A father in Canada faces contempt charges for calling his 14-year-old daughter "a girl" after she transitioned, with Justice Marzari banning discussions despite anonymity—raising concerns about judicial bias tied to West Coast LEAF. Meanwhile, Alberta’s new cabinet, led by pipeline advocate Sonia Savage and Grant Hunter (from Tabor Warner), signals a pro-business shift, cutting red tape like Doug Ford’s Ontario approach, though skepticism lingers over Hunter’s goals. Critics warn of Mark Cameron’s carbon tax past, while former NDP critic Grant Sprague returns as energy deputy, exposing $3B climate policy risks. The episode ties these cases to broader political hypocrisy: Trudeau’s "imposter" persona, CBC’s alleged Liberal bias, and his family’s flood relief snubs, suggesting Canada’s legal and media systems increasingly favor ideological enforcement over fairness. [Automatically generated summary]
I got to tell you, I first read about this in a U.S. website and I almost didn't believe it because I thought this is crazy.
It's happening in my own country of Canada, yet I'm reading about it on a small website in America.
Can this be true?
Well, indeed, it is true, and I found it reported in a Canadian source that a man, a dad, has been ordered by a court to call his 14-year-old daughter, who he brought into the world and named, has been ordered by the court to call his 14-year-old daughter a boy and to call his 14-year-old daughter by a boy's name that she has chosen.
And if he doesn't do so, he will be in contempt of court and he will be, quote, committing family violence.
I know you don't believe a word of what I'm saying, so let me just get straight to it and you can see my evidence for it.
I would encourage you before I go to please consider becoming a premium subscriber to Rebel makes a difference here.
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And you get access to other shows by Sheila Gunread and David Menzies.
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Okay, here's today's show.
Tonight, Jordan Peterson was right.
It's literally against the law now to call a girl a girl if she says she's a boy.
It's May 1st, 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.
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I'm publishing it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
It's been a couple of years now since Jordan Peterson, the University of Toronto professor, took a stand against politically correct censorship.
If you recall, it was Peterson's worry that he could be compelled to call people by pronouns that they just weren't in reality.
Now, I know that sentence I just said would make no sense at all to anyone in the world as recently as five years ago, but it basically means that whole pronouns business.
It means if a man says you have to call him her and you didn't want to bend yourself to that command, Peterson was worried that new laws could make that an illegal hate crime, could make it punishable under various human rights laws that protect gender identity and gender expression.
Two more phrases that would have been unintelligible until just a few years ago and are frankly unintelligible today, but we all go along with it now as some sort of vocabulary that we use to show how fashionable we are, how with it.
Let me show you what I mean in case all these buzzwords, this academic gobbledygook makes no sense to you.
I'm talking about this.
Give me my f ⁇ ing money back.
Excuse me, sir.
There's a young man in here.
Excuse me, it's ma'am.
It is ma'am.
I can call the piece if you'd like me to.
You need to settle down.
You need to settle down and mind your business.
Okay.
Ma'am.
Once again, ma'am.
I said both of you.
No, you said sir.
Once again, it's ma'am.
I actually said both of you guys.
Right beforehand, you f ⁇ ing said sir!
Sir?
Motherfing!
Take it outside!
If you want to call me sir again, I will show you, sir!
I apologize.
Motherf ⁇ .
I apologize now.
I need your corporate number because we're going to call them and talk about how it's misgendered several times in his store.
I apologize for that.
I need your corporate number now.
Get it for me now.
I'm going to ask you to calm down and stop cussing.
Get me a corporate number.
Well, I'm going to ask you for the fifth time to stop calling me a man because quite clearly I am not.
That's what I mean.
He had a violent tantrum.
Now he knocked some stuff over later as he stormed out, I should tell you.
Now that's unacceptable, and he was very rude, but I think we can all admit that it's one very troubled human being.
And it's sad as much as angering, and I think he was very rude to the store clerk who was trying to be friendly.
But Peterson wasn't worried about violence so much.
He was worried, and he was called alarmist for worrying, about the fact that the government, the state, could in fact compel you to use pronouns that you just don't believe in, calling he a she, ma'am.
Legal Battle Over Pronouns00:13:14
We can all have our own opinions.
And actually, Peterson has said that in some cases he would call a man she if it was appropriate, out of courtesy or deference, just, you know, if he chose to do so.
As that clerk in that video game store was actually trying to be nice, by the way.
But it's the compulsion by the government that Peterson found objectionable, as indeed I think we all should find it objectionable.
I think there are other areas of society where this is a battle too.
I think it's atrocious that men are dominating women's sports just by, quote, identifying as women.
That's pretty much the antithesis of the word sport.
It's not a sport.
If a man beats a woman at wrestling or sprinting, it's pretty much the opposite of sportsmanship.
It's cheating, actually.
But the threat Peterson was reacting to was the long arm of the law.
Well, what do you know?
A court, a court of law in British Columbia, and I mean a real court, not a kangaroo court from the Human Rights Commission, a real court of law has literally ordered a BC father to stop calling his daughter a girl.
The court has ordered that the BC dad call his daughter a boy, because she says she's a boy.
I'm not kidding.
Here's a story.
I've seen it reported in a few places.
I'm going to read it from post-media because how the media itself is covering this story is as much a scandal as the story itself, I think.
Legal dispute between trans child and father takes new turn over freedom of expression.
That's a pretty straightforward headline.
That's the fairest thing about this story.
But let me read it a bit, and you'll immediately notice something funny here.
Ready?
A messy legal dispute between a 14-year-old transgender boy and his father, who rejects the child's gender identity, has expanded into a fight over freedom of expression.
Okay, just to remind you, it's a girl.
It's a young teenage girl who says she's a boy, but she is a girl.
That's a true-false thing.
That's a matter of fact.
It's not an opinion thing.
She was born a girl.
When she arrived in the world 14 years ago, the doctor said, congratulations, it's a girl.
Her birth certificate says she's a girl.
Her anatomy is that of a girl.
Her DNA, if you get right down to the chromosomes, she's a girl.
Now, she can want to be a boy.
She can think it's cool to say she wants to be a boy.
She can be confused.
She can even go on drugs, which is exactly what actual doctors are doing these days to confuse teenagers now.
Hormones, in some cases, doing irreversible damage to their bodies.
In the past, it was just called being a teenager.
Having a tough time with yourself, maybe.
Who knows?
Maybe you're gay and wrestling with that.
I don't know.
Maybe you just have a lot of hormones coursing through your body that you didn't have before.
Like I say, you're a teenager now, and it's tough.
But my point is post-media, which says it reports the news, by which it means it tells you the facts, and that this is a news report, not an opinion column.
Post-media is calling this girl a boy.
It's just doing it.
It's just assuming that's how it is.
Out of what?
Is that science?
Is that political fashion?
Or is it out of fear of government prosecution like Professor Peterson predicted?
Well, let me read some more.
In a recent decision, a BC Supreme Court judge ordered the father to stop publicly discussing the case after finding some of his actions, including interviews with conservative media outlets, those are the worst, aren't they, the conservative media outlets, exposed his child to significant harm and constituted family violence.
Family violence?
I know what violence means, and family violence, well, I'm not sure if I know that as a specific term of art.
It's pretty plain in its meaning.
It sounds like someone, frankly, who beats their wife or kids.
It could be even worse, family violence.
I know some colorful characters in the world.
One or two of them have been in bar fights.
One or two of them have even been in jail.
But when you say a man is violent, family violence, though, that is a low, low place.
Frankly, it implies someone who perhaps even abused his own children in some morally repugnant way.
Those are the kind of people that when you put them in a prison with the general population, well, the other prisoners beat him up because he's beneath their own criminal moral code.
You tell me someone has been found by a court to have been in a bar fight.
I'd say he should grow up.
He should stop going to bars.
He should control his temper.
You tell me someone has been found to be engaging in family violence, I immediately have a bit of a hatred for that person morally, who would be violent to their own family, for God's sakes.
Well, except that he wasn't.
That's just the odious term in this outrageous, outrageous BC court decision.
Again, a real judge, not a Human Rights Commission, kangaroo court, fake judge, but a real judge said he's family violent because the dad called his daughter a girl and won't get with the new way of thinking and talking that post-media is down with.
Now, of course, when the government takes note of violence, when the law, when the courts, when the cops, not a real cop, a court, makes a finding of fact and deems someone to be violent, well, of course, they must act on that.
Now, since the father obviously has not hit his daughter, and the crime is obviously a thought crime, an idea crime, not an actual violent crime, well, since it's a word crime, the punishment should fit the crime, and so it is.
He's been banned from talking about his daughter in public, banned from calling her a girl, banned from even saying it.
I wonder if they tried to ban him from thinking it.
It's really all that's left.
Get a load of this.
This is horrific.
I'm going to quote here.
The case started last year as a clash between child autonomy and parental rights after undergoing multiple evaluations from a psychologist and staff at BC Children's Hospital.
The boy, with the support of his mother and health professionals, wanted to proceed with hormone therapy to help transition from a female body to a male one.
You know the motto of doctors going back millennia.
I mean, going back to Greek times.
You know it's do no harm, right?
Have you ever heard that, the Hippocratic oath?
Do no harm.
So you've got a confused 14-year-old who I guess this probably started a year ago when I was 13.
That's okay.
You know, it's okay to be confused.
Who wasn't confused at age 14?
But it sure looks like she was weaponized here by people with an agenda.
Multiple consultations, eh?
Were they examining her or convincing her?
You know, this is what terrifies families, parents, about these secret gay straight alliances in high school.
When I was in high school, there was never officially sanctioned sex clubs, sexuality clubs, run by an adult teacher and coach where all the goings-on were kept secret from parents.
I can only imagine what's said and done in those child sexuality clubs led by an adult, probably one with an agenda.
Well, here you've got a 14-year-old who is literally going on drugs now to change who she is after consultations.
Hey, look, why not just give the gal a few years to figure things out?
Maybe she's gay, by the way.
Why are you trying to change her into a boy?
You can't, by the way.
Maybe she's just a tomboy.
The very fact that the father is now legally banned from even challenging this, querying this, disagreeing with this, shows that this is so obviously a political move.
If it were a healthcare decision, you can debate healthcare decisions, but the fact that the prescription here, the remedy, including a judge sewing the dad's mouth shut, tells us the whole thing is politics.
Politics using this girl as a weapon.
How bitterly, terribly sad.
I'll read some more.
In February, the boy, I love that, who is in grade nine, sought an order from the court recognizing that it was in his best interest to undergo treatment for gender dysphoria and that he had the capacity to consent to such treatment.
Yeah.
Again, the reporter calls her a boy.
I'm sorry, I won't, even if I'm ordered by a court to say it, I just won't say the moon is made out of cheese.
I won't believe you if you tell me you're actually the king of Spain.
I'm sorry, I have freedom of conscience and thought and believe, and I have the right to tell you you're full of it, whether I tell you gently because you're my confused 14-year-old girl who's obviously stressed out by a family divorce and pressured by activists, or whether you're a doctor doing literal human experiments on your patients, or whether you're a court telling me I can or can't say things.
Sorry, I'm still free, or I'll die trying to be.
Listen to this, I'll read some more.
BC Supreme Court Justice Gregory Bowdoin subsequently granted the request, including that there should not be any further delays to treatment.
So they're talking about the treatment now.
That's what they call turning a girl into a boy with drugs.
Citing the boy's risk of suicide.
Yeah, pumper full of drugs.
That'll reduce the suicide risk.
Bowdoin also went on to declare that any attempts to persuade the boy to abandon treatment, addressing the boy by his birth name.
Can you imagine that?
Addressing the boy by his birth name, as in calling her the name she was given, or referring to the boy as a girl, or with female pronouns, shall be considered family violence.
Really?
So it's okay for strangers to persuade the girl she's not a girl, but not for her dad who actually loves her, helped to make her.
It's against law for him to try and persuade her of anything, even to call her by her legal name.
The dad can't even talk to his daughter anymore without the state's intervention.
He can't call the girl the name he gave her when she was born.
It's like a forbidden word.
He literally is not allowed to call the girl by her legal name, the name he gave her when she was born.
The government says so, the government.
This is Stalinist stuff.
This is Maoist stuff.
So the dad is obviously frustrated.
Who wouldn't be frustrated, beyond frustrated, wouldn't you be?
What a Kafka-esque world.
Let me read this one last passage.
The father argued his public commentary was essential to society and his rights as a parent.
He said the case has turned into a dispute, not with his child, but with activists who wanted to take away his rights.
That seems obvious to me.
Those arguments didn't fly with BC Supreme Court Justice Francesca Marzari.
Even though the father kept his child's identity anonymous in his public comments, his conduct still put the child at high risk of exposure, violence, bullying, and harassment, the judge found.
Yeah, either that or a girl turning into a boy.
Maybe that is what is the antenna here.
Let me read some more.
Marzari noted that the father's public sharing of information about the case had exposed the child to degrading and violent public commentary and that the father was essentially using his child to promote his own interests above those of the child.
Again, the fake use of the word violent, violent public commentary.
Well, which is it, violence or commentary?
Because those are two different things.
What does it even mean?
Promoting his interests over the child?
Unlike those consultants and busybodies, eh?
Look, all he cares about is the child.
I think he cares about the child, maybe even a tiny bit more than the judge does.
Who is this?
There's two judges here.
There's Bowdoin, and there's this Francesca Marzari.
Who's she?
I'm going to quote her boastful biography.
They published this when Justin Trudeau put her on the court two years ago.
Her longtime involvement with West Coast Leaf, that's a feminist legal action group, began as a law student, although her commitment to the intersection of feminism and the law may well have begun at birth.
Leaf is that feminist pressure group.
Let me read some more.
Justice Marzari will be bringing to her courtroom the experience of being a mother of young children, a daughter of the culture wars of the 1960s.
They weren't wrong on that, were they?
You know, there are many injustices in the world.
I talk about them every day.
But if I'm honest, most of the world's injustices are abstract in my real life.
I hate watching this video here.
This is what's going on in Venezuela.
We showed you this recently, the killing of innocent civilians by the Maduro regime.
I hate this.
This really bothers me.
It stresses me out.
But you know, in real life, I'm only offended in my mind.
It actually isn't affecting my life in any way.
I don't know anyone in Venezuela.
I have no connection there.
If it's bothering me, I can just turn off the TV if I like.
I mean, I'm upset for things beyond my reach, but I can turn it off.
But imagine having a crisis in your own home, your own house, with your own family, your own daughter, your own blood, and having strangers and mad scientist doctors turning your 14-year-old girl into a boy with injections.
By the way, more than 50% of trans people who go through that hormone therapy later attempt to commit suicide.
It's actually higher if you pump them full of drugs.
Imagine This Is Happening To You00:05:22
That's the highest risk.
This is not helping that girl.
This is not helping.
Imagine this is happening to you.
Forget about what's going on in Venezuela far away.
This is happening to you, your life.
You're outraged, but you're helpless and there's a pawn and a divorce going on and the child is stressed.
You ask for help, you call for help, no help comes.
In fact, when the state comes, when the system comes, it's against you.
And not only will they not give you what you want, but they tell you you can't ask for it anymore.
If you say a word, you're against the law.
And then the government itself, the courts themselves, say you can't talk about it.
You can't even call your dear daughter a girl, or you'll risk contempt of court.
You'll risk jail.
That's what happens if you defy a court order.
Jail would happen for calling your 14-year-old daughter a girl.
Jail.
Jordan Peterson was right.
And I'm not sure if I recognize Canada, at least this small corner.
Do you?
Stay with us for more.
Well, the British Columbia government is rushing to court on an emergency basis demanding an injunction of sorts against the province of Alberta.
Jason Kenney contemplating legislation that would turn off the taps of oil and gas to British Columbia, as he and others around him joke.
I suppose Kenny himself hasn't said it, but the joke is if BC wants to get carbon neutral by 2050, well, we could help him do that by 2020.
But what's so incredible is the legal arguments being put before the courts to derail Kenny's plans.
And joining us now to describe those arguments and the delicious irony of them is our friend Lauren Gunter, senior columnist with the Edmondson Sun.
Lauren, great to see you again.
We were just joking before we turned the camera on of the chutzpah.
You know, one of the jokey definitions of chutzpah is, and it's a little bit dark, it's someone who murders their parents and then asks the judge for mercy because he's an orphan now.
I think that kind of chutzpah applies to the BC government running to court.
Tell our viewers, what's their argument for why they say a court should stop Jason Kenney from turning off the taps to BC?
So the day that the Alberta cabinet was sworn in, the new Alberta cabinet was sworn in, and then immediately proclaimed the turn off the taps law, the BC government went into apoplexy and rushed to court and said, you can't do this because the Constitution prevents you from restricting the flow of refined goods across provincial boundaries.
Well, it works for refined goods.
It also works for unrefined goods.
There is nothing in the Constitution that separates refined from unrefined.
And the argument that the BC government is making is it can be used against them just as readily, that they are blocking the interprovincial trade of goods, bitumen coming down a pipeline.
And so I think this is hilarious.
I say, let them make this argument because it's just going to be fun to watch it then turned around and used on them.
Yeah, well, it'll be a test on whether or not just how political our courts are.
I've learned from my observations of any political case is that judges will find a way to finesse the outcome that they want and they'll give it legal backing up.
They can, yeah.
They can.
I mean, it is a bit of chutzpah for BC to say don't turn off the taps because John Horgan, the premier, is panicked that that would cause the price of gasoline that's already around two bucks to go even higher on the Alberta.
Go ahead.
It was $1.80 there on April 30th.
And the estimate from a person I talked to inside the Alberta government is because we supply them with 55 to 70 percent of their gasoline and diesel in BC, the price would go to at minimum 220 and probably as high as close to $3.
And yes, over time, they could arrange for some trains to bring in more from the states or more trucks to bring it in.
But for two, four, six weeks, it would be really, really tight in BC.
And earlier, when they brought a court application against the turn off the taps bill, so the NDP introduced it last year, passed it last year, but didn't proclaim it.
And in that process, BC went to court then.
And some of the documents they provided then said there would be civil unrest in BC if Alberta turned.
Great.
Let's have a little civil unrest.
I believe it.
You know, it reminds me of during the Jimmy Carter era, or I guess in the 73 oil shocks, and then there was another oil shock later in the late 70s.
Gas stations ran out.
They were rationing because they only had a certain amount of gallons of gas down there.
And you know what?
It couldn't happen to nicer people.
British Columbians' Carbon Conundrum00:08:57
Now, I love British Columbians.
I love Vancouver, especially wonderful people.
But they're going along with this whole shtick that they're morally superior and that they're greener than the rest of us.
Well, okay, let's get you to carbon-free right away.
You guys want to sue the fossil fuel companies, which they're talking about?
Hey, no need for a trial.
You guys are right.
We should totally get rid of carbon dioxide and fossil fuels starting not 20 years from now.
Let's start 20 days, 20 minutes from now.
Hey guys, you've got the only bicycling weather in the country anyways, so break out the old bike.
Enjoy this gorgeous spring in Vancouver.
A couple of other examples of BC's hypocrisy.
Of course, probably sometime next year, maybe in 2021, Victoria will stop dumping millions of liters of raw sewage into the Pacific Ocean.
But at the moment, they do that, you know, and they don't really like to be reminded of that.
But Vancouver is the largest port for U.S. coal exports on the West Coast.
It's larger than Long Beach.
It's larger than San Francisco or Portland or Seattle.
It is the largest port on the West Coast for American coal.
And it's largely soft coal.
So it's the dirtiest kind of coal that there is.
And as those tens of millions of tons come across the line from the United States to the port of Vancouver, they are charged no carbon tax.
So, you know, here you have the BC government is quite happy to have that going on, but it doesn't want bitumen.
It's quite happy to have liquid natural gas go along the same tanker routes as our bitumen supplies because LNG is theirs.
Bitumen is ours.
Over and over and over again, they have been hypocritical on this issue.
I'm glad you reminded me of the coal.
From time to time, I like to visit White Rock, which is south of Vancouver.
It's a beautiful little community right on the water, nice boardwalk, fish and ships, ice cream.
But every half hour, a huge train, one of an American train, I forget, Burnington National, BNSF, the huge, huge American train comes up from the States.
You can't hear as it passes through White Rock.
The whole town shuts down for a minute, every half hour.
And it's just going up to that special coal terminal that's nothing but coal.
And I got nothing against it.
I'm just saying it's a bit of, like I say, chutzpah for the people who love the most carbon-intensive fuel in the world.
And by the way, I'm totally pro-coal, but it's a bit of chutzpah for those folks to say we don't want your oil and gas.
I mean, that's my point.
I don't say stop the coal shipments.
I didn't even say charge the coal shipments a carbon tax.
I don't think they should be charging carbon taxes, period, on anything.
So I would just like to see the BC government treat Alberta bitumen and oil with the same welcoming arms that they treat American coal.
You know, I'm not sure how much time you ever spend down there, but White Rock that I mentioned is so close to the U.S. border.
There's something called the Peace Arch, which it's right there.
I mean, White Rock, you can see into America.
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
And so many Canadians drive down to Bellingham to the Costco there, fill up their car with gas.
You save 30, 40 bucks for making a 15, 20 minute journey into the States.
So if Canada cut off Vancouver, two things would happen.
Everyone would go to the States to fill up, but you would be punishing ordinary British Columbians, which I'm averse to doing.
I don't want to hang the sins of John Horgan and the political class around the necks of every British Columbia, most of whom are normal people, aren't even political.
But what it would do is like a splash of cold water to the face.
It would shake you awake.
And I don't, I mean, Lord, I don't want to hurt ordinary British Columbians.
I don't think ordinary British Columbians are the problem.
But if you were to slap that province with 30 days of cold water in the face on this issue, you know what it would do?
It would just stop them from playing that card again.
It would stop them.
And you know what it would also do?
It's always, so you just got your carbon tax green shift.
Trudeau, Catherine McKenna, Stefan Dion 10 years ago used to say, tax bad behavior, punish carbon, stop making pollution-free.
So punish people so they do less of it.
Well, you jack up the price of gas to three, four bucks because you cut it off.
Okay, that's what the carbon tax was supposed to do.
Oh, you guys don't like it?
So you've undermined the entire premise of the carbon tax.
I'm all for a 30-day performance art political social experiment called Let the Vancouverites Get to Know Their Bikes Again.
Yeah, exactly.
And, you know, I remember one time someone from Reason magazine, which is a libertarian magazine in the United States, went to cover a meeting of the Sierra Club.
And the first thing that he was struck by was the number of full-sized SUVs in the parking lot that had been driven there by directors.
So there they were, you know, they're going to tell you all about how you should live your life, but they were not living it the same way.
And that to me is a lot of what's happening on the West Coast: you have all these people who think they want to stop climate change, who think that carbon emissions are wrong, but they don't have a unified idea of what that means.
It doesn't mean higher taxes for them.
It doesn't mean inconvenience in their lives.
It would have to for it to be real, but it doesn't mean any of those things to them.
They'll pick and choose which of the things they don't want to see and then feel really smug and self-righteous.
Yeah.
And I think they're building a special jet fuel pipeline just for that airport.
I love the Vancouver Airport.
In my mind, not only is it beautiful and convenient, but it's the gateway to so much of the world.
When I think Vancouver Airport, I think something exciting.
You're going to Asia, you're doing something, you're going down to LA.
I mean, they wouldn't live without that airport for 10 minutes.
They all are hooked on it.
Well, what do you think jet fuel is other than one of the most carbon-intensive fuels there is?
I think they need a bit of an attitude readjustment.
I hope they can get it without us cutting off the supply.
I really do.
I hope that there's some good sense that overtakes the government because thousands of British Columbians who really have stopped hating Alberta oil and stopped hating the pipeline now need to phone their BCM LAs and tell them, look, let's get this over with before it comes to a shutoff.
But I'm glad that Jason Kenney, as his first act as premier, proclaimed the Turn Off the Taps Act because it has certainly awakened the British Columbia government.
Yeah, you know, there's so many things to talk about, but would you permit me another anecdote that comes to mind?
Bill Whittle, the very thoughtful American YouTuber, he had a thought experiment.
I don't think he meant it for real, but it was such a useful thought experiment.
He said, wouldn't it be something if every year, or even frankly, just once in your life, you had to go three days without industrial luxuries.
Three days without electricity, three days where you had to make your own fire, make your own shelter, get your own food.
Not long enough that you'd really starve or even die of thirst, but long enough that you would realize what a miracle it is.
And you can Google it really quickly.
It's a wonderful thought experiment about how we're so isolated from how things work.
I like to joke that people, you ask people, well, where does electricity come from?
They say, duh, from the plug in the wall.
Where does food come from?
Duh, the freezer.
No, but before that, duh, the grocery store.
That's where food.
And people are so disconnected from where their high industrial lifestyle, especially in Vancouver, which is such a leading-edge city, they don't realize it comes from mining and forestry and oil and gas and steel.
And they should know it because in the center of that city is the mighty port.
Yeah, you've got that coal terminal off to the side, but all throughout you see the tankers and the freighters and stuff coming in.
They should know.
They should see by looking at their gleaming towers the heavy industry.
But let them live without their luxuries for three days and they'd never complain about capitalism again.
Yeah, no, I think that's absolutely right.
And there just is this disconnect.
And the grocery store is the one I use all the time between what we do, how we live, and what sustains that.
And, you know, it's like Quebecer's and equalization payments.
They survive.
They have cheap daycare and cheap tuition at universities because of equalization payments.
Reducing Red Tape00:09:22
And then they scoff and scorn and say, no, no, we're not going to take your oil in a pipeline.
Where do you think the money comes from?
Yeah.
Well, Lauren, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the new Kenny cabinet, but I don't think we have time.
And I know your time is precious.
I'm always grateful that you give us so much of it.
But I do want to talk just for a minute.
And if I had to choose all the different cabinet positions, we've got Sonia Savage, who's the energy minister, just absolutely brilliant choice.
She was fighting the anti-pipeline activists for years at a pipeline.
She knows that file, a tremendous mastery of it.
There's some really great picks there, but can I focus on just one?
And I think it's because I've never heard of this before, but there is a minister for red tape reduction.
He's from Tabor Warner, which is about as right-wing as you get in the world.
Do you know Grant Hunter?
I think you were saying before we turned on the camera that you're familiar with him.
What can you tell us about Grant Hunter, the minister for red tape?
He's a very solid guy, very down-to-earth, old wild roser.
And he just doesn't, he won't take any prisoners.
They're going to find ways to speed up the approval for new wells that you want to drill.
They're going to find ways to cut down on all of the inspections that you're going to need, many of which are redundant and some of which are probably unnecessary when you're starting a new business.
You need a permit, you're going to get it.
And that change in mentality more than anything else.
His task is to reduce red tape by a third.
I'm not sure he's going to be able to do that.
But just the idea that red tape is in the way and we acknowledge that and we want to be business friendly is going to be a huge change from the outgoing government.
And even a huge change from, say, the Redford Tories who were in before the NDP.
You know, here in Ontario, Doug Ford has taken a red tape reduction approach and he makes little micro-announcements that are so small.
But if you actually listen to him, like he says, okay, truckers no longer have to do this, this, and this.
And like he'll eliminate 10 little things and this will save a million and that'll save 5 million.
Like we're not talking billions, but you just say, really?
We were forcing truckers to do those 22 things all the time just because?
And I'm sure every one of them had some rationale, but altogether, it's like scraping barnacles off a ship.
You can't believe how many they were on it.
I think those little things is going to make the difference.
It just reduces the irritation level.
And then people comply with what's left.
But they feel like you're on their side, that you're making it easier for them to do business so they do more business.
Yeah.
You know, I think that's part of Trump's effect is that he hasn't done everything he said he would do, but you know, at the very least, things won't get worse.
At the very least, he won't try and put your coal plant out of business.
He won't try and shut down your drilling.
Maybe he'll actually help you, but the war on industry is over.
And I think it's the same with Doug Ford.
I don't know if he's actually going to achieve things, but you know he's not against you now.
And it's the same with Jason Kenney.
I think it's going to be a very interesting time here in Alberta.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, thanks for your time and your views.
Another time, we'll have to go through more of the very interesting list of cabinet.
I'm sure that they'll start weighing in right away.
Let me throw one more question.
Let me steal one more question from you.
I believe that the first 100 days are so important for Kenny and his team to show not only that they have a plan and are ready to go, but that they meant it, not only to keep the promise, but to put their opponents on the back foot so that their opponents don't know, don't have time to, even their opponents within the bureaucracy still.
I think they've got to do more in the next 100 days, then frankly, they've got to start more in the next 100 days than in the rest of their term combined, if they're serious about winning.
That's my own view.
Maybe I'm just saying the obvious.
And I think then they have to stick with their plan.
As they get closer and closer to the next election, there's, of course, going to be the same voices that we heard in this election wailing and moaning and crying about how awful the Kenny government has been.
And there's always a temptation among politicians to listen to their opponents more than to the voices in their own heads or to their own friends.
And they just have to resist that.
I think Jason's very good at that, frankly, as he's very good not listening to the chattering classes and to the opposition.
But yeah, it's very important.
But day one, they've got BC on their hindfoot.
So that's pretty good.
That's a good point.
We've got to keep an eye peeled for his appointments, too.
I think that Jason Kenney needs a loyal opposition, so to speak, that he's not going to get from the NDP on the left.
He's not going to get from the CBC on the left.
I see, for example, my old colleague, Mark Cameron, being appointed by Kenny.
Mark Cameron has spent the last half decade being a carbon tax advocate.
I'm concerned about that.
I know the CBC won't complain.
I know the NDP won't complain.
So I believe it's up to Alberta patriots like you and conservative activists like us to say things, to criticize in good faith where the other guys won't.
So I mean, I've already done that.
On the other side for Mark Cameron, and Mark Cameron's a decent guy, but he got caught up in that whole consumption taxes.
Carbon taxes are better than income taxes thing.
We'll watch Mark Cameron.
But on the other side, Kenny has brought back a guy named Grant Sprague as the Deputy Minister of Energy.
Now, Grant was a very good deputy minister of energy.
He warned the New Democrats that their climate leadership plan would kick in all of these power purchase agreements, would force all these big utilities to return the contracts, and that would cost the taxpayers, it'd end up costing taxpayers about $3 billion.
And he warned them about that, and they wouldn't listen to him, and they pushed him aside.
And he was on Kenny's transition team, and he's now back in as deputy minister of energy, which means somebody who understands the energy industry is now the deputy minister again.
Okay, well, that's good news.
We've got to watch these things, Lauren, because you know the CBC won't.
Great to see you, my friend.
Thanks for giving us so much of your time as you always do.
You bet.
All right, take care.
That's Lauren Gunder from the Edmonton Sun.
I appreciate his point of view.
Stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
Hey, welcome back on my monologue yesterday about the latest in the SNC-Lavalon scandal.
Peter writes, wow, if the CBC is reporting on SNC illegally donating to the Liberal Party, the Trudeau-loving CBC, then Trudeau is really in trouble.
Yeah, I mean, I think this is the first negative story they've written about Justin Trudeau ever.
Now, let me limit that a little bit by saying they didn't link it to Trudeau.
They note that most of the donations predated Trudeau, but still, I'm sure there were some screaming phone calls being shouted down the phone from the PMO to CBC headquarters.
I think you're right.
Stephen writes, Elections Canada, like every other institution, is liberal and will do whatever it takes to suppress the bad.
Yeah, that's quite amazing.
You know that Rachel Notley's handpick election commissioner in Alberta, Notley's gone, but the commissioner's still there, is prosecuting us in a whole manner of ways because we put up a billboard, which is our right to do so as journalists.
So that's prosecuted.
But thousands and of illegal donations, not only not prosecuted, kept secret.
Yeah.
Michael writes, do you notice that when Trudeau was demeaning the people of the fundraiser, that everyone in the room found it funny, speaks volumes of the mentality of the crowd.
I did notice that.
They were all in on it.
But the joke's also on them.
It's super gross that they were in on his abuse of the Grassy Narrows activists.
But they're in on that.
You're right.
But what does he say?
He talked about we're helping the middle class reconciliate.
Like he just started playing his old meshes tracks.
And he said, thank you for your donation.
What's funny about that, so there's several layers of note here, but one is when he was done that speech and started going through the crowd, do you doubt he said those exact same words to his friends?
Thank you for your donation to the Liberal Party.
You know, yes, we're going to work on the middle class.
Yes, like, so what he said as an insult with a sneer is no different from what he says to the people he likes because the whole thing's a con.
As his ex-boyfriend Paul Wells says, he's an imposter.
On the Trudeau family filling sandbags, because that's what you do when you've got a six-year-old.
You take him to a crisis flood zone to fill sandbags because he's going to be more help than harm.
Kathleen writes, it was the height of sexist discrimination that young Ela Grace was not helping fill sandbags.
Trudeau's Photo Op Dilemma00:00:34
It's 2019.
Doesn't JT know that 10-year-old girls are just as capable of doing manual labor as their 11 and 5-year-old brothers.
You are right.
Come on, it's 2019.
I think the girl probably said, yeah, dad, I'm going to go do kid stuff and you go do your photo op stuff.
I think she had common sense.
And of course, yes, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, she doesn't do anything that yucky.
She's probably on the phone to the Aga Khan's princess daughter now trying to get some more free stuff.
That's our show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rubber World Headquarters, good night.