SNC-Lavalin UPDATE exposes Justin Trudeau’s alleged pressure on Jody Wilson-Raybould to drop bribery charges against the $6B firm, despite her demotion and David LeMetti’s ties to it. Polls show 66% of Quebecers support banning religious symbols in public authority roles, clashing with federal Liberal immigration targets—340,000 migrants annually, including non-economic ones. Critics like Ezra Levant and Wayne Long face backlash or censorship, while media outlets split on covering the scandal, revealing deep divides over cultural policies ahead of the 2019 election. Quebec’s secular stance may force a national reckoning on immigration and identity. [Automatically generated summary]
Unanswered Questions About Jody Wilson Raybold00:01:54
Hello, my rebels.
You're listening to a free audio-only recording of my show, The Ezra Levant Show.
Today I talk about some unanswered questions about Jody Wilson Raybold, the justice minister fired by Justin Trudeau for, you know, upholding the law.
And there's some crazy stuff about David LeMetti.
That's the new justice minister who just happens to be a Montreal liberal from the very constituency where SNC Lavalan is headquartered.
And I'll give it away a little bit, but you should listen to the whole thing.
SNC Lavalan personally lobbied him too.
Did you know that?
I'll let you watch the rest for yourself.
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Corruption Questions Unanswered00:14:48
Tonight, lots of unanswered questions about the corrupt Quebec engineering firm for whom Justin Trudeau tried to get criminal charges dropped.
It's February 11th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
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.
It was a huge front page story in the Globe and Mail last week.
It would have been big news any day, but given how submissive the media party has been towards the Trudeau government lately and how much groveling they've done for a slice of Trudeau's $595 million media bailout, you got to admit, this was an impressive bombshell.
In short, SNC Lavillan, a huge engineering company headquartered in downtown Montreal, they paid at least $48 million in bribes to secure engineering contracts in Libya a few years ago.
Yeah, I know, like me, you're totally shocked.
An establishment corporation in Quebec that's involved with corruption.
I won't hear of it.
Yeah, neither will anyone else, I guess.
I don't know if you remember, but when McLean's magazine dared to talk about Quebec's culture of corruption, do you remember the House of Commons unanimously voted to condemn the magazine, as in the Tories joined in on that condemnation too?
Anyways, the truth of that came out, and so the RCMP has charged SNC Lavalan with defrauding various Libyan organizations of $130 million.
So this is pretty big time.
This is international class corruption.
This wasn't just some rogue employee stealing from the company Christmas party fund.
This was a major operation, organized crime style.
So they're being prosecuted in Canada for being corrupt.
That's what the law says.
Just like Bombardier, another favorite Quebec company, which has been successfully prosecuted around the world for their corruption, by the way.
I should point out that SNC's Lavaland's market capitalization, you know what that is, right?
That's the amount of value of all the company's shares together on the stock market.
So SNC's Lavaland's market capitalization is more than $6 billion.
So they can handle paying a fine.
They just don't want to.
And they think they can fast talk their way out of it.
I mean, why do you think they give so much money to the Liberal Party?
including, I know you'll be shocked by this, illegal donations here in Canada, not in Libya.
They obviously haven't quite wrapped their head around the fact that they are in Canada and you can't just wriggle out of the law because you're connected to powerful people.
Just a quick point on that share price.
Here's the company's stock market valuation over the past five years.
I don't know if you can see it, but the company's shares were worth about $42 the day of the last election in late 2015.
It's pretty much right in the middle of the graph there.
And then bam, as soon as the liberals took power, look at that.
Again, we're right in the middle of the graph there.
You can see the bottom 2016, wham.
Within half a year, the stocks were trading at 55 bucks.
Do you really think that the company was worth literally 30% more billions of dollars in just six months?
Were the engineers 30% smarter?
Did they suddenly get 30% more work done?
Or do you think it's because everyone knew SNC Lavalan is a liberal crony?
And everyone just naturally assumed after the Liberals won that they would have all their legal problems magically swept away by their fellow liberal Montrealer, Justin Trudeau and his Montreal principal secretary, Gerald Butts.
That's what was going on in that stock price.
Here's the same stock price chart, but instead of showing the past five years, this is the past six months.
Do you see that huge drop in the stock price about a third of the way into the graph?
That was back in October.
I don't know if you can see that in the graph.
It's pretty small numbers.
That's when Canadian prosecutors announced that they were not going to cut a deal with SNC Lavalan.
According to the Globe and Mail, that's when Trudeau decided he was going to fire his justice minister, Jody Wilson-Raybold, who wouldn't bend the knee to him and his Quebec friends.
So that's about a third of the way in there.
And look at the right-hand side.
You see that absolute cliff in the last week?
Well, you know what that's about.
That's this whole scandal in the newspaper.
So there's a lot that goes on in a company, and I'm sure the stock price has to do with a lot of things.
