Ezra Levant and Sheila Gunn Reid expose Justin Trudeau’s hypocrisy over SNC Lavalin’s $6.5B deferred prosecution, where his government ignored corruption laws to "save jobs" despite killing three pipelines—Keystone XL, Northern Gateway, and Energy East—while using women like Wilson-Raybould as scapegoats. Reid reveals Canada’s role in banning her and David Menzies from a UN migration conference for questioning taxpayer-funded media access, while Kian Beckstay’s reporting from Brooks, Alberta, debunks Jason Kenney’s immigration claims, showing how forced Somalis influx turned the town into a crime hotspot, ranked among Canada’s worst by McLean’s. Trudeau’s Liberals and Kenney’s Conservatives both face scrutiny for prioritizing narratives over accountability, whether in media suppression or immigration policy failures. [Automatically generated summary]
Factors Considered In Deferred Prosecutions00:04:18
Welcome to Rebel Roundup, ladies and gentlemen, and the rest of you, in which we look back at some of the very best commentaries of the week by your favorite rebels.
I'm your host, David Menzies.
Well, Gerald Butts tried valiantly to, well, cover his butt the other day regarding land scam.
Did he succeed?
Ezra Levant will offer his analysis.
And some high-profile UK and Canadian politicians recently proclaimed their love for a free press.
Just one caveat.
Apparently the media has to follow an appropriate narrative in order to earn their love.
Sheila Gunread has all the details.
And Jason Kenney thinks that the importation of Somalis to Brooks, Alberta has been a resounding success story that needs to be duplicated in other Alberta jurisdictions.
Well, Kian Beckstay recently traveled to Brooks to interview residents and just wait till you hear what some of them had to say.
And finally, letters, we get your letters, we get them every minute of every day and I'll share some of your responses to my commentary regarding the federal government's refusal to say how much they are spending on accommodating refugees at two Toronto hotels.
Whatever happened to the Trudeau Liberals' promise about being transparent?
Those are your rebels.
Now let's round them up.
I don't think we can take Gerald Butts at face value.
What he's trying to do though is saying, sure, we broke a few eggs to make this alma, but we were doing it to save jobs.
But that's the thing.
See, the Canadian Criminal Code specifically says that economic matters are not relevant to whether or not you can prosecute a criminal.
It's just not how we do things in Canada.
Otherwise, we would literally favor any rich person, any big company, and let them off, but just go after the poor people.
Think about it.
Put that up just for a second.
Again, I'm going to read.
This is from the Criminal Code.
This is on deferred prosecutions.
This is what SNC Lavalan asked for.
Look at this.
Factors not to consider.
It's actually phrased that way.
Despite paragraph 2i, if the organization is alleged to have committed an offense under Section 3 or 4, the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act, the prosecutor must not consider the national economic interest, the potential effect on relations with the state other than Canada, or the identity of the organization or individual involved.
Must not.
Factors not to consider.
So this whole jobs, jobs, jobs argument that's specifically not allowed in a consideration to drop charges.
Otherwise, every big company could simply break the law all the time and say, yeah, really wish you could prosecute us, but you see, we got a lot of people working here.
Well, if there's one narrative that has remained consistent regarding the Trudeau Liberals' response to the SNC Lavalin dumpster fire, it is the innuendo that the ends justify the means.
In other words, if a major corporation employing thousands of Canadians is doing something illicit, well, perhaps there's some, you know, wiggle room within the law to allow for a wee bit of chicanery, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
After all, think of all those jobs and everyone else does it.
And besides, the likes of an SNC Lavalin, well, they're just too big to fail, right?
But as you just saw, regardless of the spin cycle at play here, the law is indeed the law, and not even the economic interests of a major corporation or even the entire nation can trump the rule of law.
And with more on LavScam is our very own rebel commander, Ezra Levant.
Welcome to Rebel Roundup, Ezra.
Ezra.
Thanks very much.
Well, first of all, Ezra, I want to go back two days ago to Gerald Butts' testimony.
Prime Minister's Feminist Dilemma00:06:03
What was your take on what he had to say?
Well, it was definitely not the real Gerald Butts.
I know the real Gerald Butts from his Twitter feed.
He's vile, he's crude, he calls people he doesn't like Nazis or fascists, even call us here the rebel Nazis, which is weird because I'm Jewish and I don't think Jews can be Nazis.
Maybe I'm wrong.
