Conrad Black’s The Canadian Manifesto—a 166-page "pamphleteer" work—argues Canada’s governance failures risk global influence, citing Stephen Harper’s moral leadership but criticizing his lack of military spending. He opposes Trudeau’s UN ambitions and high immigration, favoring assimilable groups over Islamist threats, while slashing non-essential taxes and proposing a self-eliminating wealth tax tied to poverty reduction. Black dismisses climate alarmism, calling the Paris Agreement fraudulent, and demands pipeline enforcement via eminent domain, mocking activist blockades like Northern Gateway’s 10% Indigenous stake. A former British legislator now leaning toward Canadian citizenship, he outlines three urgent fixes: meritocratic education, private healthcare integration, and nonviolent offender alternatives—all while framing his prison stint as a bizarrely positive detour. His sharp critique blends historical insight with populist policy, aiming to reshape Canada’s role from within. [Automatically generated summary]
I sat down with him at his house, had a great time, and we talked about other things besides his book too, including a question I asked him about his time in prison.
Anyhow, before we get to that, can you do me a favor?
Please go to the rebel.media slash shows.
That's where you can become a premium subscriber.
Doesn't that sound cool?
Premium?
Dude, that's premium.
Is that a thing the kids say?
Anyways, being a premium subscriber, it's eight bucks a month.
But not only do you get the video form of this podcast, you get access to Sheila Gunn Reed's show, David Menzie's show, and of course, you're supporting the rebel.
And we take no government money, you know.
All right, without further ado, here's Conrad Black.
You're listening to a Rebel Media Podcast.
Tonight, a special feature interview with Conrad Black about his new book, The Canadian Manifesto.
It's May 10th, 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 publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
I can't believe how prolific Conrad Black is as an author.
His last book about Donald Trump was great.
Not only is Black one of the few journalists who truly understands Trump, but he is also a personal friend of his from before his presidential days.
So it was a great review of the 45th President from someone who really knows him.
I love that book.
Well, Black has a new book out, and it's 100% Canadian this time.
It's even called The Canadian Manifesto, which sounds like a political call to arms.
Sounds like a blueprint for a movement.
I had so much fun talking with him about his Trump book.
I sat down with him to talk about this one.
Now, I only received the review copy just right before we talked.
So I hadn't gone through it in depth as much as I wanted to before our interview.
So our conversation was partly about the book and partly about life in general, including a surprising answer he gave me when I asked him about his time in prison, which I found interesting, and maybe you will too.
So without further ado, here is my interview with Conrad Black about his new book, The Canadian Manifesto.
you're interested in them you can buy it at the amazon link below thanks for taking the time to meet I have to tell you, the first thing that stood out to me about this book was how short it was.
And I was thrilled because I have your other books.
They're about this thick.
Why did you write something that was 166 pages?
Well, I've been ever since John Turner objected that I was causing arthritis holding my first my Roosevelt book, then my Nixon book, and then my history of the U.S., then my history of Canada, I've been slimming it down, and I got down to about 220 pages in my book about President Trump.
And I'm just, I'm trying to turn into a pamphleteer.
I'm great.
Then your sales go up.
Well, you know what?
It's daunting.
With this book, you could tear through it in one long sitting on the throne or something.
I mean, it's a good book.
You know, a flight from here to Montreal.
That's a nicer way to put it.
That's a nicer way to put it.
But it's called a manifesto, and I read it, and it felt a little bit like a political party's platform.
Is that what you're thinking?
Yeah, well, I give the historical background for it, and then I make some policy ideas.
So it is like a political party's platform.
All right.
Now, have you consulted with any politicians?
I mean, you're a bit of a politician yourself, even though you have no elected office.
You're weighing into...
No, I'm a legislator in another country.
There you go.
But have you bounced this off Canadians?
Did you consult with Canadian politicians?
Well, I showed it to a couple of people.
I think it would not be fair to say who, but that are elected, and they're from a bit of a range of the political spectrum.
And they made some suggestions, actually useful factual suggestions, but not particularly policy ones.
Now, the subtitle of the book is How One Frozen Country Can Save the World.