But I think it's also fair to point out that like Bombardier, SNC Lavaland is not a normal company.
It's a crony capitalist company.
It reminds me a little bit of Gazprom in Russia.
Gazprom is owned 51% by Vladimir Putin's authoritarian regime.
So sure, Gazprom is a huge company, and it actually does valuable things.
As you can tell by the name, it's into natural gas, for example.
But it's also a very political company.
It does political favors for Vladimir Putin, and he does them favors in return.
Over there, the corruption is pretty much normalized.
But I think in some ways they're more honest about it.
Putin just owns 51% of the company, so he's not even pretending it's independent and vice versa.
I think that's the problem for Bombardier and SNC Lavalan.
They pretend to be normal, independent, private companies, but really they're just liberal lobbying machines and they live or die based on their government connections to the liberals.
Maybe they should stop pretending otherwise like Gazprom.
It's funny this big Globe expose.
And congratulations again to the Globe reporters.
There were three of them who did a great job.
Got to say it when it happens because it's so rare.
But I should tell you that just a few months back, like December, the Globe was in full PR mode for SNC Lavalan and was going to bat for them to get them off the hook.
Did you know that?
The Globe and Mail was trying to get SNC Lavalan out of prosecution.
Here's a glowing cover story on the Globe and Mail's prestigious Report on Business magazine.
Now, that headline is Bruce Almighty.
That's Neil Bruce, SNC Lavalan's CEO, the one who's been doing so much lobbying.
And let me read, I don't know if you can see the small print there.
SNC Lavalam went from scandal-ridden to world-class.
Hey guys, it's world class.
Let me read a line from the story.
DPA is the deal where they wouldn't be prosecuted.
That's what DPA stands for.
Let me quote.
The missing DPA enraged Bruce.
He had been confident that an agreement protecting the company from a criminal trial was in the bag, all the more so since the federal government had introduced legislation to allow such agreements just a few months earlier.
So he was enraged that he didn't get the deal from the Liberals.
He was enraged.
That's their word.
Now, SNC Lavalam was so pleased with this Globe and Mail propaganda, this cover story, that they uploaded the entire Globe and Mail story to their own SNC Lavalam website just last month, just December.
The entire corporate establishment in Canada was in on this, including the Globe and Mail.
I'm frankly surprised that the Globe let Bob Fife and Steve Chase and the other reporter take a run at their customer.
It's amazing.
So where are we now?
Well, Jodi Wilson-Raybold, the justice minister, shuffled out of her position in a recent cabinet shuffle.
She is now hidden away in Veterans Affairs, a portfolio that is clearly a demotion, and to which she has no connection at all.
She doesn't have any connection to veterans.
But at least she can't stop Trudeau and Butts from helping their Montreal friends anymore, can they?
And this guy, this amazing guy, David Lametti, is the new justice minister.
And like you, I am just shocked.
I am shocked that he's from Quebec.
He's from Montreal.
In fact, he is literally from the constituency, La Salle-Amard, where SNC Lavalin is headquartered.
Who would have funk and what are the odds?
One in 338, if you're asking.
Well, Lametti went on CTV over the weekend, and it was just gorgeous.
Take a listen to this.
How can you say with any degree of certainty that there was no pressure put on her if you don't know?
Who told you there was no pressure?
The Prime Minister has said publicly, and I'm basing, the Prime Minister said that the allegations contained in the Globe and Mail article were false.
The Prime Minister has said that he did not direct my predecessor, so I'm basing it on what he has said publicly.
If you're a justice minister, is that what he said he didn't direct?
Is he skating using legal language around the idea that there's pressure, that there's room.
He may have pressured her in other ways.
The Prime Minister's office.
Are you 100% confident that there was no pressure in any way, shape, or form?
I can't.
Look, I can't speak to a relationship that I wasn't privy to.
That's clear.
But what I can repeat to you and to Canadians is what the Prime Minister has said.
Oh, so he can't speak to.
He actually hasn't spoken with Jody Wilson-Raybold, his predecessor.
He hasn't spoken with the Prime Minister, it sounds like.
Like you and me, he just watched Trudeau's evasive answer on TV the other day, and that's good enough investigating for him.
He's not that curious.
Best not to be curious.
I want you to watch that evasion of Trudeau again.
This is what he said the day after the Globe broke.
I want you to see the kind of watchdog we have on the file as our justice minister, Canada's top legal officer, some watchdog, more like an SNC Lavalan lapdog.
Watch this.
The allegations in the Globe story this morning are false.
Neither the current nor the previous Attorney General was ever directed by me or by anyone in my office to take a decision in this matter.
The allegations reported in the story are false.
At no time did I or my office direct the current or previous Attorney General to make any particular decision in this matter.
But not necessarily direct, Prime Minister.