So he's a vile, crude, elbows-up guy, and he played a low-energy guy.
I don't know what she was thinking.
I don't know what got into her because I don't know.
I mean, it was just fake, but it was to absorb the energy.
And I think I know the real purpose it served.
Until that moment, it was just Jody Wilson Raybold, and then she was amplified by Jane Philpott.
So this made it a he said, she said.
And then yesterday, Justin Trudeau weighed in and said, okay, so you're taking one position and you're taking the opposite position.
You guys, knock it off.
Here's, let me reconcile.
Let me now come in as a passive observer, outsider, a referee.
I've got nothing to do with it.
You guys are fighting.
I'm going to come in now and tell you how we're going to resolve this as if I'm some judge rather than the party in question.
So it was a move designed to make the antagonist Gerald Butts instead of Justin Trudeau.
And also, Ezra, on that point, in terms of Justin Trudeau's response and this whole business of, well, that's her truth.
It seems to me a little odd that a prime minister who declares himself to be a feminist has a lot of trouble communicating with women, whether it's the ex-attorney general or that reporter in Kokene from a while back.
He seems to have a real communication gap.
What gives?
Listen, anytime someone identifies as a male feminist, they say male feminist, you should hear someone who is not a male feminist, but who says that to preempt any criticism of how he treats women.
Every single person I've ever heard of who describes himself as a male feminist, from Harvey Weinstein, for whom it was a big deal to be a feminist, turns out he was a rapist.
Bill Clinton, same thing.
Teddy Kennedy, same thing.
In fact, he left a woman to die.
He left his mistress in a car to die.
And you don't have to be as dramatic as that.
Gian Gameshi of the CBC, who literally got a women's studies degree, he used the CBC to get dates, and then he would literally smash women in the face.
So I have, and all the people taken down in the Me Too movement, they were all noisy feminists.
Anytime a man says something, I mean, a normal man doesn't go around and say, hey, I'm a feminist, I'm a feminist.
A normal man just treats women right.
If you're talking about it all the time, if you're running hot on it, that's your clue.
And I believe that Justin Trudeau, his whole feminist thing is a front, is a sham, designed to preempt and inoculate him from sexual indiscretions in the past.
We know about his sexual assault on Rose Knight in British Columbia, and it's not me who's calling it sexual assault.
It's she who called it that, and it's the New York Times that called her that.
Kirsty Duncan lied about her resume, said she was a Nobel Prize winner.
Don't ever lie about being a Nobel Prize winner, because they have a website with a list, a list.
You can check pretty quick.
And so he treats women as one purpose only, as a shield.
But he made a mistake.
David, he made a mistake.
This male feminist who uses women just to say, look, I'm surrounded by women, so I can't be that big bad, right?
He made a mistake.
He accidentally, accidentally appointed to women of substance.
Yes.
Jody Wilson-Raybold, an accomplished lawyer and prosecutor, and Jane Philpott, accomplished doctor.
So they were excellent in their field, and I disagree with them ideologically.
They're too left-wing for me.
But they were women of substance.
And so wouldn't you know it?
Whereas Catherine McKenna, Bardish Chagger, Maryam Monsef, Ikra Khalid, and all the rest of the quota girls said, we love you, Dustin.
Jody Wilson-Raybold said, yeah, no, I'm not willing to roll over for your friends at SNC Lavalin.
And Jane Philpott, watching the whole thing from cabinet, said, I can't be a part of this.
So the irony is the only women who work well with Justin Trudeau, they're not actually women of substance, they're not actually strong women.
They're absolutely submissive women.
The only women that do well with Justin Trudeau are the ones that let him walk all over them.
Jody Wilson-Raybold and Philpott would not.
Someone as unqualified as Catherine McKenna, who had never really held down a job in her life, she will do anything for Trudeau, because this is her only gig.
Maryam Monsev, I don't even know what she did.
She was actually packing to go back to Afghanistan.
I don't know if you know that.
I do not.
And then she just decided, well, maybe I'll run for office.
She is a woman of no accomplishment.
So women of no accomplishment do really well with Trudeau because they have one use for him.
Look, I got a woman here.
Women of high accomplishment are a direct threat to Trudeau because they actually want to be taken seriously.
He's not used to that.
And speaking of Catherine McKenna, as you know, Ezra, on Monday I went down to the Danforth Music Hall and Justin Trudeau and a bunch of Liberal MPs were there to do a climate change rally.
Trudeau's Apologetic Tactics00:06:24
Of course, that's first and foremost on the front burner of the national agenda right now.
And the place was packed with liberal loyalists.
I was interviewing them on the sidewalk and it kept coming down to the other narrative that the liberals are saying.
Jobs, jobs, jobs.
It's about saving jobs.
It's about saving jobs.
Two-part question for you.
The figure bandied about so often is 9,000 jobs.
I'm wondering, has that passed the sniff test?
Is there really 9,000 jobs at stake?
And secondly, on the bigger question of jobs, Ezra, how many jobs in the Alberta oil patch have been vanquished because of the pipeline paralysis?
Why aren't jobs a priority in Alberta, but they are in Quebec?
It's not just pipeline paralysis, it's pipeline amputation.
Yes.
Because the Keystone Excel pipeline, that was Obama that killed that one.
But the Northern Gateway pipeline, that was approved.
National Energy Board approved it.
Cabinet approved it.
Trudeau killed it.
Energy East Pipeline was moving through smooth sailing.
Trudeau rigged the rules that made them abandon it.
Transmountain pipeline, same thing.
It was actually approved.
Trudeau, he's killed three Canadian pipelines.
It wasn't just passive paralysis.
He killed them.
So that proves a lie that he cares about jobs.
But it's not 9,000 jobs at SNC Lavaline that are at stake.
That's the entire company.
The entire company will not stop existing if they pay a fine.
I checked the market capitalization of SNC Lavline today.
That means how much are all the shares worth on the stock exchange?
It's about $6.5 billion.
So if they pay a fine of $50 million, that's less than 1% of their value.
So you're basically saying for every dollar you have invested in SNC Lavline, you're going to pay one cent in fines because you're a crooked company.
I don't find that too onerous, and that's not going to cause 9,000 people to be unemployed.
There should be nine people unemployed, the nine corrupt leaders of this company.
The rest are just engineers who are doing work that will be done.
If you're doing an engineering project in Montreal, you could work for SNC Lavline, you could work for another company.
If a company goes out of business, you can still find work, but it's not going to go out of business for paying a fine worth 1% of their market cap.
That's a lie that hasn't properly been challenged in the public by the media.
But more than that, even if it were true, and it's not, the public prosecutions portion of the criminal code specifically says you can't take job losses or money into account.
You know why, David?
Because if all it took for a company to say, you can't sue me, was, I'm very rich and I employ a lot of people, you would effectively be encouraging the richer the company, the more corrupt they would be.
If the only people you could ever sue for being corrupt criminals were poor people, mom-and-pop shops, low-income people, I think you should prosecute any mom-and-pop shops that are criminal.
I don't think there's a lot of them.
But if you literally rigged the rules to let someone say, well, I employ 9,000 people, you can't possibly prosecute me.
I'm too important.
You would literally be tilting the playing field towards corruption by big companies.
You can't do that.
It's the worst argument of all.
It would be an abomination of justice, to be sure.
As we're almost out of time, very quick exit question.
Hypothetical one.
Say you didn't have your role as leader of Rebel.media and you were an advisor to Justin Trudeau, because clearly what Mr. Butts and Mr. Trudeau said in the last two days did not kill this issue.
In fact, they've added fuel to the fire.
What would be your advice to him in terms of trying to make things right?
It's advice he will never take.
Justin Trudeau is known for his apologies, but they're ironic apologies.
As in he apologizes for other people and he presents himself as the only one moral enough to say what my predecessor did was wrong and I'm here to apologize for him.
So Trudeau apologized for what past people did and he does it in that backhanded self-complimentary way of saying, I'm here to deeply apologize for the wrong that someone else did so you can see how right I am.
This is actually about me.
It's not even about you.
So he loves making apologies for things he hasn't done.
In his entire public career, I have yet to see him make a single apology, let alone an acknowledgement that he's done something wrong.
And were he to look into the camera and say, folks, I screwed up.
I had to.
And the public is forgiving.
Oh my God, you know what?
You know who is a master of that?
Ralph Klein.
Yes.
Ralph Klein would sometimes get so far out on something and then he would say, what am I doing?
And he would just say, folks, I messed up.
I'm going to change it.
And you know, everyone said, holy cow, politician who actually says he's wrong and says, sorry.
And he turned lemons into lemonade.
Every time Ralph Klein did that, I remember one case he appointed a partisan guy to head the Alberta Energy Regulator, which is a very important nonpartisan that basically runs oil and gas in Alberta.
And Klein had appointed an old crony to head it up.
And the whole industry said, no, no, you can't.
This has to be clean as a whistle.
The reason we're so successful is unlike Nigeria and Mexico, there's zero corruption.
You can't, And the whole problem said, no, And he dug in his heel and then he finally said, all right, I was wrong.
And he just went to the place and said, folks, I screwed up.
And everyone said, oh my God, when was the last time we saw that?
And he went up in the polls.
And if Justin Trudeau ever looked in the camera and said, you know what, guys, I'm not going to blame someone else.
I called this one wrong.
I did it wrong.
I may have had positive motivations, but that doesn't cut it.
I got it wrong.
And I apologize, and we're going to do this, and we're going to fire that hyper-partisan clerk of the Privy Council.
And I've already lost my right-hand man, Jerry Butts.
We're going to do this and this.
We're going to fix this and that.
And I screwed up, and I'll try and do better next time.
Defending Freedom Of The Press00:05:30
You know what?
All of a sudden, it would be tough to pile on him because he just piled on himself.
Absolutely.
And the more arrogant a guy is, blaming others, and he's basically called Jody Wilson Raybel the liar.
If he were to say, you know what, Jody, I know you're mad at me right now, but I want to let you know something.
You're right.
Holy cow would the whole country say that took courage.
Instead, we see a coward.
We see a male feminist.
We see a faker.
And that would be my advice, but he would never take it.
Unbelievable.
Well, Ezra, thank you so much for this analysis.
Greatly appreciated.
And there you have it, folks.
I guess Elton John was right with one of his song lyrics.
When it comes to Justin Trudeau, sorry seems to be the hardest word, doesn't it?
Keep it here.
more of Rebel Roundup to come right after this.
Now look at these couple of tweets here.
This guy here is Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary of the UK.
He sent a tweet that said, The free media is the lifeblood of democracy.
So pleased to announce the UK and our good friends in Canada will be co-hosting the first ever ministerial level media freedom conference on July 10th and 11th in London.
Thanks to Christia Freeland for your support.
Defend media freedom.
Journalism is not a crime.
You know what?
That is one heck of an interesting tweet sent by a representative of the country that locked up Tommy Robinson for the crime of journalism.
But anyway, let's carry on.
To which Jeremy Hunt's Canadian counterpart, our moral preening embarrassment of a foreign minister, Christia Freeland, replied, In any democracy, journalists must have the ability to report facts freely, to defend, expose, and advance the truth without fear of retaliation, reprisal, violence, or imprisonment.
Canada will always defend this right.
Except the Canadian government was directly responsible for me being banned.
They retaliated against me for my skepticism.
I couldn't tell you the truth as I saw it from inside the United Nations Climate Change Conference.
I couldn't expose the wastefulness and the opulence of the elites telling us to live with less from within those conference walls.
I was explicitly banned because I was going to tell you all those things.
And Canada did not defend my right to report.
They have never defended our right to report.
Freeland has stayed silent.
It's also fascinating to see the political elites in Canada and the UK go to bat for freedom of the press, isn't it?
Except for one thing, their love of press freedom apparently extends only to those media outlets that deliver a narrative that the government approves of.
Does that sound like unconditional press freedom to you?
And with more on this story of yet more government hypocrisy running amok is the host of the gun show, Sheila Gunread.
Welcome to Rebel Roundup, my friend.
Hey, David, thanks for having me on.
Always a pleasure.
So Sheila, both you and I have skin in this game, so to speak, because we were both banned from UN conferences overseas last December.
And the thing is, as you point out in your commentary, it was our own federal government, you know, the one that allegedly champions press freedom, that got the UN to ban us.
And this was supposedly due to your inappropriate behavior at a previous UN conference.
So first of all, Sheila, please tell our viewers what evil and egregious thing you did to get us blackballed in the first place.
I asked a press secretary who paid her way to the conference.
And that was it.
I asked her if she had been sent there by the Canadian taxpayers.
Wow.
She turned white as a ghost and ran away.
I think she locked herself in a bathroom, to be honest with you.
And then the guy in charge of media, Nick Nuttall, Google that name.
He's a real winner.
For the UN, he came and he sat us down and he talked to us and said, you know, we heard that you were harassing people.
We actually said, you know what?
That's interesting you say that because we have the whole exchange caught on film and it's not the way that this horrified press secretary said it unfolded, but that was enough for him to ban us.
And then the very next year, it's clear when we got our rejection letters, when you and I got our rejection letters when we applied to cover those UN conferences, it said that we were banned at the behest of the Canadian delegation, which means our own government, this government that says that they appreciate diverse viewpoints, intervened with the United Nations to have us banned so that we couldn't tell the other side of the story.
You were probably one of the only, not, I wouldn't even say you're anti-immigration, but anti-mass unvetted migration journalists at that UN migration conference.
I was probably one of two skeptical journalists at the UN Climate Change Conference this year.
Mass Unvetted Migration00:12:58
When these people preach about diversity, that's not what they mean.
No, it isn't.
And it's funny that that's more of an explanation that, as you know, Justin and I went to Marrakesh, Morocco to cover the Migrant Compact conference.
And when we applied for press credentials there, well, we knew they didn't exist, but the answer we got was you're being denied due to the bad behavior of one of your colleagues, meaning you, my dear.
So now at least you've put a little more meat on those bones in terms of an explanation.
But, you know, you mentioned diversity, and that's the thing, isn't it, Sheila?
As much as the Trudeau liberals and other governments in the West love to use the D word whenever and whenever possible, diversity doesn't apply to a diversity of thought and a diversity of opinions, does it?
Because if you're not in ideological lockstep, well, there's a problem with you, isn't there?
Well, yeah, and the liberals are willing to spend exorbitant amounts of money to make sure that the alternative viewpoints to the mainstream media have a very tough time competing against the echo chamber.
We've seen that they're willing to give $1.5 billion to the liberal-friendly CBC just to make sure that there isn't a diversity of viewpoints over there.
And they're giving another $600 million to the rest of the failing and struggling mainstream media.
And that will be divvied out by a liberal-appointed panel of former journalists.
I don't think you and I are going to make it on that panel.
And they're going to dish it out according to content quality.
And we know that's not going to include anybody from the right side of the spectrum.
So, you know, they talk a lot about diversity, but there's a lot of homogeneity in the mainstream media and a lot of money to make sure it stays that way.
Oh, and you know something, Sheila, you're bang on.
And what I thought was one of the most underreported angles of the SNC Lavalin scam, and certainly there's more legs on that story than a centipede.
But it was that statement where Jodi Wilson-Raybold was told that to sell this DPA for SNC Lavalin, we're going to get people to put op-eds into newspapers explaining why this is so good.
I mean, Sheila, the audacity to me is amazing.
Those media checks, to my knowledge, haven't even been cashed yet.
And the liberals are so sure that the media party is just going to accept material from their stenographers to carry the party line.
What's your thoughts on that?
Well, yeah, I mean, sure, those checks haven't been cashed yet, but every story seems to be a grant application, doesn't it?
The way that that was said, it was just so self-assured and like it was normal that we can line up friendly op-eds.
No big, we'll just spin this in the media.
We have a lot of friends and a lot of people on our side, which is something I think we all knew.
Like we all knew in our to, you know, you read this stuff and you think this came literally right out of Katie Telford's email.
But to see it said and to see somebody from the inside who's heard it, like Jody Wilson-Raybold repeat it verbatim to confirm it to the rest of us, I think that's what was most shocking that someone would break ranks and admit to the amount of sycophancy that exists in the mainstream media for the liberals.
You know, and here's another question too, Sheila, completely hypothetical, but assuming come October the Andrew Scheer Conservatives get in, do you think they'll go to bat for us for these future UN conferences because they've already banned us from their own conventions?
So I don't know if, you know, what's behind door number two, in other words, the devil you don't know is better than the devil you do know in this case.
Yeah, you know, I think the Sheer Conservatives, they're really, like painfully playing it safe.
The one thing I will say about the Sheer Conservatives is that they are at least responsive to pressure from normal conservative voters.
They have finally capitulated and allowed us into some of their events to report, which is, I mean, great.
But that was through a lot of badgering from their own voters.
I think when and if we see a sheer government, they are still going to be afflicted with that desire to be liked by the CBC, even though the CBC will never like them.
And I think until there is a real sea change with the Conservative Party of Canada, I think that's just the way it's going to be.
I think you're right.
And Sheila, one last point.
You know, the part of your commentary that made my neck hair stand up was when you talked about that British politician tweeting out that conference where the UK and Canada are going to be hosting on press freedom.
And you made the very adroit point that this is the same UK government that imprisoned Tommy Robinson for practicing journalism.
And these guys are going to do a conference on press freedom.
Wonder what that conference is going to look like, Sheila.
Oh, it's going to be a bunch of people from the BBC and the CBC patting themselves on the back.
While people like you and me get punched out at work for the crime of journalism, get banned from the United Nations.
I've been banned by the Alberta government also.
You had to fight to get into the PC conference.
We were banned by the CPC from their conference.
It's going to be a lot of mainstream media people talking about mean tweets while people like you and me and Tommy were sort of grinding it out in the streets and trying to bring people the truth.
I think you're right, Sheila.
And you know, Tommy and you and I, we should all wear those bands as a badge of honor because it simply means we're telling the truth.
We're calling them as we see them, like the umpire behind home plate, and we're not in anyone's pocket.
And if they can't handle that and they have to resort to shutting us down and shutting us up, the shame is on them, not us.
Well, good luck to them trying to shut me up.
Good luck.
Perish the thought, Sheila Gunread.
Listen, thank you so much.
And another great commentary.
Thanks, David.
Have a great weekend.
You got it.
And that was Sheila Gunread in Alberta.
Keep it here, folks.
More to come on Rebel Roundup.
What would you tell Lloyd Minster as they wait for Jason Kenney to give them their allotment to people?
All you're doing is diluting and adding to the pool of people that are looking for work.
And it's now become a situation where these people are getting preferential job placement.
They're getting preferential treatment on the job market and can actually, in some cases, work for even less because some of them are supported by partial programs.
And this makes them a better candidate to an employer than, let's say, my children or grandchildren.
It's clear that these folks don't recognize the city that their small town has turned into over the last decade.
And it's not hard to understand why.
Canadian Mortgages has Brooks, Alberta listed as one of the 10 worst places to live in Canada.
McLean's magazine has Brooks Alberta listed in their collection of Canada's most dangerous places.
It's gotten so bad that there's an easy-to-use crime map app for this small Albertan municipality.
It's clear that there's an assault problem.
It's way above the national average.
It's clear that there's a drug problem.
Look at this list of people who were arrested and charged with drug-related offenses back in 2016.
I wonder how many of these folks Jason Kenney directly had a hand in bringing to Canada and sending them to Brooks, Alberta.
This all begs the question as to why Jason Kenney, why on earth he would want to recreate the legacy of Brooks in every small town across Alberta.
Indeed, what is Jason Kenney thinking when he points to Brooks, Alberta as being a success story vis-a-vis immigration policy?
True enough, the importation of Somalis makes for a cheap source of labor for the meat packing industry there, but the cost to society would suggest this experiment has been a failure.
And yet, Kenney wants to duplicate this flawed initiative in other Alberta municipalities.
How weird is that?
Joining me now is Kian Beckstay, who recently traveled to Brooks and interviewed several residents there who are less than pleased that Kenney's vision of immigration has led to a dramatic decrease in the overall quality of life there.
Welcome to Rebel Roundup, Kian.
Thanks for having me.
You got it.
Now, Kian, those interviews you conducted in Brooks, they were very powerful.
And it's clear that Brooks is no longer the town it once was.
So, Kian, why in blue hell is Jason Kenney holding up Brooks as some sort of success story that needs to be repeated in other Albertan jurisdictions?
Kierkegaard, your guess is as good as mine, and you're right.
It's not the small town that it used to be.
It quite literally is not the small town it used to be.
It is now a city.
It used to be a town.
Now it's a city as a direct result of how many immigrants they brought in.
And, you know, the folks there were telling me it's not the fact that there's immigrants coming in.
It's fine to sprinkle immigrants throughout rural Alberta, whatever.
They integrate really well.
But the problem is this forced ghettoization where you just bring a huge community into this small town where they're not able to integrate like they would be able to in Calgary and Edmonton.
Even in those places, to be fair, they don't integrate that well sometimes.
Northeast Calgary is a ghetto by definition.
So I don't know what Jason Kenney's plan is here.
I wish that he, and I think lots of conservatives in Alberta wish that he framed this more through a lens of let's choose the people that we want to bring to Alberta.