That was my publisher, Kim White, who came up with that.
It's a great line.
It's funny.
It's a little bit of un-Canadian chutzpah.
It's a little bit...
You know, Canadians are modest.
We're always sorry after you, after you.
It's a little trumpy to say we're going to save the world.
I thought the reference to Canada being frozen played into a caricature Canadians don't like because they don't like the thought of that we're living in igloos up here.
But I've got to tell you, right now it looks like we can't even save ourselves, let alone save the world.
We're a mess right now.
Foreign affairs, for example, save the world.
I think the government's not doing well.
It's still a great country, but the government's not doing well.
Well, first we've got to save ourselves before we save the world.
Yeah, this the fact is, if you get into it, as you know, the definition of saving the world is in fact making Canada sufficiently noteworthy and recognized in the world because of its level of good government if the program enunciated here is followed.
It isn't save.
We save the world by saving ourselves, so it's not as contradictory as it sounds.
You know, you broke this book into three parts.
The first is sort of a history.
Yeah.
Pointing the way.
And I'm glad you did that because you're a historian by, I'd almost say by profession.
It's what you do, I think, more than anything.
Nowadays, yes.
And it's a good reminder.
Sometimes we think, oh, we haven't done much here in Canada, but we've actually done a lot.
No, true.
We've had a very distinguished history.
And you know, we often think about the Quebec quarter of our country.
Yes.
So we've managed to do that without, as you point out, a U.S. civil war, without the Irish challenges of the U.K. Seceding.
Yeah, I mean.
After the, you know, frankly, the British almost, oh, they starved them out of their island.
You know, for all our quirks as a country, we have kept it together.
We have, and the only countries in the world with more people than Canada, larger population than Canada, that have had political institutions continuously longer, pardon me, longer than we have, are Great Britain and the United States.
And as you say, the British lost a province at the end of World War I, and the Americans, just two years before we set up Confederation, ended a terrible civil war in which three-quarters of a million people died in a population smaller than Canada is now.
Yeah, that's incredible.
Now, Canada, when I was a kid, we learned it's a middle power.
Wasn't it going to be a superpower?
But it was a middle power, and we like to punch above our weight.
Does it matter?
I mean, there are great countries that are middle powers that I don't think aspire to be to save the world.
Switzerland is an example that comes to mind.
I don't think the Swiss want to double their population and throw their weight around.
I think they're just happy beings.
No, but they've made a vocation of what they have.
As you know, it's a trilingual country, and it's between the traditional great powers of continental Europe, and it's sort of a haven country, and it's a small country, so it could never aspire to more.
So it does well at what it can do.
But you might as well say the same, you know, Luxembourg's a wonderful tax haven country.
So is Monaco.
You know, Kuwait's a good petro-state.
You know, if you only have a little country, you can't do that much with it.
I don't think we're that little.
We're certainly geographically.
No, no, no.
I'm saying we should distinguish ourselves from those others because not in disparagement of them.
The Swiss make the absolute most of what they have, and I don't think we do.
That's my point.
You know, under Stephen Harper's prime ministership, I think Canada did have a moral force in the world that was larger than our size.
On Israeli matters, yes.
And to some degree opposite Russia and China.
That's exactly what I was doing.
But you can't do much.
If that's what you're going to do, you can't do much unless you pay your way militarily.
And we didn't do it.
If we had, we could have had much more influence in NATO, I think, and in the United Nations.
Well, by contrast, our current prime minister has made such an obsession with getting on the Security Council of the United Nations, which I think is just nothing but a bauble, but a bragging point.
And in his path towards that, I think he's burnt so many of our key relationships.
But even if we were to, like, what's the point?
Like, who cares if we're giving out foreign aid to corrupt third world countries?
Who cares if we're at the front row of a corrupt institution like the UN?
Like, does it really mean that?
We should be leading the movement to reform the UN.
We were a co-founder.
We have a good reputation there.
We've earned a good reputation.
I mean, I think a lot of it's nonsense as you do, but that's not the point.
As it is now, it would absolutely horrify its founders.
And it's a primal screen therapy for the most disreputable regimes in the world.