Was there any sort of influence whatsoever?
As I've said, at no time did we direct the Attorney General, current or previous, to take any decision whatsoever in this matter.
So when David Lanetti says that Trudeau denies the Globe Mail story, well, he didn't, did he?
Because Trudeau said he just didn't direct Jodie Wilson-Raybold to take a particular decision.
That's a very Clintonian answer, parsing the words, just so.
Remember what Clinton said?
Defends what your meaning of the word is is.
What the Globe said in their lengthy front page story, citing sources both from the Justice Department and SNC Lavalan itself, was that Jody Wilson-Raybold was pressured, which we knew just by skimming the list of endless lobbying meetings that Neil Bruce and SNC Lavillan had with every senior official in the government, including more than a dozen meetings with Trudeau's own office.
But this sleeping lifeguard of a justice minister says, yeah, no, there's nothing here even worth investigating.
I mean, I saw the boss on TV and he says everything's fine, and I wouldn't want to enrage the head of SNC Lavilan.
And look at this.
He's not investigating.
He's not apologizing.
He couldn't even be bothered to pick up the phone and talk to anyone involved.
He watched the news just like you and me.
Good enough for him.
Look at this.
Look at this.
Attorney General Lehmetty says SNC Laviland settlement still possible.
Well, let me read a little bit.
New federal attorney general David LeMetty says it is still possible.
He could issue a directive to the prosecution service to settle corruption charges against SNC Lavaland Group out of court.
There is a specific set of rules that would allow the Attorney General to direct a public process in a transparent process through the Canada Gazette, he told CTV's question period on Sunday.
That remains a possibility.
But I'm not going to comment on the possibility of that now because the case is before the courts.
So he said he might still do it.
Yeah, how do you think he got the job?
The Liberals are just going to brazen this one out.
Now, the opposition parties joined forces and they demanded a probe, not a huge independent, multi-million dollar inquiry like, say, Robert Mueller has been doing against Donald Trump for the past two years about Russia collusion with tens of millions of dollars in budgets, the power to subpoena and prosecute anyone who gets in his way.
No, the opposition can just want a teeny tiny baby inquiry.
It's in like half an hour.
Maybe, hey, Jody Wilson-Raybold, maybe you can come by Parliament for half an hour to answer some questions, not even under oath.
Maybe ask some of the other people who were lobbied.
No powers to prosecute.
Just maybe, you know, extended question period, not even extended.
Well, David Lehmanny shut that down in a hurry.
Or Justin Trudeau or Gerald Buds did.
No big difference.
What?
Did you think the chief legal officer of the land was going to enforce the law or something?
This wound is, I think it's pretty much cauterized already.
I mean, Jodi Wilson-Raybold, because she's a lawyer, has to follow some rules of confidentiality.
They call it solicitor client privilege.
It's like what you tell a priest or a doctor.
It's a secret.
Justin Trudeau could waive that confidentiality, but why would he?
Why would he?
Because the Globe and Mail wants him to stuff it.
Listen, that's the price you pay to be a cabinet minister in Justin Trudeau's cabinet.
You have to do what the Montreal Mafia says.
And by Mafia, I don't mean the actual Cosinostra.
I mean Trudeau and Butts.
Jody Wilson-Raybel is an Aboriginal woman from B.C. She's not a made man.
She's not part of that elite McGill world.
David LeMetti absolutely is.
He was a professor there.
He's a professor in McGill.
He's fine making a compromise with Trudeau and Butts.
I mean, he's a former law professor.
Being justice minister is the most important thing in the world to him, even more than becoming a judge, because he gets to appoint all the judges.
Imagine how popular he suddenly is with his friends.
All of his lawyer friends, all of his professor friends, all sucking up to him now to get appointed as judges or promoted as judges.
He's a big shot now.
He's a powerful Montrealer now.
Wayne Long's Surprise Statement00:06:24
And all he has to do is turn a blind eye to this one little mess.
And after all, Trudeau denied it on TV.
And who amongst us would ever challenge Justin Trudeau's word?
Well, to my surprise, this guy, Wayne Long, New Brunswick Liberal MP, he put out this statement today.
Let me quote a little bit of it.
As politicians, we make the laws, but we do not directly apply them to the citizenry.
How the law treats individuals or corporations in our society is not and should never be incumbent upon the political pressure they can exert upon politicians.
I believe that a full and transparent investigation is necessary to ensure that my constituents and all Canadians can be confident in veracity of those answers.
That's why I support the opposition's motion to launch an investigation in the allegations of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.
Well, by the way, I went to Wayne Long's website today and it's offline.
I wonder who pushed that button.
I wonder how long, I mean, as I say this, he's still a liberal MP.
Maybe by the time this gets to air in an hour or so, he'll be sacked.
Who knows?
But look, he's a dead ender.
He'll never be put in cabinet.