Let's bring in the best and brightest from around the world so that we can enrich our communities rather than how he did, which just said he wants to start replacing rural Albertan labor.
It didn't make any sense to me.
And Kian, I just wanted to go back to the time in which this experiment was kicked off.
I mean, it's no secret that right now the Alberta economy is ailing.
But I'm thinking that years ago when these immigrants were first brought in, was there some sort of a labor shortage issue that they couldn't find enough, you know, homegrown Albertans to go to these meat packing jobs?
So by way of necessity, they had to import labor.
Well, yeah, that's a fair point, actually.
In Brooks, Alberta, what it is for people who don't know is there's a large portion of the economy is one business.
It's called Lakeview or Lakeside.
I can't remember the exact name of it.
Anyways, it's a meat packaging plant.
They butcher the animal, package it up, and send it on its way.
All of Alberta has a huge beef production industry and meat production industry, and this is where a lot of that meat goes to get packaged and sent to retail.
So they needed a lot of labor, and it's labor that lots of people didn't want to do necessarily because at the time, this was almost a decade ago, the oil sector was booming.
It paid a lot better than this kind of job.
And in the meat packaging plant, it's kind of rough work.
It's smelly, it's gross.
So there was a reason why they wanted to bring in this labor.
It's because lots of people didn't want to do it.
The side effect is quite clear.
10 years down the road, we've seen that crime has increased hugely.
It's listed by McLean's as one of the worst places to live in Canada.
Main Street Struggles00:03:44
And there's, for this small town, or now a city, I guess, but just barely a city, there's an app online to see where the latest crime was.
You can see there's, oh, there was a break and enter on Main Street.
Oh, on Railway Avenue, there was just an assault, just so that residents can know what's going on in their town because there's so much crime that that's what they've resorted to.
And Kian, I'm still struggling with what the unspoken reason is for Kenny saying what he did.
I mean, this is the sort of stuff I would expect to come out of the mouth of Rachel Notley.
And I think it's, you know, I mean, I would, I'd bet the house that, you know, Kenny is the next premier of Alberta when the election is called.
So that further suggests he doesn't have to do this kind of virtue signaling if that's what it is.
So again, who is he trying to please?
I don't think it's people that are part of his base.
You're right about that.
And I want to point something out.
There was after this video came out, a star, Edmonton Star reporter, her name was Nadine Youssef.
She was absolutely triggered by this report.
She couldn't believe that I went to Brooks to talk to people to hear what they had to say.
So she sat at her keyboard in Edmonton and started typing up an essay on Twitter, eight different individual tweets in this thread, talking about how it's not fair that I characterize Brooks in this way.
And it's not fair to talk about the crime app that details assaults and break and enters on Main Street.
But if you look at her tweets and who's favorited this, and I'll send it to you so you can show it on the screen, all of the people that have liked her tweet are reporters themselves with the Edmonton Star, the Globe and Mail.
It's just ridiculous.
It's a cesspool at this press gallery here in Edmonton, Alberta.
And that's who Jason Kenny's trying to please because he's terrified of the media.
He's terrified of everyone in the media.
So he wants to make sure that he appears as politically correct as possible to them so that they don't assassinate him in the newspaper.
Wow.
So shades of Andrew Scheer here, you know, going back to the conservative convention in Halifax, where for some reason we're persona, despite the fact that we have 1.2 million YouTube subscribers, most of whom are red meat conservatives.
And yet Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, CBC, as Ezra calls them, the mean girls, hey, come on in.
I want to be loved by you.
And he'll never be loved by them.
But you know, it's funny, that reporter, when she heaps that blame on you, Kian, first of all, stats are stats, right?
And you didn't make up those numbers.
Those are collected by a third party.
And secondly, it wasn't you characterizing Brooks that way.
It was the people you interviewed that actually live there.
So what is this person talking about?
You're just the messenger.
Why is she shooting you?
Because she can't stand the rebel.
But you know what?
I would invite Nadine Youssef to go to Brooks on vacation, bring her niece, bring her daughter.
She's not going to like it.
She's not going to have a good time.
But to be fair, I don't think she's ever stepped foot in that town.
Maybe she has, but I doubt it.
But it's just typical of these reporters in the mainstream media.
They Google something quickly and then write a story on it with a huge ideological lens overlaid on it rather than just going into the community and chatting with people.
