemary Barton taking a fangirl style selfie.
I wonder if she just sits at home with all her cats, just drinking wine, just staring at that picture there and just doodling hearts with the letters JT plus RB in them.
I'm sorry, that ain't journalism, folks.
That ain't journalism.
At least not for me.
You know, we fell out of the Garden of Eden, didn't we?
For eating from the tree of knowledge.
But would we really want to go back to blissful ignorance and pretending there's no bad news and pretending that we could maybe possibly love Justin Trudeau?
That really reminded me of how Monica Lewinsky looked at Bill Clinton.
But Rosemary Barton's a grown-up.
What's her excuse?
Oh my God, that will never be us.
That is not real journalism.
That is fake news.
We report the bad news because that is the way the world is.
And we'll stop reporting the bad news when there is no more bad news.
Now, maybe we don't want to know the bad news.
Maybe we don't want to follow the bad news.
But you cannot un-know things once you know them.
You cannot unsee things once you've seen them.
I mean, just for example, 1,500 people in the city of Grand Prairie, population 65,000, had a protest yesterday.
1,500 people had a protest in a small city.
They weren't demanding a bailout or a handout.
They just wanted to be able to work, actually, to build a pipeline.
And here's what the Environment Minister said from a UN global warming conference half a world away.
Here's what she tweeted.
Countries need to see beyond their national interest that requires solutions and compromises in the broader interest.
Let me translate.
Sorry, Albert and sorry, Canadians.
I met some really cool people at the UN conference.
She speaks with that.
And to impress them, I've decided that we need to phase out your oil and gas job.
So don't be surprised that they're taking this point of view because Justin Trudeau himself said so.
I've said time and time again, and you're all tired of hearing me say it, you can't make a choice between what's good for the environment and what's good for the economy.
We can't shut down the oil sands tomorrow.
We need to phase them out.
Can you imagine him saying that about any other industry, by the way?
I don't think Trudeau has actually ever done a real day's work in his life.
He was born a Millionaire Trust Fund kid, son of Pierre Trudeau, Millionaire Trust Fund kid.
You know, the last Trudeau, I've told you this before, last Trudeau to actually have to work for a living was Justin Trudeau's grandfather, Charles, or Charlie, as they call him.
He actually ran a chain of gas stations in Quebec, if you can believe it.
Charlie Trudeau worked hard, sold this chain of gas stations to Imperial Oil, and the Trudeau's have never had to work a day since.
Charlie Trudeau died before Justin Trudeau was even born.
Justin Trudeau's never even met a family member who's had to work for a living.
So here's what Justin Trudeau has to say about the people who work hard, whose jobs he wants to phase out, people who work hard like his grandfather used to do.
You might not say, oh, what does a gender lens have to do with building this new highway or this new pipeline or something?
Well, there are gender impacts.
When you bring construction workers into a rural area, there are social impacts because they're mostly male construction workers.
How are you adjusting and adapting to those?
That's what the gender lens in GBA plus budgeting is all about.
Let me translate.
You don't want a bunch of gross blue-collar men building a factory or a mine or a highway or pipeline because, and this is his clear meaning, there's no other meaning that makes sense because those men will go in and rape women in the local community.
That's clearly what he means.
That is not a gaffe.
That's what they keep on saying.
That's how they talk.
Remember this?
Gender impact?
How does that fit into a pipeline approval process?
So I'm really glad you asked that because I think people are like, well, what is this gender thing?
Well, imagine that you have a huge number of people going to a remote community, many men.
What is the impact on the community?
What is the impact on women in the community?
And actually, once again, smart proponents understand this.
So they're going to put measures in place.
That's all it is.
It's just taking a smart approach to thinking about, okay, what's going to be the impact of a major development in a particular area?
Even Don Martin of the mainstream media knows that's kooky.
So undo industry to please ideology, to please foreigners at the UN conference.
That's a theme with Trudeau and his cabinet.
They put everyone's interests ahead of Canada's interests.
We have sent our underpaid, underequipped military to Mali.
They're there now.
Not sure what the mission is.
Not sure what the measurement of success is.
Not sure what the Canadian interest is.
But as Catherine McKenna tells us, we have to get beyond doing things that are in Canada's interest.
So we're helping Mali, but we can't afford to continue our own 40-year NATO tradition of hosting a two-week Air Force training exercise in Cold Lake, Alberta.
So that's cancelled.
But we've got Mali covered, whatever it is that we're doing there.
And of course, we put foreign migrants ahead of Canadian citizens too.
We signed that UN Global Compact for Migration that creates the counterfeit human right to immigrate to Canada, to get free health care in Canada, to bring other relatives with you to Canada.
We just did it.
And anyone who disagrees is obviously a racist.
The Liberals use that Nazi phrase.
Even though polls show that only 6% of Canadians want more immigration, 6%.
That's that tiny number at the bottom.
So it's frustrating.
But what do you do?
Do you join the bailout media and just sing for your supper?
Should we just get with the program and, I don't know, do a story about Justin Trudeau's socks?
No, never, never, never.
Because if we put Canada first in our hearts in real life, that means putting Canadians first.
That means defending Canada's interests, and Canadians desperately want that.
And today we have proof is what I'm saying.
First, look at this story, front page of the Hill Times newspaper in Ottawa.
It's a real insider's newspaper, really, just made for MP Senator, their staff, lobbyists.
It tilts lefts, obsessed with gossip and inside baseball.
But I bet the story is being passed around Parliament Hill a lot today.
Look at this.
Liberals should be exceptionally concerned about potential recession in 2019.
Voters' anxiety on unrestricted immigration, says Nanos.