And we are the logical people to lead the reform movement.
I want to ask you about immigration.
You talk about immigration, and you are politically incorrect enough to say we've got to watch out for Islamism.
We've got to watch out for people who would want to.
We've got to watch out for unassimilable immigrants.
Well, okay, let's talk a little bit more about that because there is no one in our Canadian political firmament right now who is saying that.
They're saying keep out security threats, but that is a very different thing from keeping out someone who does not believe in the equality of men and women, does not believe in the separation of mosque and state.
And has no ambition to assimilate to either official culture in this country.
How do you do that?
I have to say that.
Well, you've redefined your criteria.
Give me an example.
And this is a very practical issue, and I think that this is an issue where the elites are on one side and the people are on the other.
I refer to an Angus Reid poll that shows only 6% of Canadians want more immigration, 49% want less, and yet we have Justin Trudeau saying, we're going to give you more than ever.
My own view is we need more population.
So I'm not a small number of immigration people.
We want assimilable people.
Where are they going to come from?
Well, I think, believe it or not, we could get some from the United States.
I think we could get a good many from Central and Eastern Europe.
Right now, if you look at where Canadians are coming from, the new Canadians, China, Philippines, Pakistan?
I have nothing against any of those countries as long as the attitude of the applicants is the correct attitude.
Well, let's talk about Islam, and that's tough to do.
No, it's not tough for me to do it.
How do you...
I agree with you.
I mean, Chinese Canadians, Filipino-Canadians, integration, assimilation, I don't sense that's a problem.
And with most Muslims, I don't sense it's a problem.
Not a problem.
I mean, look, some of these street gangs are Vietnamese and they're dangerous.
But the Vietnamese in general are welcome here.
They're ingenious people.
Many of them speak French from the French days.
How do you deal with the Islamism?
I'm not talking about a Muslim.
I'm talking about the political ideology of Islam as being superior to the secular law of the land.
Quebec is reacting to this.
We can't have that.
Look, I don't particularly get into this in this book, but on the issue you raise, I'm happy to talk about it.
We cannot have Sharia law in this country.
I mean, look, they're perfectly entitled to the religious views like you and I are, and just as much as you and I are.
But they are not entitled to demand religious exceptions to the laws of this country.
I only mention that because when I read that you want Canada's population 50, 60 million, I thought, they're not going to come.
I mean, wouldn't it be great to get people who...
If we did it right, we'd get a lot of people from Belarus and Ukraine and Russia and so forth.
We'd get a lot.
And look, I want to be clear.
Everybody's welcome.
It's not a race thing.
It's not a religion thing.
It's an assimilability thing.
Well, okay.
I want to talk a little bit about that because high immigration is good for landlords, drives up rents.
It's good for factory owners, drives down wages.
But I'm not sure if that works in today's economy.
I'm worried we're teetering on the edge of a recession.
I guess you're thinking in broader sweepstakes.
We may achieve the utter, now we're straying from my book, but that's fine.
I mean, you're free speech prevails in my house, I reckon.
We'll get back to the book.
No, no, but we may achieve the astounding feat of having a recession in this country while the United States is having the greatest economic boom in its history.
How do we get along with the United States?
Because Stephen Harper, I think, bit his tongue and went along with Barack Obama for the good of Canada.
And I think he actually got a grudging respect in return from Obama.
It wasn't until Harper was gone that Obama nixed the Keystone XL, for example.
How does Canada stay Canadian and get along with our biggest ally and trading partners?
Oh, you can do that.
Mul Rooney did it very well.
Mr. King did it very well.
Indeed, the Americans have no desire to tell us what to do.
They don't want to meddle in this country the way Brussels meddles in the governments of the member states, because ostensibly the European Union is seeking an ever-closer union.
It's falling apart, but that's not the point.
In Brussels, they're still seeking it.
The Americans don't want to dominate us.
They just want arrangements with us that they're happy with.
That's all.
You know, there's a while there where we heard different people in Ottawa talk about changing the sun around which we orbit, replacing America with China.
Oh, please.
Well, I heard that from Catherine McKenna and Gerald Butts about, well, if America's not following the global warming scheme, maybe China is, and let's reorient towards China.