He's already criticized Trudeau at least two times.
He stood up for the Energy East pipeline, give him credit for that.
And he spoke out against Bill Mourneau's tax favoritism.
So I think this fellow knows he has no future in the Liberal Party.
He might not even be allowed to run again.
Maybe they've already told him that.
And look at this.
Here's another little bit more timid.
This is from a parliamentary secretary to Trudeau, that kooky MP, Selena Cesar Chavannis.
She tweeted as someone on the inside, oh sure you're on the inside, who knows Puglis, that's the Twitter handle for Jodi Wilson-Raybold.
I can tell you that she is fierce, smart, and unapologetic.
When women speak up and out, they are always going to be labeled.
Go ahead, label away.
We are not going anywhere.
I am with her.
Stand up.
I see you.
Okay.
All right.
That's weird.
Because she's not actually doing anything.
I mean, she's already been demoted, though.
Did you know she used to be Trudeau's own personal parliamentary secretary?
She was shuffled out.
She has a minor obscure position.
I guess she knows her hopes are dashed too.
I mean, she lacks the courage to actually do anything or say anything clearly or call for a solution like Wayne Long.
Really, she's only good for a tweet now and then.
I think she wants to still stay on as parliamentary secretary.
She likes the extra salary and the extra perks and the extra travel and the extra staff that come with that gig.
Who knows?
Who knows if Justin Trudeau will abide such insubordination?
I wonder.
I think they're going to sack Wayne Long because he's a white guy from New Brunswick.
Cesar Chavannis is a 2-4, as in she's a visible minority and a woman, and we know that Justin Trudeau appoints based on quotas.
It'll be tougher for him to sack a woman of color, but he just did it to the justice minister.
Look, I think Trudeau's going to wait this one out.
Here's an article in the Toronto Star, left-wing paper, that's just starting to blame Jodi Willison Rabel, The Toronto star's Chantali Bear wrote this and says that Jody Wilson-Raybold is, quote, being passive-aggressive.
And one could not but ask why she has not resigned on principle from Trudeau's cabinet rather than accept a lesser role.
Hmm.
I'm sure it's just a coincidence, though, that Chantali Bear from Montreal has been a paid scholar with the way for it, the Trudeau Foundation.
Did you know this journalist running every day on the take from the Trudeau Foundation?
Now, I've got a few questions, though.
I've got a few questions for other people besides Jody Wilson-Raybold, since Trudeau is stammering his lawyerly non-denial, and David LeMetti has gone into full schultz mode.
Remember Hogan's heroes?
Remember this?
What is she doing in the uniform, Killer Hogan?
Please!
Oh, you went too far.
I must report this.
It would be worth my life if I do not report this.
It's only until tomorrow, and he's going to take it off again.
After he steals the tank.
From the cancer division.
Oh!
He brings it here onto the band.
Oh, I see nothing.
I was not here.
I did not even get up this morning.
That's David LeMetti, I think.
Well, here's a small suggestion.
If Trudeau and his sergeant Schultz, David Lametty, are silent, and they're keeping Jody Wilson-Raybold gagged, I don't know, maybe we could get on the record a comment from one of the dozens of other senior liberals who were lobbied by the enraged head of SNC Lavalan over the past year or so.
I showed you some of the names before from the lobbyist registry.
Weird names.
I think it's really weird.
For example, the Canadian ambassador to the United States, David McNaughton, was repeatedly lobbied, as you can see here, just, for example, twice in a period of just three weeks.
Boy, who knew he had the time?
I thought he was busy with NAFTA.
No, he made time.
But why, why, why, why?
What did SNC Lavalin say to him?
And the fact that there was a follow-up meeting, I mean, he had meetings and then the follow-up meeting, that surely implies that McNaughton had promised to make some inquiry or pass on some pressure and was reporting back to his boss.
That's my guess.
Maybe he should tell us.
I mean, the ambassador?
What did SNC Lavalin say to Bill Mourneau?
Do you see that there on September 18th?
Mourneau himself was in the meeting with his chief of staff.
That's pretty sure.
So what did Mourneau say in reply?
Because Ben Chin had several meetings, if I recall.
That's his chief of staff.
So did Mourneau talk to Wilson Raybold, one cabinet minister to another?
Lots of cabinet ministers were lobbied.
For example, Jim Carr, the former energy minister, the international trade minister.
He had his whole team there.
Whole team, looks like.
Same with François-Philippe Champagne, the fellow Quebecer who is now the infrastructure minister.
Plenty of parliamentary secretaries had meetings too.
Quebec's Unique Intellectual Tradition00:13:32
The execrable Omar Al Gabra, for example.
And I'm not even going to get into the chiefs of staff or chiefs of policy for minister, who probably did the real heavy lifting here for their elected bosses.
And I came across this one.
From 18 months ago, well, would you look at this?