That's the headline.
Nanos, of course, refers to Nick Nanos, a fairly reputable Canadian pollster, as establishment as they come.
I mean, he's no rogue.
And here's what he says.
Let me read a little bit of the story for you.
He says, Prime Minister, this is the Hill Times, Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, liberals, should be exceptionally concerned about the very negative economic mood right now in Canada with potential for a recession in 2019.
And the Conservatives' attempts to paint liberals as supporters of unrestricted immigration as the combined effect could become a serious problem for the party in the next election.
I'll read just a little more.
There's a very negative economic mood in the country, said Nick Nanos, president and CEO of Nanos Research in an interview with the Hill Times.
A sitting government presiding over a recession usually is not good news for the sitting government.
I think that's obviously right.
Those are the two big issues.
Trudeau's war on industry, which is couched in environmentalist ideology, and Trudeau's obsession with mass immigration, especially illegal immigration.
And it has to be said, Muslim immigration.
He's obsessed with it.
And you can be a fake news, good news type and ignore it and go on first dates with Trudeau and ask him, who's your favorite, who's your favorite Ryan?
No, come on, Nick, you do it.
Or you can talk about the real news.
Let me read some more from the story.
According to the Nanos Research, a weekly rolling poll numbers released last week, the Liberals and the Conservatives were tied in the statistical dead heat.
The numbers were released on December 7th indicate that the Conservatives had 34.8% support nationally, followed closely by the Liberals with 34.1%.
The NDP had the support of 15.8%, and the Green Party support was at 8.2%.
Now, I had seen a poll from another pollster last week that showed the Conservatives doing well also, but I thought it was an anomaly, but two different pollsters in a row suggest that it's probably not an anomaly.
It might be a trend.
Here's how Nanos explains it.
Mr. Nanos attributed the notable drop in liberal support to the psychological effect of the General Motors auto plant closing in Oshawa, Ontario last month, the low oil prices affecting the Alberta economy, and the slow pace of progress on the trans routine pipeline expansion on Canadians' declining confidence in the state of the country's economy.
I think that's right, although I'm not sure how many people follow pipeline politics outside of the West, but maybe.
He's a pollster.
It's his job to know.
I think he's probably generally right.
Now, unemployment in Canada is low right now in most parts of the country, so that looks good, right?
But growth of our economy is slowing, slowing.
It's half that of Donald Trump's America.
It's slowing to a halt.
Investment is drying up.
I mean, when you turn away $50 billion worth of private investments in your country's pipelines and liquid natural gas projects, you're not just hurting Grand Prairie.
You're hurting, I don't know, engineering companies in Quebec and investment companies in Toronto and a thousand other companies from airlines to auto dealers to hotels to restaurants.
You can't take $50 billion out of an economy our size and not have it hurt.
But more to the point, you are signaling to the next $50 billion or $500 billion just to put the money in the States, where Donald Trump couldn't be clear.
He wants to create jobs, not talk about gender.
Let me read a little more on that.
Mr. Nanos said the federal liberals so far have focused mainly on progressive elements of their agenda on issues such as the marijuana legalization, gender equality, First Nations issues, or the environment.
And if a recession did hit Canada next year, people will question why the Liberal government led by Prime Minister Trudeau did not focus more on jobs in the economy.
Yeah, well, the media party loves all those things.
So isn't that good enough?
Last quote from Nanos.
I know I'm quoting a lot, but it's interesting.
He said about immigration here.
He says, on the issue of immigration, Mr. Nanos said that with the Conservatives' recent opposition to Canada signing the UN Global Compact on Migration, the Conservatives are trying to paint the Liberals as creating too many exceptions on orderly or legal migration and supporting unrestricted immigration.
The message from the Conservatives, Mr. Nanos said, is that by supporting unrestricted immigration, the Liberals are not only risking Canadian security, but also the Canadian economy.
Well, I think it's true.
See, open borders mass migration, European style, Angela Merkel style, it's obviously not in our economic interest.
I mean, 90% of Trudeau's Syrian migrants still don't work three years later.
They don't speak English or French.
They don't have any marketable skills.
And frankly, they're not that interested in working when they can get huge payments from the government not to work, as you know, 50,000 bucks just for arriving here, as access to information documents show.
But we also know in our bones, just in terms of the sheer number, if you bring in 340,000, that's their latest number, 400,000, 450,000 people a year in the country, that's what their own think tank says they should do, 450,000 people a year.
Well, that drives up housing costs.
That drives down wages, because these are unskilled immigrants.
It increases traffic in the big cities.
That increases waitlists in hospitals.
If you live in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, imagine adding 450,000 people a year.
They're going to those three big cities.
How's your traffic going to be?
We know this has an economic impact.
We know it has a quality of life impact.
And the thing is, Canada, until recently, was so warm-hearted towards immigrants, so welcoming, but something has changed.
And it's not that we're Nazis now, despite what the Liberals say.
It's that Trudeau has allowed lawbreakers, illegal, scammers, whatever, to jump to the front of the line.
He is what has changed?
Him, not us.
So look at this.
This is from Pew Research.
Have you heard of them?
They're a massive U.S. think tank, liberal-leaning, but a good reputation.
I trust them.
And this new survey from Pew measures the same thing that the Angus Reid poll earlier measured, how many people want immigration to be reduced or stay the same, and how many want it increased.
But it does it country by country instead of just focusing on Canada, obviously.
So it's an international comparison.
And look at that.
Scroll down to Canada there.
Yeah.
Just look at that for a second.
So under Justin Trudeau, Canada has become more hostile to immigration than America under Donald Trump.
Pew Research Reveals00:15:40
Just hold it there for a second.