And that's one of my favorite things about my job with the Rebel is that Ezra, you know, he thinks it's a great idea for me to go out and do things like this where I'm chatting with real Albertans to get their side of the story, the side of the story that the mainstream media just doesn't want everyone to hear.
No, absolutely.
It was a great report, Kian.
No Records, Big Questions00:05:29
We're going to have to wrap it here.
I guess, you know, to paraphrase the Tina Turner song, What's Love Got to Do with It?
I guess with the mainstream media and certain politicians, what do the facts have to do with it?
And if the facts aren't nice or play into their narrative, they'd rather it not be reported.
And when it is reported, you are a racist, a bigot, a xenophobe, etc., etc.
But, you know, you keep reporting how you are, Keenan.
That was a wonderful piece.
And any of our audience out there that hasn't seen it, please tune in and check it out.
Thank you again, my friend.
No problem.
Thanks for having me.
And that was Kian Bexte in Alberta.
And folks, keep it here.
More of a Rebel Roundup to come right after this.
In any event, since it is you, the taxpayer, that's paying for all of this hotel accommodation, we thought it would be interesting to find out just how much it's costing.
Well, the Justin Trudeau Liberals, despite their 2015 promises of openness and transparency, well, incredibly, they wouldn't tell us what that dollar amount is.
So we put in a formal access to information request.
Here it is.
It reads: Provide copies of any contracts or agreements with the Plaza Hotel in North York and the Radisson Toronto East for the provision of accommodation for asylum and refugee claimants since January 1, 2016 to January 29th, 2019.
And here's the answer we received.
Following a thorough search of our information holdings, I regret to inform you that no records were found that respond to your request.
What?
How can this be?
How is this even possible?
The Radisson and the Plaza are just two hotels that are now closed to the public.
The refugees staying at these properties are most certainly not paying for their rooms.
Rather, the federal government is being invoiced.
And we're being told no records exist?
How odd.
There is literally no room at the inn when it comes to the Radisson Toronto East and the Toronto Plaza Hotel.
And yet, even with a 100% occupancy rate being paid for by you, the Canadian taxpayer, no records exist?
Does that pass your sniff test, folks?
In any event, here's what some of you had to say about the Trudeau Liberals, who are yet again proving that they are about as transparent as concrete.
George Bowman writes: Taxpayer money means blank check.
Shouldn't CRA audit these businesses?
Wow, could you imagine that?
Say, does anyone want to phone the Canadian Revenue Agency Snitch Line and register a complaint and maybe a complaint against the federal government too?
I mean, untold millions are being spent on refugee accommodation, yet no records pertaining to invoices exist.
Sounds like a scam to me.
Canadian Man writes, Trudeau wants to hide the millions he stole from us to give to illegals who are living the life of luxury.
Meanwhile, real Canadians are freezing under overpasses and nearly starving, feeding on restaurant garbage bins.
Well, it is indeed a shame what's happening in our country right now, Canadian men.
But is it too much to ask that the Liberals, at the very least, provide full financial disclosure regarding the migrant motels?
Well, apparently the answer is yes, it is too much to ask.
Rodney Powell writes, I'm a retired vet and I can't afford three meals a day.
Well, Rodney, first of all, thank you for your service.
And it pains me to hear about the financial straits you are in.
But as our PM once remarked, you guys are simply asking for too much, even though there are millions of dollars in the federal kiddie to spend on people who aren't even Canadian citizens.
Shameful.
Midnight Golfer writes, It's not the crime, it's the cover-up.
Failing to fulfill FOIA requests needs to see some punishment.
Well, Midnight Golfer, you are indeed, we are indeed appealing this decision.
There has to be a paper trail somewhere.
As for the cover-up, well, as we continue to discover in terms of how the Liberals are tiptoeing around full disclosure regarding the SNC Lavalin affair, it would appear that cover-ups are a house specialty when it comes to Team Trudeau.
And Timothy Cook writes, Oh, this is good news.
Since there are no records, it must mean Mr. Trudeau has been paying the bill himself from his big trust fund.
Well, I think it would take 10 episodes of Seinfeld to make me laugh harder, Timothy.
The thing is, when it comes to the folks in Ottawa, they are world-class when it comes to spending other people's money.
But when it comes to spending their own dough, these politicians and bureaucrats throw around nickels as if they were manhole covers.
Well, that wraps up another edition of Rebel Roundup.
Thanks so much for joining us.
See you next week.
And hey, folks, never forget, without risk, there can be no glory.