SNC Lavalan had a private lobbying meeting with David Lemeti himself, the new justice minister.
They met with him in private to lobby him.
And now he's saying he won't investigate them.
Now he's saying he'll take Trudeau's TV word for it.
Everything's fine.
He won't recuse himself.
He won't bring an outside counsel.
Everything's fine, people.
Yeah.
The Libranos are back.
I miss Stephen Harper.
Stay with us for more.
For me, the hijab is not something that women should be wearing.
Because it does have at some point some significance about the oppression of the women and the fact that they have to cover themselves.
And for me, it's, well, it's not in my values.
Well, that is Isabel Charret, Quebec's minister for the status of women, standing next to François Legault, the Premier of Quebec.
They're with the Coalition Avonir Quebec, a new party that wasn't even around a decade ago, that whooped the Liberals.
And as part of their campaign platform, not only did they call for a reduction in immigration to Quebec, a modest reduction of 20%, but a reduction at all.
And look at that, the Minister for Women's Rights is actually talking about women's rights.
Well, joining us now, Vice Kuipe, to talk about this is a woman who's usually right.
And she's from Quebec, our friend Barbara Kaye.
Hey, Barbara, how you doing?
I'm fine, Ezra.
How are you?
I am fine.
And I should tell you, I watched that little clip there and I read the newspaper coverage in the Quebec media.
And I know she walked it back very slightly.
She just, if I'm not mistaken, she said, well, maybe her phrasing wasn't perfect.
But the idea that a woman would say the hijab, and she was specifically talking about the hijab, not the full face obscuring the cab, offends her belief in freedom.
And she wasn't immediately devoured by all the mean girls on Twitter and in the CBC and social media, tells me that Quebec is a little bit more grown up about these conversations than the rest of the country.
Well, it certainly tells you that Quebec is much less politically correct than, you know, the rest of Canada knows what you're allowed to say and what you're not allowed to say, but Quebec women didn't get the message.
Quebec is an extremely feminist province.
I don't know if anybody noticed, but they had lots of women politicians long before it was very common in the rest of Canada.
They teach feminism.
I mean, they've always had a very strong, and that's because of the reaction against the Catholic Church so many years ago in the quiet revolution.
The Catholic Church was not seen as very friendly to women.
And the response when Quebec became far more secular or very secular was to renounce a lot of the attitudes that came with a very strong clergy, clerical domination of society.
So they were really ahead of the curve on feminism and not shy at all about speaking their minds regarding symbols that they see as oppressive, which many, many Canadians, many people in the West also see it as oppressive to women, but they don't dare open their mouth about it.
I agree with most of what you said there, but I would point out in contrast that Ontario, which certainly regards itself as just as woke, I mean, Quebec had Pauline Marwa, the female premier.
Well, Ontario had Kathleen Wynne, who wasn't just feminist.
She was a lesbian activist.
And, you know, you could say she went just as far.
She certainly despises the Catholic Church just as much as anyone in Quebec.
But look at this picture of her sitting at the back of a mosque wearing a hijab.
She was going in some sort of solidarity event and this proud feminist was sitting at the back of a mosque because she was unclean, she was haram, so she would allow herself to be humiliated.
And so I guess what I'm saying is that feminism you're talking about, the anti-Catholicism you're talking about, I believe that's just as strong in other parts of the country, but that feminism immediately collapses into Islamophilia in other parts.
How come it hasn't done so in Quebec?
I don't think that Quebecers got the, they haven't got the total message because they're kind of segregated from a lot of the media and a lot of the even the intellectual traditions of the universities in the rest of the world or the rest of the West.
They kind of go their own way.
They're never big on multiculturalism.
This intersectionality thing, just I don't hear about it at all here.
It's just not a thing.
So they have their own style of thinking.
And don't forget too that Quebec intellectuals are much more influenced by intellectuals in France than they are intellectuals from Berkeley, say.
So there are different traditions here.
And multiculturalism was never a big deal here or never something to be sought after.
So that accounts for some of it.
Let me throw another theory at you and then I want to go to an opinion poll, Barbara.
I have in front of me a very important Angus Reid poll from just two months ago about Quebec.
So I'll get to that in a moment.
But can I put a counter theory to you?
Again, I don't disagree with what you've said, but I put it to you that Quebec, depending on your definitions, can argue, could arguably be called the first ethnic nationalists.
I won't say alt-right, but an ethno-nationalism.
The Quebecois, the Sovereignty Association, the Pure Lane Quebecers, we must keep our culture, our language amongst this sea of others.
I put it to you that for centuries, and certainly since the Parti Québécois and the Bloc Québécois came along, Quebecers have been told it's okay to celebrate your nationalism.
It's okay to celebrate your history, your culture, your language, and even if they don't practice it, your religion.