29% plus 44% of Americans, 29% plus 44%, want less immigration or the same amount.
But 27 plus 53%, 80% of Canadians want less immigration or the same amount.
So that's exactly what Angus Reid found too, by the way, to the percent.
So in America, that number is just 73%.
So Trudeau has burned up so much Canadian goodwill.
He's calling us Nazis now.
But he's the one that has turned Canadians against immigration even more than Americans are.
Nick Nanos thinks people are wising up to this, but let me show you one more poll, okay?
Let me close the day with polls.
This is the flicker of good news, along with that first one by Nanos.
This is from Angus Reid again.
This is a new poll from Angus Reid.
It's an interesting poll.
It checks what Canadians think about individual cabinet ministers.
It tests individual ministers.
Headline, federal cabinet ratings, a happy new year for Freeland.
Hassan, so he faced cold winter ahead.
Now, I have some questions with the methodology here.
I mean, how valid is a public opinion poll that asks Canadians what they think of Mary Ng?
When I don't think 99% of Canadians have ever heard of Mary Ng or know that she's in cabinet, she is.
She's the minister of small business, which is just classic.
She has spent her life working in the government sector.
She worked for a government sector union for 20 years.
She knows about as much as running a small business as I know about, you know, running a marathon.
So yeah, what value would a poll have that asked about her?
No one even knows who she is, of course.
She doesn't even know who she is.
Or how about this woman, Philomena Tassi?
You ever heard of her?
I don't think you have.
She's also a low-achievement liberal.
She's the cabinet minister for seniors.
Now, it's not impossible for a first-term minister to make a name for themselves.
It's just that given how many cabinet ministers were appointed by Trudeau for reasons of gender and racial quotas, and he says that, it's not surprising that they really haven't made a mark in the world.
They just read talking points written to them by the prime minister's office.
It truly is a one-man show in Ottawa.
It's impossible to think of the Federal Liberal Party without Justin Trudeau.
It really is just a hollow show without him.
And he himself, of course, is a hollow man, full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing.
But at least he's got buzz!
Speaking of signifying nothing, did you see this clip the other day?
Concern is what happens when we hit a recession.
If you're running $19 billion deficits now, your fiscal capacity to deal with a rainy day has got to be worse.
Actually, that's not true.
And for two reasons.
First of all, the ratings agencies have given us that AAA because they are confident in our ability to withstand shocks in the future if they come.
Secondly, when Canadians have better jobs, when they have more education, when we have solid infrastructure, either climate change, resilient infrastructure to protect us from floods, or more public transit or more housing, Canadians do better, even if there are difficult times in the economy.
That's the choice we made to invest in our communities, to invest in our future, and that's what's giving Canadians confidence.
I think maybe he heard the word rainy day there, and he thought, oh, rainy weather, global warming.
Let me just play the global warming message trap.
I don't know.
That's an embarrassment, folks.
That's an embarrassment.
But back to the Angus Reed poll.
They actually did control a little bit for the fact that Trudeau leads a cabinet of 34 dwarves.
They asked Canadians first if they could recognize a politician before asking them to rate the politician.
So they broke it down into high-profile ministers, medium-profile ministers, and nobodies.
So here's the top five and the bottom five cabinet ministers from their list, according to the poll.
So Christia Freeland is in the lead.
And what this means is the percent saying they're doing a good job, more or less than those saying a bad job.
So Christia Freeland, 20% more people think she's doing a good job than a bad job.
Now I think she's a disaster.
I mean, is there a country around the world we're not quarreling with right now?
China just took two Canadians hostage.
Canada is regarded as a foolish country in India.
Saudi Arabia is threatening us.
Christia Freeland is actually legally banned from Russia.
Did you know that?
Donald Trump just ate our lunch in NAFTA.
Cuba is using microwave weapons to endanger our diplomats and their families in Havana.
But hey, the fake news, good news media love her.
Maybe she should go on a date with someone.
I guess if you pump out 24-7 propaganda, I guess it works because people think, I mean, we have never been more alone in the world as we are now, but Christian Freeland's just tops.
That poll suggests she has a net 20% favorable rate.
Now, next is Mark Garneau.
Do you see that?
He's a plus 16.
Can you name anything Mark Garneau has done in the past three years?
Don't feel bad, I can't either.
Trudeau really hasn't let him do much since Trudeau crushed him in the leadership race.
I think that positive view is just people who remember that he used to be an astronaut once, and he served in the Canadian military, and he looks and sounds like a grown-up, and he's got a little bit of dignity.
But can you name one thing he's done as a cabinet minister?
I mean, I guess he's the one who banned the tankers off the coast of BC, but that's really been the work of Trudeau and McKenna, hasn't it?
But look at the disapprovals on that chart.
Bill Mourneau has a net negative 20% favorability, no doubt.
He comes across as sneaky and tricky and dishonest.
Remember he lied to the ethics commissioner about his villa in France.
He said, whoopsie, yeah, who teehee?
I forgot, I just forgot.
Who wouldn't forget about their villa in France?
Sorry, Your Honor.
You remember when he had a massive stake in his old company called Mourneau-Chapelle while passing all these tax changes that favored Mourneau-Chappelle?
Oh, how did that happen?
No wonder so many people signed our petition.
Remember that great truck?
Look at that.
I miss that old truck.
Firemourneau.com.
Boy, that was a great truck.
All right.
You know what?
Patty Haidu, she's not well known either, is she?
Other than for being the face of the discriminatory campaign to force anyone who wanted a summer job grant for students, they had to sign an attestation that they support Justin Trudeau's personal views on social issues like abortion.