Navigating National Interests00:09:32
China is.
They're the greatest offender to it.
I know that.
I mean, they are, one, the greatest polluter in the world, and two, the head of G77, the 77 countries padding around with capped hands and begging bulls, saying, you advanced economies have to pay us conscience money.
What do you think?
I mean, the Chinese, like anyone else, if you leave the door open, they'll push the door.
So what is the best way to handle China, which is a huge market, but it's croning capitalism and it's aggressive militarily?
Look, it's 40% a command economy.
It's a semi-totalitarian state.
And it pursues not only an aggressive foreign policy, but one with certain racist overtones.
And it has to be respected as the other great power in the world next to the United States.
But the way to do it is to maintain cordial relations with those kinds of, well, maintain as cordial relations as we can with China without in any way subordinating ourselves on matters of principle or our national interest.
And keep friendly with that arc of states that is resisting the, it's not a military expansion, but the general expansion of Chinese influence in the Far East.
We're talking about Japan, Indonesia, Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, even though it's a Chinese country, and India and Australia.
They're all countries we're friendly with, and the Americans are essentially encouraging all of them not to be bullied by China.
It is a very soft and appropriately different version of the containment strategy in Western Europe in the days of the Cold War.
I'm having trouble staying focused on your book because I want to talk to you about the whole world.
Yeah, I didn't get into that.
Let's get it back to the book.
I was reading your passage about oil and gas and natural resources and pipelines.
I mean, Ontario was built by mining.
And the Atlantic fisheries.
And Canada has more oil than any country in the world other than Saudi Arabia or Venezuela.
But we've actually, for the first time in a decade, had a reduction in oil production.
No, it's a shameful thing.
What are we going to do about that?
Well, you change governments and you proclaim an imminent domain that requires the construction of pipelines east and west from Alberta.
It is an absolute scandal and an outrage that we import one drop of oil.
Okay.
And, you know, you've stopped inviting the native people to declare the whole of Canada a sacred burial ground.
There are Indian bands who support these oil pipelines.
Northern Gateway pipeline was 10% owned, the 10% set aside for Indian bands, and yet it was stopped.
I don't know if there will always be an activist.
There will always be an environmentalist who says no.
What do you do when you've got all your permits and yet activists show up to either physically block or even do some violence or God forbid ecoterrorism?
What do you do when people just say, I will not abide by the rule of law, I will stop this with my body and my violence?
What do you do?
Well, you use the military.
Is that risking another OKA?
That's what Justin Trudeau thinks.
Look, I mean, obviously you try and avoid the violence, and if there is violence, you try and ensure that it isn't fatal violence.
But the fact is, you do the necessary to ensure that the writ of the government of Canada runs throughout the country.
How many with, I mean, like you said.
I mean, otherwise, it's just a house of cards and not a government.
Vancouver, Victoria, Montreal, these cities, even Toronto, talk about a climate emergency.
Oh, bunk.
Absolutely.
Well, here's the thing.
I mean, they love oil and gas in all those cities.
No one's driving any less.
No one's driving.
There's no climate emergency in any of those cities.
There's a hypocrisy.
Look, Andrew, let's get this straight.
I mean, I touch on this in the book, so you're not off topic.
The carbon footprint of Canada and the world is a fraction of 1%, as you know.
If we had belching factories side by side from Halifax to Vancouver, it would have no impact on the world at all.
Secondly, we don't know a thing about climate change.
We know at this point the world is not, in fact, warming.
The first 15 years of this century were colder than the last 15 years of the previous century.
Who has got the courage to say that in an election campaign?
Well, certainly the President of the United States does.
Well, he's an anomaly.
about in our country we've got the you get leadership is you tell the people the facts and nobody's telling them the facts Well, I'm with you on that.
I mean, the whole thing, look, let's get this straight.
Basically, the conservation movement, which we all agreed with, I mean, I'm older than you, but years ago when we were young, it was essentially avoidance of pollution, and it consisted of birdwatchers, butterfly collectors, and the Sierra Club.