And so when hundreds of thousands of Muslim migrants come in, they don't immediately say, well, we're just an empty slate, we're just an empty hotel room and a zip code, and we'll immediately roll with whatever multi-culti holiday of the week it is.
They're saying, no, we actually are proud Quebecers.
I think there's an ethnic pride in Quebec that is much stronger than anywhere else in the country.
And it is accepted by the media class as somehow being not racist, whereas anyone else who would show any ethnic pride is immediately deemed racist.
So that's my theory.
What do you make of that?
Well, no, there's no question about it.
They are quite comfortable with their own heritage, their own ethnic identity.
They don't have white guilt.
They don't hate America.
They don't hate themselves.
As I say, they're walking to a beat of a different drum.
And don't forget that outside of Montreal, Outside of Montreal, Quebecers are the only probably jurisdiction in all of North America where you have an ethnically homogeneous group of people, like six million people, who are still not multicultural at all.
Montreal is very multicultural, but the rest of Quebec is not.
And they don't have that whole set, they're not in the flow of progressivism or what it means or intersectionality or any of that stuff.
It means that doesn't mean anything to them.
I find that very interesting.
And I think the most interesting part of it is watching how Justin Trudeau, who himself is technically from Montreal, although I don't think he in his bones is a Quebecer.
I think he's sort of a global citizen and he probably is more at home in Ontario, frankly.
Or at least he's in the cosmopolitan parts of Montreal.
It's funny to me how he can abide these things in his home province, but when he's in Ottawa, he speaks with a great fury on behalf of hijabs and Islam and all these things.
I find it interesting.
Let's go to the poll.
I mentioned a poll from Angus Reed, and this is very telling.
Angus Reed did a survey on the Coalition Avenue Quebec's proposal to ban religious symbols from public sector workers.
So this is not a ban of hijabs or niqabs on the street, as for example, France has.
They ban the full face-obscuring niqab anywhere.
So this is just for people, you know, a nurse in a hospital or someone at the motor vehicles.
And according to this survey, and we'll put it up here on the screen, depending on the particular religious object, let me just read the exact question.
Please indicate whether you think public employees should be allowed to wear each of these religious symbols while on the job.
So this is all respondents, including Quebec residents.
So this is nationwide here.
And I'll get to the Quebec numbers a bit later.
77% of Canadians want the Burqaban.
75% want the niqab band.
And I put it to you that there's really little difference.
So this is extremely popular, not just in Quebec, but across the country.
And there's one more chart I'll ask you.
I'll show you.
And this is just of Quebecers now.
And then I'll bring you right back in, Barbara.
The new government of Quebec has promised to ban public employees in positions of authority from wearing religious symbols at work.
Do you support or oppose this ban?
Now this, Barbara, is just asked of Quebecers.
43% strongly support the ban.
Another 23% support it somewhat.
So that's a total of 66%, as opposed to just 16% who oppose it and 12% who oppose it strongly.
So it's two-to-one support and it's a very strong support in Quebec.
So it's a lot of numbers I was throwing at you.
But I guess the takeaway here is not only is this extremely popular in Quebec, but this would be popular in every single province in the country.
Well, I know that.
I mean, I know that, for example, the Nikob face cover has always been strongly opposed throughout Canada.
But, you know, the media disregard that.
They are strongly for it, or not for it, but they're strongly for the right to wear it.
As far as I know, I'm one of the very few journalists that has come out always for years strongly against the niqab in public service.
I think it's appalling that people should be allowed to cover their faces in the public service since you don't have any choice with whom you deal in the public service.
I think that's very bad.
I am sympathetic to women who wear the hijab that want to be able to wear it in their daily life.
I get that.
I have no problem with seeing it or interacting with women wearing it.
It's meaningless to me.
But I do understand that in places of authority, judges say, doctors, I don't know.
I don't know who they considered.
There's a case to be made.
I don't say I'm totally on the side of those who think it shouldn't ever be in the public service.
I don't think wearing a little kippah really, somebody who is a school teacher or a doctor, I don't see how that's harmful.
I can see how judges, that would be something in law court.
I can see where that could be intimidating to somebody who's from another, you know, they might believe, even though the judge might be totally impartial, but they might have feelings about that and they shouldn't have to worry about such feelings.
So, you know, a bit of a mixed bag there.
Yeah.
Well, here's what's interesting to me.
Conservatives Face Mixed Bag00:06:32
It is so clear to me that the 2019 federal election, obviously we're less than a year away from that, open borders immigration is going to be a major campaign issue.
I don't think Trudeau and Amin Hassan wanted it to be, but I think it is becoming that way, partly because of the open border between Quebec and New York, partly because of the homeless crisis this has caused in Ontario.
The success of the Quebec Party that we talked about, I think, is part of this.
And I think that the Liberals are going full speed ahead.
They really are replicating what Angela Merkel did.