It was weird, completely inappropriate, and obviously intolerant, and Heidi was the face of it.
But look at who is actually near the bottom.
Ahmed Hassan, the immigration minister, minus 26.
And Amijit Sohi just absolutely despised a negative score of 36%.
He's just in a league of his own.
The most hated man in cabinet?
Yes, he is.
Now, Sohi is in a league of his own, but you could also say he's out of his league in terms of the substance of the file.
He has no idea what he's talking about.
He doesn't know anything about oil and gas.
He's from Edmonton.
Yet, that don't count.
When it comes to pipelines, and so many leftists who have to pretend that they actually like oil and gas, listen to this.
This is a mix of ignorance and arrogance.
But what's so amazing is this clip he actually published to social media himself.
He thought this made him look super smart and super good.
The oil is to Alberta, what is auto to Ontario, and what is aerospace to Quebec?
It is so disappointing to see that when we made the decision to invest $4.5 billion to move this project forward so we can support the oil sector in Alberta the proper way.
Every single Conservative member of the Federal Conservative Party did not support that decision.
Your promise was conservative.
It's so disappointing to see that they're willing to invest $12 billion and write off $3 billion to support an industry.
But when it comes to Alberta oil and gas sector, they back off.
You're one of 200,000 unemployed Albertans in here that's scolding, arrogant, know-nothing lecturing you.
I'm surprised it's not minus 56.
Do you think that guy's going to build any pipelines?
No, me neither.
Look, there's only so much stock you should put in a poll like this.
I mean, at the end of the day, you only get to vote for the candidate in your own riding.
People don't think of Amarjit Sohi when they're marking a ballot in their riding other than his.
Like I say, most of Trudeau's MPs and most of his cabinet are still new to Canadians.
Many are first-term NTPs and many are just window-dressing affirmative action hires who don't really do the work that's done in the PMO.
But I think there really is a correlation.
The more important to file, the better known the file, the less Canadians like the Liberals.
Wouldn't you agree with me?
Bill Mourneau, disliked.
Ahmed Husson, disliked.
Amarjit Sohi, deeply disliked.
Yet all of these issues, Mourneau saying that high taxes and big spending and big deficits are fine.
What we really need is a gender budget.
Husson saying that open borders, mass illegal immigration is fine.
And Sohi saying that, no, he's doing a great job for oil and gas.
It's the conservatives who hate oil and gas.
These are the key issues upon which Trudeau, well, those are the ones he's in trouble for.
That's what Nick Nano's talked about.
I mean, they're the most hated cabinet ministers.
Now, don't bet on this poll, but there are enough data points now, I think, to show a trend.
Canadians don't buy the spin from the Liberals, and they're not persuaded from the fake news, good news, first date media.
With the possible exception of Christy Freeland, who surely, by any measure, must be regarded as the least successful foreign minister in Canadian memory.
But these polls together are reason to hope and not to give up and to realize that although we feel like we're telling people bad news all the time, the fact is it's just the news.
The news happens to be bad.
And doing that, telling people the ugly truth, warning them, ringing the alarm, rather than telling them pretty lies and going on dates and asking about who's your favorite Ryan?
Come on.
Telling bad news is possibly the most important job, almost a public service, that the media can do for the public.
Don't you think?
Stay with us for more.
Well, they say water is the universal solvent, as in everything dissolves in it.
That's almost true.
I think that global warming is the universal excuse, the universal justification for everything from carbon taxes to social policy, whatever.
It can be excused by global warming.
And odds are there's a policy arguing for from a research paper that was funded because if you say you're studying global warming, you're going to get dough for it.
I remember that our friend David Menzies reported that one of the official excuses for that migrant caravan coming up from Mexico to the United States was they were climate refugees.
I'm not even kidding.
It is the universal excuse for globalism and big government.
Well, one of the arguments in this bundle of global warming arguments is that because of global warming, we have to depopulate the planets.
And you've heard this many times.
In fact, David Suzuki often says this.
He's against immigration to Canada because he thinks we need fewer people.
I should point out he himself has five children.
I tell you all this because I have in studio with me the author of a new book debunking this theory.
The book is called Population Bombed, Exploding the Link Between Overpopulation and Climate Change.
And joining me now is our friend Pierre DeRocher, who wrote the book with Joanna Cermek.
Great to see you again in studio.
Nice to see you.
It's been too long.
Yeah, you're a professor at University of Toronto.
I am so glad you are because you are a skeptic on issues like this.
Yes.
And I think you're a contrarian in the academic world.
Would you agree with me?
And I still have a job.
Yes.
That's a little bit of a miracle.
Do you have tenure yet or should I?
Oh, no, no, no, no, I have tenure.
I have tenure tenure.
Oh, I was going to say, that's, I was going to say, if you write a book that challenges the official global warming narrative like this, you better have tenure or you'll be an ex-professor pretty soon.
Yes, but yeah, lucky for me, the OFT has been good so far.
They still respect tenure like some other Canadian institutions, but that's another debate, yes.
Yeah.
Well, let's get to this book because I'm trying to understand it.
I just leaped through it, and I appreciate you bringing it.
And by the way, if folks want to learn more about the book, read some op-eds, they can go to populationbombed B-O-M-B-E-D.com and they can get all that info.
But we got you here.
Tell me about the thesis that the left has.
Did I properly explain it?
You explained it, but the problem, the conundrum is the following.
So there's more of us than ever before.
So when Thomas Maltus wrote the, well, let's call it the original population bomb two centuries ago, there were about a billion people on planet Earth.
Today there's over 7.5 billion of us.
We live a lot longer, we're a lot healthier, we're also a lot wealthier.