You know, Greenpeace, even though I got a little tiresome about nuclear weapons, but they just wanted a good environment.
When the international left was defeated in the Cold War, the forces of Marxism piled into the ecological movement, and in the guise of saving the planet, they've turned it into an assault on capitalism.
And it's a fraud.
What gets me?
The Paris Climate Agreement is the most outrageous fraudulent agreement in history, except for the Iranian nuclear agreement.
And they were both the work of the Obama administration, and Trump is undoing them both.
I point out that Andrew Scheer, the leader of the Conservatives, one of his first acts as leader was to whip his MPs, including his oil patch MPs, to support the Paris climate.
I don't agree with Andrew on that.
What I was getting at about these cities, Vancouver, Victoria, Toronto, Montreal, is they use oil and gas as much as anyone.
But psychologically, they say, I don't want that dirty oil from Alberta, but they're buying oil from America.
Ezra, I think you spent, I mean, it's your job, so you need to do it.
I'm not criticizing you, but you're missing the silent majority here.
The silent majority don't think like that.
Well, okay.
I mean, you used to bestride this country in your newspapers.
And I worked for the National Post when you were the proprietor of it.
And I felt like we were pushing back against that narrative, that consensus narrative.
I felt that way when I worked for the National Post 20 years ago.
That was part of my reason for founding the National Council.
But I look around and my chief complaint, but how do you stand up against the Paris Accord?
How do you stand up for pipelines?
How do you think?
Well, you just do it.
But what if 90% of the voices in the country at the discussion table are the think-alikes on the vanilla left?
Ezra, that's leadership.
In 1939, not quite 90%, but almost 90% of Americans were isolationists.
They wanted nothing to do at all with the belligerent powers in Europe.
By the middle of 1941, well before Pearl Harbor, a majority of Americans wanted to support the British and Canadians, even if it led to war, though they hoped it wouldn't.
Now, that was leadership by President Roosevelt.
At the end of the war, an overwhelming majority of Americans didn't want anything to do with keeping forces in Europe.
President Truman explained the facts, and within a year, he had a majority of support for the Marshall Plan and setting up NATO.
That's leadership.
That's what leaders do for a living.
I don't know the media landscape back then enough offhand.
But here in Canada, on the issue of global warming, even the old National Post's dissident approach is gone now.
I see pro-global warming.
The media in this country is completely hopeless, not just because of its political policy.
Most of them can't write, and most of them are slothful.
How can you be a courageous leader proposing the ideas that you do in your book when you know in advance that the Huffington Post and Vice and BuzzFeed, let alone the CBCCTV, the Globe and Mail, are going to take the mushy think-alike lefty view.
If you can't get your point of view out, how can you be a leader if no one repeats your message?
Well, no, if you're in a position of official responsibility, you can, to use Margaret Thatcher's old line, you have a direct line to the people.
And now they may comment on it.
The mushy-minded people, as you say, may comment on it and distort it and misrepresent it.
That happens.
But when Reagan referred, when he opened the Strategic Defense Initiative, you're certainly old enough to remember that.
He was ridiculed everywhere.
Star Wars, they thought he'd gone crazy and had cartoons of him as Darth Vader and everything.
Meanwhile, the country followed it, and basically that ended the Cold War.
The Russians collapsed.
Even the Soviet Union.
Yeah, I know.
Not the Russians.
Well, listen, I read your book, and it's called A Manifesto, so you got my attention.
And it was a nice short read, 160.
Wealth, Poverty, and Taxes00:08:07
No, no, but it is.
I do propose a lot of policy alternatives in different fields.
All right, go through some more of them, because I read the book quickly.
Look, on the tax side, I don't want to sound too simplistic.
These are complicated matters.
But on the tax side, I want reduced income taxes and an increased HST on non-essential spending.
Which obviously you don't raise HST on groceries bought in food stores, but you can raise it on luxury restaurant bills, you know, that kind of thing.
And in poverty reduction, I think we go to a self-eliminating wealth tax, very small percent on high wealth numbers, but the way it's paid is not just paying a tax to pay for more civil servants.
It is the wealthy people certify in the way that bona fide charities are certified methods of poverty reduction.
And as statistically defined poverty is reduced, the tax is eliminated.
So you give the wealthiest and most commercially and economically astute people in the country an incentive to help eliminate poverty, and you align exactly the interests of the poor people and the rich people.
I think we've gone as far as we can go with our well-intentioned but now over-manned and rather inefficient welfare system.
So you're saying you're calling on private individuals to solve the problem of poverty as a way to get out of their wealth tax.
Is that what you're saying?
Look, I think official action has reduced poverty a long way from where it would be.
But to finish it off, yes, the answer is.
you know, the Bible says the poor will always be with us.
Yeah, but we don't have, I agree it says that, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily true.
If you define it as, let's say, the lowest 10% of income earners, you will always have a lowest 10%, even if you're not afraid of the government.
Yeah, but they need not necessarily be in a state of poverty.
Okay.
I'm not trying to create equal levels of wealth for everybody.
I'm not a Marxist.
I think that I'm an anti-Marxist.
There's a great tradition in Canada and even stronger in America of wealthy people doing enormous charitable acts.
Indeed.
I think part of that is made possible if people are allowed to get wealthy in the first place.
course.
And also if we don't imagine for a second I'm trying to stop that.
I'm cutting income taxes in my plan.
People will get wealthier.
It's just that the tax they pay will be a slightly different tax.
I think, I mean, listen, I've never been wealthy enough to donate a hospital wing or anything like that, but I would imagine people do that partly for the pride and the joy and the feeling that I'm a community builder.
But I think there's been a demonization of wealth and the wealthy.
Bernie Sanders, that whole Alexander Ecrizio-Cortez, there's a new love for socialism and a misunderstanding of socialism and capitalism, I think, from millennials.
And I'm worried that we're demonizing.
Look at Howard Schultz, who's thinking of running as an independent force.
He's a complete jackal.
But he started with nothing.
Yeah, yeah, he's fine as a businessman, but as a politician, he's a jackal.
But some of his clips that I've seen online are startling.
He says, look, we have to keep with the American way.
It's what allowed me to go from poor to wealthy.
He's a conservative Democrat, which is basically doesn't exist anymore.
And that's my point, is that the Democrats have demonized wealth and wealthiness so bad, I'm worried that that's undermining American.
I blame some of this, and it certainly wasn't what they intended, but on these immensely wealthy people making sort of leftist gestures, like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates saying, I'm not leaving anything to my heirs.
I mean, you know, Uncle Warren padding around in his corduroys and his viola shirt and masquerading as just the friendly uncle in the old age home or something.
I mean, it's a wonderful PR for him.
And he's a brilliant man, to the very small extent I know him.
He's a very courteous, nice man, too.
A tough, tough businessman, actually.
That's how he got so wealthy.
But it sort of invites the next step to Sandersism.
Look here, these guys aren't leaving their money to anybody.
Why the hell did they make it in the first place?
And why shouldn't we take it now instead of waiting for them to die?
You know, I tell you, there's a hundred things we've talked about that I could go down deep, but I want to come back to the book.
We've talked a little bit about taxes.
We talked about oil and gas.
We've talked about immigration, my favorite subject.
Sorry, we took so much time on it.
We talked about Florida.
It's a very important subject, though.
Now, what about, I think that constitutional matters were pretty much put in the freezer during Stephen Harper's tenure.
Yes.
Western alienation was evaporated.
You had a Calgarian in 24 Sussex Drive.
Quebec was appeased.
I think because Harper was not part of an age-old feud himself, it allowed him to, that's my thing.
Look, he spoke French tolerably.
They didn't like him down there, and they didn't give him much support, but at least he spoke French tolerably well.
He recognized Quebec as a distinct society.
And separatism was a dog that did not bark.
Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't credit Harper with that.
Look at Canada now for three years of Trudeau.
I can tell you, Alberta.
Alberta has been treated outrageously.
But even I think that you see province after province turning against the hard-fisted tactics of Trudeau on the carbon tax, for example.
That's a ridiculous tax.
I mean, look, if you have to raise taxes, you have to raise them, but don't pretend you're saving the planet.
And that's why Macron has these gilet jaunts out there.
You know, the French don't like paying taxes, but they would pay it if they have to, for valid reason.
But the idea they're paying it to save the world's climate is just a load of godswallop, and I know it.
Well, let's talk about the gilet jaune, the yellow vest protests, which have been going on for almost pretty much half a year now.
Well, you can't deal with them the way Macron is.
In Canada, we have some people who put on yellow vests as a symbol of being dissident, but it's not a real move.
It's just more Canadian identity.
I mean, let them put on the pink tukes like the women who are complaining about Trump a few years ago.
But the great use of that is that it's allowed Justin Trudeau, Christy Freeland, Ahmed Husson, Ralph Goodale, all the Trudeau senior cabinet to say, ah, we have a tremendous problem in Canada with neo-Nazis, alt-right, and white supremacists.
I think that's going to be their theme going forward.
First of all, do we have a problem in Canada?
It won't fly.
You can't frighten Canadians about Canadians.
Are you sure?
I'm confident.
That one, I'm confident.
The average Canadian knows, of course, in any society, there are some crazy people, and there are some extremists, and you can't take their rights away, but you've got to watch them closely to make sure they don't do really seriously bad things.
But that Canada has a real problem, that our society is threatened by the numbers and ferocity of these people, bunk, and everyone in this country knows it's bunk.
Well, I hope you're right.
The CBC sure likes that theme.
Well, yeah, they do, but the answer to that is get better media, not change society.
Well, now you're talking my language.
Claude Wagner, you know, I supported for leader when he ran against Joe Clark, he used to quote Duplessis and say, le peupe des bon.
The people are good.
It's the elites that are not so good.
Yeah, I like that.
You take on that.
Well, that's funny because you're a lord, the House of Lords.
It's a very meritocratic house, though.
They're only a few inherited ones.
They're all life beers now.
Phone Conversations Happen00:02:52
And I think partly because of how you carry yourself, partly because of your vocabulary, and partly because, you know, media tycoons, that's a certain image.
You would normally be called fancy, but you have this populist streak to you.
You're a Trumpist, which by definition means you're sort of a blue collar.
You sympathize with the blue-collar workers in a way that I don't think most people in your station would.
How did that happen?
I always find people interesting.
Everybody has their story to tell.
I mean, when I, you know, it was an outrage.
It's widely recognized now to be an outrage.
And the last shoe hasn't dropped yet, but it will, on the legal problems I had.
You know, everybody in the media here was saying, oh, well, when he gets to an American federal prison, they'll do terrible things to him and so on.
I got on like smoke with everybody.
When the public address system announced that I was under a Supreme Court release order, 200 people wanted to accompany me to the gate.
I mean, I'm interested in people.
I mean, I am what you said.
I'm an educated person.
I'm a well-to-do man, and my father was a well-to-do man.
And I certainly know a lot of socially prominent people in various countries.
But I'm interested in everybody, not just rich people.
Well, I've seen that.
I mean, I've seen you when a 17-year-old cadet said hello, and you stopped, and you talked to him for 15 minutes about every...
I've seen you do that.
It's not just, I mean, and it's amazing.
It's a personal skill.
Can I just ask you one more question?
I've never asked you about your time in prison, and maybe you don't want to tell me, but I'm curious.
Because talk about a fish out of water.
I mean, if it weren't so grave and unjust, that would be a hell of a movie.
It had its humorous movie.
I was going to say, I mean, that's a hell of a fairy.
That's very entertaining.
Maybe it's absurd.
I mean, some of them are bad news, but I got on fine with them.
Even the dawn of the Genovese family.
Have you kept in touch with any of them?
Would any of them?
Are you serious?
Would you call any of them?
I mean, I guess you're there.
There are a few of them I phone, yeah.
Really?
And vice versa.
They phone here.
Isn't that interesting?
All right.
Well, you've been very generous with your time.
I want to talk more about it.
I'm trying to sell books.
I've got to go.
Oh, well, no.
You're very helping me out here.
I like the fact that you still love Canada and that it's called a manifesto and you want these things to happen.
Are you going to do anything to make them happen?
Are you going to have a conference?
Are you going to go on a tour, a speaking tour?
Are you going to, I mean, this book is affordable and it's on Amazon and people can get it.
Are you going to do anything to push these ideas into places where they might be acted on?
Why Books Matter00:05:38
I might.
I'll see how it goes.
I'll do what I can, Ezra.
I'll do what I can.
And if I was, if anyone in, I mean, I'm not at this stage about to hurl myself into politics, and I'm not even at this point a citizen of this country, though.
I think that'll change probably fairly soon.
But I like the situation I have in Britain, because I am a legislator, and I can speak, and it's on television.
If it's any good, it's noticed and quoted.
But here, if somebody asked me to do something that I thought I could do properly and it was interesting, I'd do it.
I mean, I'll see what I can do.
I'll do what I can and I'll see what I can do.
All right, last question.
I mean, there's a lot of things in the book.
You talk about constitutional matters.
There's a lot of things we haven't even touched on.
But if you could identify one problem in Canada that you think is soluble, like not just a wouldn't it be great if, but if there was one thing out there, a low-hanging fruit, something that you think, my God, we got to knock that off our to-do list.
What would that problem be and what would your prescription be?
So there's a lot of things in your book, but what's the one thing that's a no-brainer?
The no-brainers are not so, there are not so many of those.
I mean, if there were, in fairness, I think others would have got onto them already.
Can I just mention a couple of things?
Sure.
On the education side, I think we have to decertify the teachers' unions and institute a meritocratic system of rewarding performance, both the students and the teachers.
And occasionally this is attempted, but it's always rigged.
And we've got to stop that because we're spending as a civilization in the Western world, in almost every country, more and more and more money to get less and less well-educated people.
And we've got to reverse that trend.
The second thing I'd mention is on, I'll mention three, if I may.
We have to integrate private medicine into our health care system.
We don't have enough doctors per person, per unit of population, to get rid of waiting lists and provide efficient health care.
And we can only deal with it by bringing some level of private medicine back into the system.
And third, on the justice side, other than in the most egregious cases, we should not imprison any nonviolent first offenders.
It is nonsense.
It's just done because it's always been done.
I'm all for punishing crime, but there are much better, more efficient, more just, and less costly ways of doing it.
Interesting.
Well, listen, I'm amazed at your output.
I've got to keep up with you.
I mean, you've written more books.
If you make the book short enough, you can put them out quickly.
You've written more books than a lot of folks have read.
I like the fact that this and your Trump book, which was great, is so accessible.
And I'm grateful because, I mean, I love your thick history books.
No, but in fairness, the life of Franklin D. Roosevelt, if you're going to be serious, you can't do it in 200 pages.
He's a four-term president.
Well, I congratulate you on this new book.
And we'll send this video to our folks out there.
And I think in this country, people are, after three and a half years of Justin Trudeau, I think people are looking for someone who loves Canada, who's maybe studied Canada a little bit and knows our history and has done some serious thinking about the future.
I want to say I personally like Justin Trudeau.
I think he's a very genuinely nice man and smarter than his detractors say, but I do not think he's had a successful government, unfortunately.
It's been a disaster.
Well, it's great to see you.
Congratulations on the new book.
And we look forward to your next book as well.
I mean, and for me, I think the test will be, can your ideas in the manifesto, which suggests action, can they take root in this country?
I hope they will.
Thanks so much, Ezra.
Well, what did you think of that very interesting character?
I tell you, he's a polymath.
He's interested in so many different things.
I wish I had had a little more time to go through the review copy, which I just got that day, so my questions would have been more specific to his book.
But I hope you enjoyed our conversation nonetheless.
And if you want to buy his book, and I think we should support conservative authors, I tell you, the best of the list is jammed with liberal books.
When a conservative actually writes a book, I think we should support it.
So please consider going to the Amazon link below this video to buy a copy for yourself.
What's so great is that Conrad Black, he makes these big thick history books, but this is just 166 pages.
Like you could really read it quickly.
I like this new briefer, Conrad Black.
I think it's going to sell a lot of copies, by the way.