They're calling for 340,000 migrants next year, 40% of whom will not be economic class immigrants.
So I think it's going to be an issue.
I know from another Angus Reid poll that only about 5% of Canadians support increasing immigration that high.
Only 5%, Barbara.
So I think you're having this extreme immigration agenda that is disproportionately Muslim.
It's just a fact.
And at the same time, you're demonizing critics as Islamophobic, bigoted, racist.
They're even demonizing Doug Ford's provincial cabinet ministers as un-Canadian for not going along with this.
I think we're in for a heck of a fight.
And I just don't know if Quebec is going to have a different narrative than the rest of us.
Maybe Trudeau's not going to criticize anyone en français, but in English, he's going to call us all bigots.
How do you think that's going to go down?
You know, I'm not, I try not to make too many predictions because I hate having to eat my words.
I think immigration is a big issue for a lot of people.
The problem for the Conservative Party is that the Liberals are always going to paint any criticism of immigration as you're a racist.
I mean, it's very hard to avoid that accusation, and it's very frustrating to anybody.
I know myself, when I write about immigration, I have to be so careful because for me, it's about the numbers.
We just don't have the infrastructure and we don't have the capacity.
I don't even think we have the, I don't think we know what our job needs are even.
And of course, a lot of those immigrants coming are the ones that are working, but a whole lot of others are not.
They're the, you know, the grandparents and the sisters and the brothers and the children.
So it's a tremendous, it's a tremendous burden on the system.
And there's no time for the generations to catch up and relieve the burden because when the next generation comes and they're all integrated, then there's another wave of immigration.
You have to keep expanding services, but they can never keep up with the rate.
You know, the hospitals are overcrowded, but you can't keep building hospitals at that pace.
So it is a problem, and the conservatives are going to have a serious problem countering this narrative about Islamophobia, racism.
it's just a mantra i don't know how it's going to uh i think i think they have to take the bull by the horns i think they have to sort of punch back and say stop calling us racist that's wrong you know and just take the offensive on that Well, I mean, the success of François Legault and the CAC party in Quebec shows it's possible to win.
And they're not saying stop immigration.
They're not saying ban Muslims.
They're saying, folks, slow down a bit here.
Let's reduce it by 20% and let's keep this religious symbol out of the public sector.
I think that's an eminently reasonable point of view.
And it won't.
Yeah, I agree with you, Ezra.
And the one thing that might happen is that Maxine Bernier's party, although it's very tiny and very just nascent, if he starts getting a lot of support from people and if the conservatives see that really there's a significant number of votes that are going to him because he's honest about immigration,
it may encourage them to take back that, you know, to appropriate his message a little more in order to keep those votes on side.
And I'd be perfectly happy for that to happen because I'd like to see the conservatives gain traction.
But yeah, they really have to go on offense here.
I think statistics are linked.
I think mass migration without vetting for cultural fit and without absorption and the hijab, I really think they're linked.
You know, Barbara, let me end with a little anecdote.
You know the last conversation I had with Andrew Scheer, he doesn't talk to the rebel anymore.
You know when the last conversation we ever had was?
He was on this very show and I asked him about immigration.
And he did not like my questions.
I put the same question to him five times and he evaded it five times.
And because he wasn't on Skype, he couldn't just push the off button.
He was literally sitting next to me here.
And I said, and I asked him, do you have any, you know, putting aside security concerns, which is something very acute, do you have any proposal for a cultural fit?
He wouldn't answer it.
Andrew Scheer will not answer two questions about immigration.
The absolute number of immigrants.
Note he has never criticized Trudeau or Hassan for their huge numbers.
He has never said he's opposed to increasing numbers.
And he won't talk about the quantity.
He won't talk about the quality either.
He will not talk about cultural fit.
The most I've seen him say is we need to have better processing and an orderly flow.
I think that he has yet to cross that Rubicon you talk about.
He recently had an epiphany on global warming, and he no longer says he wants to follow the UN.
He's still being a me-too mini-me of Trudeau on immigration.
And I think you're right.
I think Maxine Bernier might eat his lunch on that.
Last word to you, Barbara.
Well, I'm just looking forward to the campaign coming up because I think it is going to be very interesting.
And I do think migration, and this, by the way, this global pact on migration, which I think is very insidious, you know, I hope these things do come up for debate because we might see something energetic happen if we can get some movement on the part of the conservatives to own that issue a little bit more.
I'd love to see that happen.
And I do think Quebec may be showing us the way.
You know, Quebec's not always right, but when they are right, they're often very, to me, they seem very courageous because they'll buck trends.
Jagmeet Singh's NDP Dilemma00:05:59
They don't even know how courageous they are because they kind of don't realize how politically correct the rest of us are.
Very interesting.
Well, listen, I'm always grateful for your time.
Time flies with you.
I want to share one, give me 30 seconds to share one more thing.
You know, we had Yasmin Muhammad on the show the other day.
Oh, she's great.
Yeah, she's great.
She's a former Muslim who was forced to wear face-obscuring veils.
Actually, she was married to an al-Qaeda activist, if you can believe it.
She said to me, she's not for banning, she's not for telling women to take off the hijab because she's worried that doing so could sentence them to death.
So she says she supports any woman who would take the hijab off, but she would never pressure a woman to take it off because she doesn't know what violence that woman would face.
I thought that was a terrifying thing to hear her say.
And obviously it comes from someone who has lived inside that world and would be terrified that if I were free, I would be perhaps murdered axa parves style by a father or a brother.
So I just wanted to leave that anecdote with you.
It changed my thinking on that.
That's why we need the government to ban it because a woman herself might not be in a position to stand up to the tyrants in her small world.
Yeah, it's a possibility.
All right.
Well, Barbara, thanks for talking with these very controversial subjects with me.
You're one of my favorite people to talk with them because you're not afraid.
And I wish more people were like you.
Thanks, Ezra.
All right, there you have it.
Barbara Kay, one of our favorite people, National Post columnist.
Stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
Hey, welcome back on my monologue Friday about Jagmeet Singh asking the elections watchdog to investigate slanderous ads targeting him.
Robert writes, Singh has turned out to be a real dud for the NDP.
Too bad.
The right needs him to do well in the next election so that Junior doesn't eat their lunch again in the next election.
Yeah, you know, I think that the media looked at Jagmeet Singh and thought, he's so handsome, he's such a sharp dresser, and he's got that beautiful, colorful turban.
That's all our checkboxes of what a progressive man looks like.
And of course, he had strong ties to the Sikh community who came out en masse.
And that's just not enough.
That's a good add-on to other stuff, but that's not enough in itself.
And my observations of Jagmeet Singh are that he is, you know, he's not in the thick of the debate.
I think it's probably because he's not an MP yet.
When I see him on interviews, he doesn't sound well briefed on things.
And, you know, I know he's Sikh and everything, and I think that's fine.
But I think he's obsessed with Sikh separatism.
Like he goes to rallies and stuff for it around the world even.
And that's a project, but that's not the project of someone who wants to be the prime minister of Canada.
I think it's a distraction for him.
I don't know.
What do you think about that?
I don't think he's going to do well at all.
I think for sure he's going to lose this by-election in Burnaby.
I might eat my words on that, but I think it's going to come in maybe third.
And I think the NDP have a real question.
Do they want to go into an election with him?
Because it was only the collapse of that NDP vote that gave Trudeau his majority.
Yeah, I share your worries on that.
Betty writes, the similarities between Trudeau and Singh are striking.
Neither one of them will answer legitimate questions that they're asked.
Yes, there are some similarities.
Both are clothes, horses, both are masters of the selfie.
Both are in love with the mirror.
But there's an extremely important difference.
Trudeau is a household name.
And there's a resonance there because his father was prime minister.
And so a lot of boomers have fond, sentimental memories.
They're probably not thinking of Pierre Trudeau himself.
And as a prime minister, they're probably thinking of their own youth when Trudeau was prime minister.
So if you're 65 years old now and you think of Pierre Trudeau, well, maybe you were 25 years old.
And so your fond memories of, oh, when I was a kid, when I was 25 and carefree.
So they have that sentimentality, that nostalgia of their own youth.
And the name Trudeau is a household name.
Jack Meet Singh is none of those things.
So I think he's going to get his clock cleaned by Trudeau.
And that's not good for those of us on the right.
On my interview with Andrew Lawton about Trudeau's SNC Lavland scandal, Paul writes, One liberal actually does their job and they get fired.
Let that sink in.
The media party will pretend to do their job for a while and let it go.
Yeah, it's interesting.
And I showed you earlier today that the Globe and Mail had this full-on propaganda piece for SNC Lavland.
That was in December.
So I am a little surprised and a little impressed that they let Bob Fife go on this.
He seems to be still like a tiger on the issue.
Evan Solomon was pretty good too.
You can see other media starting to play defense for the PMO, CBC obviously.
Toronto Star 2, Global TV 2.
I think they're going to brazen it out.
I think they're going to tough it out.
I just think that the only way you shame someone from office is if they feel shame.
And I don't know if Trudeau feels shame, and if he does, I don't think he shows it.
Yeah, I think they're going to ride it out.
Well, that's it for today's show.
It'll be interesting if Wayne Long survives, though.
I'll tell you that.
I don't think Trudeau, he's so thin-skinned.
I don't think Trudeau will keep Wayne Long in the caucus after he says he wants an investigation.
I just don't think so.
We'll see.
That's going to come to a head pretty quick.
Until tomorrow, folks, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, you at home.