And at the same time, if you look at the environment in advanced economies, well, our water is cleaner, our air is cleaner, our forests are making a huge comeback.
We've never had it so good.
So how can you explain a much larger population and a cleaner environment?
And so what the book attempts to do is to explain that none of the good things that we have today, and I'm not talking only about our wealth and our health, but also our cleaner environment, would have been possible without that increase in population and more carbon fuels.
Very interesting.
Remind our viewers, the Reverend Thomas Malthus, his argument, and it was about 100 and 200 years ago.
And he was in a panic because he did the math and he said population increases exponentially.
Yes.
But food.
Food production can never keep up.
Yeah.
So what was the name of his thesis back then?
I just forgot what it was called.
Well, it was an essay on the principle of population.
But the problem is that Malthus only focused on food.
And then other people came after him and they said, well, there's food, but there's also coal.
We're going to run out of coal and then we're going to run out of coal.
The club of Rome, like as late as the 1970s.
People said, we're going to run out of steel, we're going to run out of iron, we're going to run out of coal, we're going to run out of everything.
And there was a great bet, wasn't there?
Great bet.
Was it Paul Ehrlich versus?
Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon.
So Paul Ehrlich was the most well-known, let's call him population bomber that was often his name at the time, who argued like most biologists.
And you see, the problem with people like David Suzuki and Paul Ehrlich is that they're biologists by training and they refuse to acknowledge that humans act differently than other animal species.
Test Tube Fallacy00:10:41
So what they think is that, well, if you have a test tube full of food and you put in a few bacterias in there, eventually the bacterias will multiply and they will run out of food.
And they think that human societies behave the same way.
I want to stop you there because I know the exact video.
David Suzuki is so famous for that story.
Let me show a quick clip of that.
I find it infuriating.
He compares us, he always does that.
He's a fruit fly geneticist, or at least he used to be.
He always compares people to maggots and things like that.
Here's a quick clip of David Suzuki with this bacteria argument.
And then I'm going to ask you to debunk it here.
Take a look at this.
I'm going to give you a system analogous to the planet.
That's a test tube full of food for bacteria.
So the test tube and food is the planet, and the bacteria are us.
Now, I'm going to introduce one bacterial cell in, and it's going to divide every minute.
That's exponential growth.
So at time zero at the beginning, there's one cell.
One minute there are two.
Two minutes there are four.
Three minutes there are eight.
Four minutes 16.
That's exponential growth.
And at 60 minutes, the test tube is completely packed with bacteria and there's no food left.
So we have a 60-minute growth cycle.
When is a test tube only half full?
Well, of course, the answer is at 59 minutes.
Even though it's been chugging along for 59 minutes, it's only half full, but one minute later, it'll be completely filled.
So that means at 58 minutes, it's 25% full.
57 minutes, it's 12.5% full.
At 55 minutes of a 60-minute cycle, it's 3% full.
At 55 minutes, one of the bacteria says, hey, guys, I've been thinking, we got a problem.
We got a population problem.
The other bacteria would say, Jack, what the hell have you been smoking, man?
97% of the test tube's empty, and we've been around for 55 minutes.
I've seen that, and I find that so irritating.
Give me a quick rebuttal to that Suzuki propaganda.
He always talks about that.
Yes.
Well, what you have to ask yourself is, how did human beings end up at the top of the food chain?
Well, we have two evolutionary traits that you don't find in other animal species.
The first is that we trade physical goods.
So, you know, you have other animal species that will trade services, let's say grooming for protection.
But human beings, well, for a long time, we've been able to move large quantities of physical goods over long distances, over long geographical distances.
The other ability that we have that you don't see in the rest of the animal kingdom is our capacity to innovate, to create new things.
And how do we do that?
Well, essentially by combining existing things in new ways.
So when you have a problem, let's say at one point, well, people add ink, people add wood, and then other substances came along and they say, well, why don't we develop something different to write?
And then you combine a typewriter with electronics, you get our modern computer, you get things like that.
So the more things we have, the more we can invent.
And so these two traits are really unique to human beings.
And what we've been able to do is, for example, concentrate food production in the best locations in the world.
So we produce a lot more food on a lot less land than in the past.
And we keep coming up with substitute for things that exist.
So unlike, let's say, animal species, if you have tigers, well, their number is absolutely limited by the number of preys.
But human can eat all sorts of things.
So we developed agriculture, we expand our food supply, and we were able to catch fishes in the sea.
Then when that became problematic, we developed aquaculture.
And one of the great things that humanity was able to do, and I think the key that environmentalists not understand is that over time we increasingly replace things that were produced on the surface of the planet.
So let's say animal for food or for wool, growing plants for dyes, by things that came from underground.
So products derived from coal, from petroleum, from natural gas.
And the answer that people like Suzuki and Erlich are unable to see is that we have more stuff, not only because of the energy that we extract from under the ground rather than burning wood, for example, but also because things like plastic have replaced things like wood, ivory, and countless other materials.
So because of our ability to trade things over long distances, to create new things, to develop substitute, and to replace things that came from the surface of the planet by resources that came from underground, we were able to increase our number, improve our health, and clean up our environments.
I tell you, Pierre, I wish I had you as a professor when I was in school because you say things so clearly.
You remind me of two other thinkers.
One is Bjorn Lomborg, who's an environmentalist.
He calls himself a skeptical environmentalist.
And his main point is, what's the smartest, best way to fix things, not just basic.
And, you know, Alex Epstein, he's a pro-energy, pro-oil activist who makes the moral case for fossil fuels.
And you remind me of, this is so important.
You remind me of a clip.
Can I play one more Suzuki clip?
Just because you use it.
You raised it in my mind.
David Suzuki was in Australia, and he was asked about drilling and fracking and things like that.
And you make a great point that when we started to innovate and think and mining, mining was so, it really changed, it changed everything.
That's when people stopped starving because with coal, we were able to develop things like the steam engine, but also to develop steel.
And out of that, out of the steam engine and steel came the railroad.
And the railroad and the steel steamship powered by coal were the two things that really put an end to famine.
Up until the early 19th century, what would happen?
Well, people depended on local foods.
Well, from time to time, you would have a drought, you would have a flood, you might have the Irish potato disease.
Two bad harvests in a row, you had a famine.
Well, what happened in the 19th century?
Because of coal, because of steel.
Well, for the first time in human history, people are able to move large quantities of food over long distances affordably.
So regions that have bumper crops can send their surplus to regions that are starving, and vice versa.
And it would have been impossible to put an end to famine without those innovations.
You know, I'm thinking about switching life from sort of 2D to 3D.
Like if you, for millennia, mankind lived just on the surface of the earth and digging a little bit.
I mean, there was always some mines, some copper.
But when we could think 3D, but I just want to show you this clip.
You just made me think of it because I always laugh.
When Suzuki was presented with this, he said, we drilling whole deep underground, we don't know what's down there.
I don't know.
They could be like, you know, some goblins from Lord of the Rings.
Here, look at this clip.
This is David Suzuki on Australian Broadcasting ABC video clip.
Look at this.
Fracking is one of the dumbest technologies there is.
We have no idea what is under the ground.
You know, we're kind of, because we're an air-breathing land lubber living on the top skin of the planet, we think out of sight there's nothing down there.
We have no idea what we're doing when we pump vast amounts of water down there.
We have no idea whether it'll end up contaminating our drinking water.
We don't know.
But we're just going to go down there and try to frack as much gas as we can get out of the ground.
This is just, I think, crazy.
That clip makes me laugh every time because he's a supposed scientist who's basically saying, we don't know what's down there.
It's unnatural to dig into the ground.
We've been digging into the ground for millennia, but it's only since the Industrial Revolution that we've actually unlocked a fraction of a fraction of what's underground.
I think it's ingenuity plus freedom.
They go together.
They go together.
I mean, there were creative people all throughout human history, but it was only with the emergence of capitalism, the freedom that people were given to innovate and to earn a return on their investment that you saw this explosion of creativity.
Well, you know, I think of the medieval scheme or scam, whatever you want to call it, of alchemy, to turn lead into gold because they're on the periodical table, they're next to each other.
And it was always, you know, that's just alchemy, that doesn't exist.
But if you could ever solve that, you would be rich beyond Midas.
But we've done so much better than that.
We've turned carbon fuels into energy, into substitute products.
That was the real success of humanity.
Well, that's the alchemy.
And my point is, like, think of the oil sands and fracking.
Just give me one minute, and I'd love for you to respond.
I shouldn't even be talking at all in this interview because I'm hanging on your evidence.
But you're making me think of these things.
The oil sands.
You know, Aboriginal people knew the oil sands because some of them, they're exposed, like they just use it to waterproof canoes.
Yes, indeed.
But for decades, we looked, you know, European settlers looked at the oil sands and said, we can't use that.
It's oily sand.
But it was technology and freedom that turned worthless oily sand into a $100 billion project.
Same thing with fracking.
Shale is one of the most common sort of clay-like rocks in the world.
And there's teeny tiny little drops of natural gas or oil in it.
But how do you get it out of the sand?
Exactly.
And it really is a modern scientific alchemy to take something utterly useless, shale, and figure out how to frack it to get the oil out.
And the gas that we actually created something from nothing far better than turning lead into gold.
But that's only because we think of those as current challenges.
Even when the petroleum industry began in the late 1850s in the United States, all people at the time were salt mining technology, and they could not really go much deeper than 20 meters.
And we were very lucky in North America that you had some deposits in western Pennsylvania where the oil just seeped to the surface so people knew that there was oil there.
But at first it could only go like 20 meters.
And I've been to that site in western Pennsylvania.
We got extremely lucky that people drilled there.
Apparently, Colin L. Drake and his crew hit the exact perfect spot for this.
But think of what we do today.
We think of conventional oil.
Well, if it's, I don't know, a few hundred meters underground and it's easy to reach.
Well, it wasn't.
I mean, reaching oil that was 100 meters below ground a century and a half ago was even more challenging than creating value out of the oil sands today.
So the easy oil of each generation was always the challenge of the previous one.
And we've been building on our knowledge for a century and a half.
And it might be that 50 years from now, people will remember the good old days of the oil sand, how easy it was.
And although we have enough for what, 200 years at least or something.
You know, you remind me of Sir Isaac Newton who said if I saw further, it's because I stood on the shoulders of giants.
Maggots and Flies00:02:10
And that's it.
That's another, I mean, there's so many obvious differences between us and non-human biology.
It's grotesque that David Suzuki compares people to animals.
And just because I'm on the Suzuki theme, let me show you one more Suzuki clip.
This is where he actually compares people to maggots.
Take a look at this from the CBC.
I can't believe this man has had 40 years on our public broadcaster.
Take a look at this.
One thing that I've gotten off on lately is that basically, you know, I study fruit flies.
Oh, yeah.
And I suddenly realized that basically we're all fruit flies.
You know, you're born as an egg and you live in that egg environment and your parents kind of cut out all the external crap that comes in and protect you and nourish you and clothe you and all that.
It's a very nice little egg and it's comfortable.
But at some point you hatch out and start crawling around and eating stuff on your own.
You start reading, you start looking at the tube, you start doing all sorts of things.
You hatch out as a maggot.
And a maggot can now crawl around.
It's got two dimensions and it can ingest food at its will and it defecates all over the environment.
And some other smaller maggots can even eat your defecation and get some nourishment out of it.
And you grow as you eat more nourishment and you mold.
You become a second level maggot.
You know, a bigger maggot.
It even looks different.
And the bigger you get, the more people you can, or more maggots you can crush with your weight.
The world overrun with food.
Yeah, I mean, most people in the world are content to stay as first or second level maggots.
And they establish their own little area and they crawl around there and that's fine.
And the guys that become tenth level maggots are really big wheels.
Just so gross.
And he's still saying things like that, which is amazing.
And you see one chapter in the book that was written by my co-author Joanna Shermach is simply, well, why is it that someone like David Suzuki can't see what's right in front of his eyes?
Well, because there's a lot of financial incentives for him to stop to that.
And Suzuki.
Yeah, the Suzuki Foundation is a multi-multi-million dollar lobby group.
Financial Incentives Cloud Vision00:09:30
But the innovation, the accumulation of we build on knowledge of the past.
I don't know.
I find what you're saying very inspiring.
Let's get back to the book a little bit.
I mean, it's meticulously footnoted, hundreds and hundreds of footnotes.
But it's meant to be readable.
That's care readers.
I mean, I haven't read through it in depth, but I thumbed through it.
It's accessible.
Yes.
What was your reason for writing it?
Well, you mentioned it to some extent.
A few years ago was the 25th anniversary of the bet between optimistic or, in my opinion, realistic economist Julian Simon and eco-catastrophist biologist Paul Ehrlich.
And for your viewers who don't know about it, Ehrlich came on the scene in 1968 with the original population bomb, just population bomb.
And went on the, well, I don't know if we would tell the kids about Johnny Carson today.
Well, let's say Jimmy Fallon and all those shows.
He was on the main late night show over 20 times in the early 1970s and always pewing that catastrophe was around the corner.
We were about to experience worldwide famine.
And Julian Simon, who had looked at the data, who began as a population catastrophe, said, well, this is nonsense.
You know, it's weird.
I'm still not sure why.
But the more of us there is, the more resources we have, the longer we live.
And so at one point, Simon, who originally came from marketing, thought of a way to get Ehrlich to put up our shut up.
And he says, well, if you believe in your ideas so much, here's a wager for you.
Select five materials of your own choosing of the time period that you want over a year.
If the price goes up, it will be a sign that the resource becomes more scarce.
I will pay you the difference.
If the price goes down, well, it will be a proof that resources are becoming more abundant, despite the fact that there's more of us and that we're wealthier.
So it's not said often enough.
Ehrlich chose the materials and chose the time period.
So five materials, the ones that he was sure, and he talked to a lot of people, you know, what are the metals or minerals that are the most likely to become scarce?
And what would be a good time period, 10 years.
So Simon said, sure, okay, whatever.
And again, people don't remember that often enough when they say Simon got lucky.
He gave all the cards to Ehrlich.
He said, whatever material, whatever time period.
And after 10 years, well, you know, the world population had gone up by over 800 million people.
The world had become wealthier.
And the price of every resource had gone down and sometimes significantly.
So Ehrlich had to send him a check.
And ever since then, well, people have looked and said, well, if Ehrlich had selected a different time period or different materials, he might have won.
But the point I wanted to make on the 25th anniversary of the bet a few years ago was to say, well, remember the original conditions and look at all the resources, looked at any significant time period over time, and Simon would have been the winner.
Of course, you've got commodity cycles, so sometimes, you know, prices go up, they go down, but the trend in the long run is unmistakable.
And in fact, by choosing the most precious ones, if he had done so, he misunderstood that human nature, the left would call it greed.
Yes.
Well, if something's very valuable, people are going to invest to find more of it.
Exactly.
And that's the thing that they never understood.
Again, we're not like other animals.
If a resource becomes more scarce, more valuable, if its price goes up, well, we become more efficient in the way we use it.
We look for more of it, and we develop substitutes.
And all three of those things would reduce the price.
It would make resources more abundant at the same time.
You know, one of the things when I wrote my book, Ethical Oil, almost a decade ago, I mean, I sort of knew it, but I didn't know it until I...
How is it possible when the world burns 100 million barrels of oil every single day?
Yes.
That is a lot.
That is a lot of oil.
And then we do it again tomorrow.
Yes.
And then again, so you're burning 100 million barrels every day.
So how is it that global reserves aren't shrinking?
How is it?
And the answer is because a reserve is something that we discover and find and it's economic.
So we're hunting so much.
We're so curious or greedy or whatever you want to say, whatever your words, in human nature.
And so we either find it or we develop the technology to unlock it in the oil sand.
And if you look at it again, remember, 150 years ago when the oil industry began in the United States, the first deposit was reached at about 21 meters underground.
And there was a given price for a barrel at the time.
Well, today you do something like you go five kilometers offshore, let's say two kilometers underwater, then another two kilometers down, then another four kilometers sideway.
And the price of extracting that oil, if you factor in inflation, is the same as it was 150 years ago to extract it for 20 meters.
You know, that's very encouraging, and it's a rebuttal to all the...
Well, it's a rebuttal because we also address the issue of climate change, because CO2 emissions are the one things that have not gone down.
And the argument that we make in the book is that, okay, well, people like Suzuki cannot argue that we're becoming sicker or less healthy than in the past.
If nothing else, well, poor people are fat in advanced economies.
We have these kinds of problems.
I would rather have that overfunded, trust me.
And then they cannot say that our air is getting dirtier.
It isn't.
They cannot say our water is getting dirtier.
They cannot say that in advanced economies, forests are not coming back.
What is left?
Well, CO2 emissions.
These are the one things when you burn carbon fuels, well, you release more CO2 in the atmosphere.
Now you could see, and a lot of plant scientists were actually saying that in the late 1980s, when the original, well, when global warming was put at the top of the agenda, I mean, some people had been talking about that since the 50s, but it was really pushed forward at the turn of the 1980s and then became more popular in the late 1990s.
A lot of plant scientists at that time were saying, well, that's great.
You know, more plant food, the world will be even greener.
But the point that we make in the book is that, well, as every other environmental threat or scare sort of disappeared, we were left with CO2 emissions.
And I think this is why people are obsessed about it today, because we've basically solved all our other pressing problems in advanced economies.
But then all that you have are essentially the results of scenarios, computer scenarios.
And the point that we make in the book, and you referred to Longborg before, and I'm glad that you saw it, because he's been able to communicate that information very effectively.
You cannot do any cost-benefit analysis that factors in all the benefits that you get from carbon fuels with the potential alleged risk of global warming and not come up on the side of saying, well, we cannot take the benefits from carbon fuels for granted.
And, you know, you can live well.
I mean, you're from Alberta, so you can live well in Edmonton.
I know a lot of your international viewers might not understand that.
You can live well in Singapore.
As long as people are wealthy and they have affordable and reliable energy, we can adapt to anything.
Very encouraging.
It's great to talk with you.
You are so clear.
I hope less time will pass before we have you back on the show.
We've had you on a few times, and you're an excellent communicator.
And I say again, I sort of wish I had someone when I was in college who was speaking so plainly.
And I would remark to our viewers how jargon-free your communication is here compared to your average academic and how the opposite of the grievance studies.
This could be a celebration of human creativity, really.
The book is called Population Bombed.
We've been talking with Pierre Durocher, who is the co-author of the book, along with Joanna Cermak.
He's a professor at the University of Toronto.
You can go to the website populationbombed.com to learn more about it.
And we'll put an Amazon link underneath the video too.
Pierre, great to have you and see.
Thanks very much.
All right, stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
Hey, welcome back to my monologue Friday about a CBC journalist comparing Omar Khadr to just a rebellious teen Jato, right?
Carter wants to change the deal, so Canada should change it.
Freeze all assets.
Well, look, the money is the least of it.
Yeah, it's outrageous and scandalous.
He got $10.5 million.
But it's, I mean, the public apology, I think, is far worse.
And it's the fact that he's at liberty and marauding about.
And the fact that he has been whitewashed.
He's this victim as opposed to a murderer and a terrorist in al-Qaeda.
That's far more concerning to me than just the money.
Nicknamed Libertarian45, right?
For years, CBC refused to show a more modern picture of Cotter.
They always showed this cutesy young teen picture, even though he was in court with a bushy beard.
The CBC deliberately wanted us to think of him as a kid.
Oh, yeah.
And by the way, that very young picture of him wasn't even his picture when he was captured in Afghanistan.
That was the picture his mom circulated to the media.
It was like an elementary school picture of him.
And any journalist who reproduced that was just trafficking in propaganda, which is really what the government journalists at the CBC do.
The Toronto Star is just as bad.
Chip Implant Into Ourselves00:02:41
Love I mean they're just bad.
Can you name a single reporter?
There's a few columnists, especially the Sun Chain, who can't stomach Obar Carter.
But can you name one reporter, one reporter who isn't a full-time propagandist for him?
I can't.
On my interview with Alan Bokhari, Luke writes, the next step from this, of course, is to implant you with a chip that is attached to your rating.
Everything will be activated by your chip, and if you are bad, even the toilets won't flush for you.
Well, don't laugh.
I think we're getting there.
I see news from time to time about implantable chips, but you know, that Apple Watch, I don't have one.
I was looking at some specs for it, knows everything about you.
It knows your heart rate.
It knows how many steps you've taken.
It knows precisely where you are.
It knows more about you than your wife or husband does.
And that's what I always say about Facebook.
I mean, I don't use Facebook a lot, but Facebook knows more about you than you know about yourself.
And you would say, well, how can that possibly be?
How can anyone know more about me than I know about myself?
Well, that's the thing.
When you think you're alone, you're not, because Facebook is logging everything you do.
And whereas you forget what you looked at a year ago, you forget what you searched for a year ago.
You forget what you mentioned in a brief message to someone five years ago.
Facebook never forgets.
And you combine everything you've ever written, everything you've ever looked at, and maybe now add in your medical deets from the Apple Watch and your GPS tracker on your phone where you go all the time.
And then as soon as it can cross-reference with any other source of data on you, your banking, this is what Statistics Canada is out for, your family members, your friends, all of a sudden there is nowhere to hide.
It's all linked together.
So yeah, I think we are effectively there with the implantable chip.
The funny thing is, you don't need to implant it in people.
They happily carry it around with them, sleep with it in their bed, take it into the bathroom.
The cell phone is us implanting the chip into ourselves.
Wouldn't you agree with that?
Or do you think I'm overstating it?
Let me say that my Apple phone, once a week it gives me a report on the number of hours a week I spend on my phone.
I don't know if you have an Apple phone, it would do the same for you, or if Android, for instance, it is terrifying for me to see how many hours I'm looking at that thing.
Implantable Chips and Phone Addiction00:00:14
And yeah, almost as many as if it were a chip implanted, isn't it?
On that dreary note, let me end the show.
Thanks for watching today on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters.