Ezra Levant skewers Catherine McKenna’s drunken "global warming fairy" confession and Canada’s recycling fiasco, where 69 containers of garbage—including diapers—sparked a "garbage war" with the Philippines. Her carbon tax push clashes with public skepticism (47% doubt its urgency) and provincial resistance, mirroring Australia’s recent repeal after anti-tax wins. Levant contrasts her elite-driven consensus with conservative leaders like Jason Kenney, who reject carbon taxes amid evidence of public backlash, and praises "Ethical Oil" over forced "Freedom Gas" branding as a more credible energy narrative. [Automatically generated summary]
I've got a funny, shouty, tragic, weepy, drunk, story-free today.
And you know that I could only be, when I say the word drunk, you're thinking, well, that's Seamus O'Regan.
No, I'm talking about Catherine McKenna, the environment minister who has had a terrible week.
She was in a Newfoundland bar drinking and she thought she would do some drunk tweeting.
Don't do that.
If you're drunk, don't drunk dial an X. Don't do it.
Don't do it.
You may be lonely.
Don't do it.
And don't drunk tweet from a bar.
Don't do it.
She did it.
But she taught that.
She went further.
That's what my show is about today.
Hey, before I get out of the way, can you do me a favor and go to the Rebel.media slash shows and become a premium member?
I know I ask every time.
It's $8 a month or $80 for the year.
You get the video.
You've got to see these videos.
I show you videos of ships.
I show you videos of foreign presidents.
I show you videos of a shouty, drunken sorority girl named Climate Barber.
You've got to see the videos.
And to do that, you've got to be a premium subscriber.
Go to the Rebel.media slash shows, become a premium subscriber, and see the video version of it.
All right.
Here's today's episode.
Tonight, Catherine McKenna's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week.
It's May 31st, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer I know?
Shouty, Drunken Sorority Girl00:12:28
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
It's been a tough go lately for Catherine McKenna, Canada's shouty minister of, and this makes me laugh, she's the minister of environment and climate change.
Or as she says with a straight face, she's the minister in charge of the weather.
This is what she tweeted once.
It's just, it's starting to snow just in time for the parade as the minister responsible for weather.
I'm either a hero or a zero.
Depends how you feel about winter.
Imagine the vanity, the narcissism, the detachment from reality.
Imagine the enablers around her.
Imagine her echo chamber.
Imagine the bizarre world in which she lives if she actually believes that she's in charge of the weather, that she's responsible for the weather, and that people treat her as they should based on what they think of the weather because she's the one who, you know, ministered it.
So she's responsible for it.
Imagine thinking that.
Imagine saying that.
Imagine having a staff of 24 people who work on her Twitter communications, 24.
And not one of them said, boss, sorry to be a fly in the ointment, but that tweet's a little bit off.
It's a little bit self-centered.
It's a little bit, how do we say that?
A little bit unscientist, a little bit, you know, crazy.
Not one of them said that.
This is a picture of the equally hapless gender quota cabinet minister, Christy Freeland, with her cracked team of Christia's angels who got absolutely taken to the cleaners in the NAFTA negotiations with Trump.
Look at them.
Not one of them has even negotiated a house purchase in their life, let alone negotiating the largest trade deal in our history.
They got smoked.
Now, I haven't seen a picture of McKenna's team of know-nothings.
I'm sure they look like that, but with a little bit more hemp and open-toed sandals and lots of soy milk and just sort of bongs and stuff.
Just a quick note about Freeland before I get back to McKenna.
Did you hear what U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said when he visited Canada yesterday?
Here, take a listen.
As talks progressed, and we talked in Lima, Peru during the Summit of the Americas last year, I saw your determination, your determination to drive a hard bargain for Canada, just as President Trump was driving a hard bargain for the United States of America.
Yeah.
You know, that's what the winner of any negotiation says to a loser.
It's a winner of any, you know, the winner of any game says to the loser, you sure played well.
I mean, not well enough to beat me.
It's what you say to make someone feel better.
You know, when I was a student, I was just thinking of this.
I was, you know, 25 years ago, I was flipping through the TV channels, and for a moment, I just stopped on a little documentary on Oprah Winfrey.
And for some reason, a part of it always stuck with me.
I don't really care about Oprah, but this part.
She was telling the story of how it was time to renew her contract.
She was just an employee of some media company.
And she said that she was visiting the company office, and three different people in the same visit complimented her on how good her lawyer was.
As in the people she was negotiating against, the people she was supposed to be taking to the cleaners, they all told her how much they liked her lawyer, how much they liked her agent.
So she knew she had to fire her agent, because if someone is complimenting your agent, that's a way of saying you're being taken for a ride.
That's what Mike Pence just did to Canada.
Hey, guys, you know, Justin Trudeau and Christia Freeland and her crack team of Christia's angels, they're very, very good negotiators.
Boy, did you guys ever take Donald Trump, the lifelong property developer and financier in Manhattan, perhaps the most vicious industry in America?
Boy, did your team of millennials ever tune him up?
Oh, you guys, don't ever switch away from Trudeau and Freeland.
No, no, you guys, you Canadians want to keep them.
Take it from me and Donald Trump.
Yeah, McKenna is the same way, but on the global warming file.
If you listen to her rationale of why we need a carbon tax, if you actually listen to it, and unfortunately I do, she often says it's not going to achieve anything other than to set an example for other countries.
An example.
As in, maybe if we tax our own people enough and shut down our own industries and make Canada uncompetitive, that maybe Donald Trump's America or Xi Jinping's China will say, hey, those Canadians are being such good sports, pricing themselves on the market, shutting down their industries.
Let's do the same.
My God, we're run by a group of suckers, aren't we?
Anyway, back to McKenna and her terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad week.
She's had a tough COVID lately as voters in province after province have kicked out governments that supported Trudeau's carbon tax and have voted in governments that vigorously oppose that carbon tax.
The latest, of course, being Jason Kenney in Alberta, but Doug Ford before that in a big one.
And even the Atlantic provinces, they hate carbon taxes so much that they break out of their eternal liberal rut to vote conservative, which they rarely do.
I think you can see the stress of it in McKenna.
A couple months ago, when the carbon tax court battles started heating up, the lawsuits by the provinces were piling up, and Trudeau's own mask slipped, revealing himself to be a user and abuser of women, especially Aboriginal women, like Jody Wilson Raybold, and the whole Sunnyways mask slipped.
Trudeau himself had a desperate manic, like this is manic rally to show the troops.
He was still in command.
Trudeau himself looked unhinged.
Remember this?
Great to see you all!
How you all doing tonight?
Are there any liberals in the house?
Let's hear it first off for two amazing leaders in our caucus, Julie DeBruce and Catherine McKenna.
Holy cow.
I think that's what cocaine looks like.
Is that ever uncomfortable?
Well, that same manic rally, as you know, Catherine McKenna just cracked.
Remember this?
So let's talk about climate change for a second.
Who believes it's real?
Who believes in science?
We got a report last year that said we have 12 years to take serious climate action.
We are all in this together.
We need to act.
And just remember last year.
Who remembers last summer?
Who remembers the extreme heat that we felt last summer?
Who remembers that people literally died of extreme heat?
I've called people, I've called mothers in British Columbia where there were forest fires.
Remember those forest fires?
And guess what?
They were scared for their kids to go outside because the air quality was so bad.
She was claiming that naturally occurring fires and fires started by arson were because of the global warming fairy.
Yeah, no, but it's her safe place.
Just like Trudeau goes to his safe place, his message track, when he's stressed out, who is a liberal?
I'm at a liberal rally.
Are there any, like that grin?
Are there any liberals here at the Liberal Rally?
Yeah, boss, we're actually all liberals here at the Liberal Rally.
He just, that's not even a grin.
That's like, am I smiling naturally?
I'm fine.
That's what he looked like.
Can we play that clip one more time?
That was so insane that is anyone here a liberal?
Great to see you all.
How you all doing tonight?
Are there any liberals in the house?
Let's hear it first off for two amazing leaders in our caucus, Julie DeBruce and Catherine McKenna.
You know what?
I mean, just get that guy a tranquilizer.
Bring him down.
He's just flying too high.
But he goes to his safe place.
He just says goofy things when he's under extreme stress.
Like, remember those Aboriginal protesters from Grassy Narrows when they crashed a fancy like $1,600 a head cocktail reception he had in Toronto?
He just put on that same rictus grin, that fake grin.
I'm really smiling, you guys.
And he went to his happy place.
Thank you for your donation.
Thank you for your donation.
That's just, he started saying it.
Remember that?
Thank you for being here tonight.
Thank you.
People that rally here are suffering from Mercury Foy.
Thank you.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you very much for your donation tonight.
I really appreciate the donation to the Liberal Party of Canada.
And as we know, the Liberal Party is filled with different perspectives and different opinions, and we respect them all.
And our commitment to reconciliation continues to be strong and committed.
And we will continue to engage.
Thank you, sir, for your donation to the Liberal Party of Canada.
I really appreciate you being here tonight.
Thank you for being here.
That is why we are moving forward on reconciliation in a real and tangible way.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you for being here tonight.
Thank you for highlighting how important reconciliation is.
Thank you for being here tonight, sir.
Thank you very much for your donation to the Liberal Party.
Now, at least Trudeau was not screaming there.
He managed to bring himself under control a bit more, but not McKenna.
She still shouts in question period.
I think she just went nuts the other day.
Remember this?
Speaker, if you're like the party opposite, you're worried about you're worried about costs.
You should be worried about the cost that we are passing on to our kids, the cost of climate change.
We have got an emergency here, and the party opposite is not telling the truth to Canadians.
We are paying.
We've gone from $400 billion a year to over $2 billion, to $400 million to $2 billion because of the cost of climate change.
Why don't they step up?
Why don't they step up for climate action?
Why don't step up to the economy of the future and stop misleading Canadians?
Can I show you something?
Can I show you that same clip now?
The same answer, but with the sound off?
No sound.
Just look at the scowl.
Look at the rage.
Look at the stress.
Look at the finger pointing.
Look at the haranguing.
Without the sound, that's what the world sees.
Angry, shrill, nagging, shouting.
The opposite of Sunnyways.
A little bit manic, a little bit desperate, a little bit stressed.
The opposite of the word appealing.
The Liberals are behind in the polls.
Her party's going to lose office if this keeps up.
Donald Trump laughs at the whole global warming nonsense.
He's drilling and pumping and mining energy, even coal.
He loves saying fossil fuels.
He's got placards that say Trump digs coal for heaven's sakes.
He mocks the UN.
It's great.
So no one is hanging out with Catherine McKenna and Trudeau and their global warming delusions except other exceedingly unpopular globalists like Emmanuel Macron at France, who is at about 23% of the polls, and he has street riots against the carbon tax called the yellow vest.
Liberals Behind in Polls00:06:37
Everything's going wrong for Catherine McKenna.
Maybe that's when you slow down a bit, you have fewer cycles, you just do less and you calm down and you step away from the Twitter machine a bit.
But nope.
Did you see this?
We showed you this the other day.
She went to a bar and she got drunk and she started shouting and she admitted she just shouts and repeats things because she thinks people will believe her if she shouts and repeats things enough.
Here I am at Christian's Pub in St. John's, and you won't believe who I have here.
Mark Kritsh here and I've gotten Chef Gucke and I got screened shit.
So really amazing.
But the funny thing is, so you think like it's amazing, you got screened shit and you hear all these facts about Newfoundland.
And what the hell are they doing now?
They're fighting about the facts about Newfoundland.
And did they really get them right?
So what's the discussion now, boys?
What we were talking about is St. John's the oldest city in North America.
And there's some debate about that.
He was saying that it could be Missouri.
Well, we firmly believe it is because there's nobody from Missouri here.
But you know, I actually gave him some real advice.
I said that if you actually say it louder, we've learned in the House of Commons.
If you repeat it, if you say it louder, if that is your talking point, people will totally believe it.
Yeah, that's pretty bad.
You're not a 19-year-old sorority girl anymore.
I mean, the drunk part alone, don't do that.
I mean, you're closing in on 50.
Go to a bar, sure, have a drink.
I mean, sure, get a little tipsy, whatever, as long as someone's there to make sure you get home okay.
But to have a video team with you, to have your videographer there to film you getting drunk, to edit the video and make it a public broadcast on purpose, and to leave in the obvious drunkenness and that weird confession about how she just yells fake news till people buy it.
That is weird.
And again, no one in her 24-person communication staff had the courage to say, um, don't.
Well, that video was trounced online.
Oh my God.
Editorials were written about it in paper newspapers.
That's how bad it was.
It was proof, that little confession there, that the government's not only unserious and that McKenna is unserious, but that even they don't believe their own lines.
They just shout it till other people do.
It's showing that there's no there there.
They know it's fake, that we all knew it's fake.
Anyone who jet sets around the world full-time obviously doesn't believe energy use is a problem.
They're just saying it's a problem for reasons like taxing people or destroying an entire industry in the conservative part of the country or whatever.
So she deleted that video.
I noticed that she recorded it with Mark Critsch, the top liberal at the CBC government comedy show called 22 Minutes.
You could sort of see him cringe when she was all shouty and sweary.
He took the energy down, tried to really calm things down, didn't help.
Anyways, CBC obviously helped make this problem by going and taking her out to drink.
So the CBC sort of helped fix it, I guess.
But it was really bad judgment, really weird.
So the CBC, they helped fix this meltdown.
They ran another interview with McKenna, but in French for some reason, on French CBC, to help her mop up that mess that she made in English.
I didn't even get that.
Anyways, watch this that appeared on CBC French.
I recommend pulling one plastic bag over your head and tying it around your neck.
Couldn't put a value on that.
Mais alors c'est horrible.
Et c'est pas seulement horrible pour moi, parce que moi j'ai des enfants, j'ai trois enfants.
Si ils voyaient ça...
Les militants de la droite l'avaient déjà surnommée la Barbie du climat.
I just would like a commitment that you will not call me names.
Les attaques se sont intensifiées en plein débat sur la tarification du carbone.
Il y a des gens qui détestent vraiment l'action sur les changements climatiques, mais aussi détestent les femmes.
Alors ça vient, c'est vraiment étrange, mais il y a une connexion.
So in case you didn't understand that, Manic McKenna was replaced by almost crying depressed McKenna because she found a tweet somewhere on the internet that was mean to her.
I don't know.
I mean, there must be millions of tweets and comments about every Canadian politician.
The key is to, you know, be a grown-up and ignore them.
Or if you really want to rebut them.
Or, you know, how about just do some real work instead of being on Twitter?
But she went on the CBC to tearfully say it's hate and it's a threat to her.
She loves being a tough woman who can compete with the guys.
But when it actually gets tough, she plays the I'm a little girl card.
Stop being mean to me.
I mean, you wouldn't be mean to a girl, would you?
Just a girl.
Margaret Thatcher and Deera Gandhi, Golden Meher, They would never do Benazir, Buto, Corazona, Kino, think of the great women leaders in really tough places.
They would never do that.
But McKenna does.
That fake crime and saying that our own Sheila Gunread, you recognize Sheila there, must be sexist.
Yeah, because Sheila came up with the nickname Climate Barbie.
So pitiful and lame.
So that's been the really, really bad week for Catherine McKenna.
But the week, well, it's not quite over, is it?
It's still Friday, still Friday night, right?
So technically, the week's not over yet.
So how would the master communicator, Catherine McKenna, how would the master strategist top all that?
How do you top a drunk sorority video in a pub?
How do you top that rant about shouting fake news till people believe it?
How do you top the stop being mean to me because I'm just a girl video?
Duterte's Garbage Misunderstanding00:15:19
How do you top that?
Well, you got to bring in the big guns.
You need maybe even some help from a foreign country.
How about the Philippines?
Some background.
Canada's recycling is mainly fake, of course.
Most recycling is just dumped in the landfill or burned.
It's just busy work for virtue signalers and to keep government workers busy.
Only metal makes sense to recycle from a net energy use or a net resources point of view.
It's more harmful to the environment from a resources or energy point of view to try to recycle plastic or paper than it is just to throw it out.
As in, it takes more resources, it takes more energy to recycle those things than just to make new ones.
So it's actually bad for the environment if you care about those sorts of things.
That's why Canada doesn't actually recycle, for example, our plastic.
We just ship it to China, which pretends to recycle it, but they just bury it or dump it in the sea.
I mean, do you really think that when you sort your garbage into three, four, five bins, I swear I've seen five bin garbage cans.
Do you really think that they're not just all mixed together and buried?
I mean, seriously, do you really think that?
Anyways, for some reason, dozens of huge cargo containers of Canadian garbage of the grossest variety.
I don't want to gross you out, but including like used adult diapers, sorry to say it.
For some reason, in the name of recycling, that was shipped to the Philippines.
Why?
Do we hate them or something?
They're great people.
Why are we being mean to them?
And something went wrong.
I won't get into it.
It's not even important, but they didn't want our trash.
They just didn't want our super gross trash.
And it became a really, really, I mean, imagine the fermentation.
Whoo, whoa, Petri dish.
But there's 69 of those huge containers.
This became a toxic international diplomatic incident.
Watch the president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, express his frustration at great length.
The second one, Mr. President, is the field help.
We will declare war against them.
We can't do that.
I will take it back.
I will take it back.
If you take it back to the ship, load the containers to a ship and advise the island.
I will advise Canada that your garbage is On uh on the on the way.
Prepare a grand reception.
Eat it if you want to.
65 years, uh 18 earthquakes, so uh the cargo prepare your and celebrate because your garbage is coming home.
Now the headlines were funny.
Duterte, you heard the word.
He said he's declaring a garbage war.
He used the word war.
He's declaring a garbage war in Canada.
Now the guy next to him was sort of smiling because he sort of Trump-like that way.
But look, from his point of view, we started the garbage war.
We shipped our garbage to them.
Who does that?
Well, we do because we like to pretend that we're super duper clean and environmental when really we're just outsourcing our worst garbage to the poorest countries of the world.
But out of sight, out of mind, right?
That Duterte, he's a little bit grumpy and a little bit trumpy.
And there was some banter there, but I think he meant it.
He really wanted that stinking, rotting garbage out of his country.
He wanted Trudeau to take it back, and he was frustrated it wasn't coming back.
And yes, it's hard to believe.
I know you can't even believe it, but Freeland's Angels, Christie's Angel, bungled that one too.
What's the list now?
What are the countries that don't even talk to us anymore?
China, India, Saudi Arabia, Philippines, Australia.
I mean, has he not screwed anything up?
How can the Philippines declare garbage war on you?
That takes some skill.
So finally today, the garbage, 69 Hayuge containers of it, was loaded on a ship to be sent back to Canada.
I mean, talk about environmentalism.
Ship your garbage to a depot by truck, then ship it to Vancouver by train, then put it on a freighter and sail it to the Philippines, store it for a few months just so it just ripe.
And now do the whole thing again in reverse.
Put it back on a ship, sail to Vancouver.
I mean, that is some well-traveled garbage.
That's your modern environmental movement right there.
So the Philippines, you could say they won that garbage war, didn't they?
Now their foreign minister, Teddy Loxon Jr., and you got it.
Look at his Twitter account, Teddy Boy Loxon.
I like the guy already, just from his name.
He was laughing and mocking us all day, tweeting, look at that, Babe-bye, as we say it.
He just, I mean, he's a little bit better at Twitter than Catherine McKenna, and he doesn't do drunk sorority girl.
I love you, man.
I really love you guys.
He doesn't do that on Twitter.
He doesn't get drunk on Twitter.
And you saw Duterte.
He was saying that we Canadians can eat the garbage for all he cares.
We can welcome it in a celebration, he says.
He has disdain for us, not for you and me, but for Trudeau and Christy Freeland and Christie's angels.
So he said, prepare your celebration, your garbage coming back.
What idiot would want that garbage, right?
I mean, what idiot would celebrate the arrival of the garbage, like Duterte said?
Well, I think I know just the kind of idiot who would.
Look at this tweet.
This is real.
This is real people.
Anchors away.
Hey, guys.
The containers of garbage have departed the Philippines and will arrive in Canada in four weeks, where the waste will be turned into energy that will power homes in British Columbia.
Oh my God.
She's excited.
She's happy.
She's boasting.
So burning adult diapers is going to power our homes in Canada, will it?
We're going to turn garbage into energy.
Is that really what's going to happen?
This weirdo, by the way, is banning ships that would export ethical oil from Canada to Asia, but she is giddy about welcoming ships bringing toxic garbage back to Canada.
She's excited.
She is what Duterte mocked us for being.
He meant it as an insult.
She is that person.
It reminds me when Christy Freeland thought that China mocking Justin Trudeau was like a sign of praise.
Remember that?
We're quite proud.
The Prime Minister has been given a fond nickname in China.
He is called Tudo, which I believe means potato.
And he is, I can't say the Chinese word, it's Xian, Tudo, little potato, because his father, Pierre Elliott Tudo, was senior potato.
So we feel we are off to a great start.
We feel we're off to a great start.
No, sister, that wasn't a compliment.
I think someone had better just send a memo to Catherine McKenna that when Duterte said you can eat the garbage, he didn't really mean it.
Catherine McKenna is the most gap-prone cabinet minister in Ottawa, and my favorite part of it is she just won't stop.
Stay with us for more on this lovely lady.
What is it that Canadians or these premiers are not hearing here?
Because it seems to me that it's not that difficult to all be on the same page about climate.
Is it just your methods?
Is it your strategy?
Is it the way you communicate it?
What do you figure it is?
I think us conservative politicians don't understand the science behind climate change, which shows that we need to do more.
Nor do they understand the huge economic opportunity.
If you take the case of Alberta, I mean, it's interesting because you have here Jason Kenney saying free to pollute, but at the same time, the same energy companies that he says he wants to defend are saying put a price on pollution because they recognize in Alberta they need to have a serious climate plan if they're going to get the resources to market.
And the economy of the future doesn't look like the economy of the past, but you've got Jason Kenney, you've got Doug Ford, and you've got Andrew Scheer who want to take us back to the time of Stephen Harper.
They don't seem to think climate change is a serious threat.
And meanwhile, we have forest fires already in Alberta that are a major concern to people's livelihood, to their lives.
Well, that's Catherine McKenna with a tapestry of all of her talking points together in one mishmash like that.
That's quite something, but to me, the favorite point was, hey, CTV, there's forest fires already and Jason Kenney hasn't even repealed the carbon tax yet.
It's going to happen in a few hours.
The forest fairies are mad.
They're lashing out.
And to say that she is the party of science, oh my God.
Catherine McKenna is the gift that keeps on giving, joining us now from Edmonton to talk about it.
Our friend Lauren Gunters, senior columnist with the Edmonton Sun.
Now, I don't know, maybe I misheard or misinterpreted what she was saying, but I felt like she was blaming the annual wildfires of Alberta, which have been going on since time immemorial.
I felt like she was blaming them, and especially their timing, on the fact that Jason Kenning was elected like this is some Tolkien forest where the forests are, where the trees are saying, We must rise up against, you know, it felt so pagan, and yet she's the one invoking science.
Well, I won't say you're wrong about that.
I think probably what she's doing is simply regurgitating the point that politicized climate scientists make that the forest fire season is getting earlier and earlier every year because of climate change.
It doesn't matter.
Both of them are unscientific, whether she thinks that Mother Forest is angry with us because we've gotten rid of the carbon tax or that this is incontrovertible proof yet again of climate change.
There's two or three things she said that just make my eyes roll.
One is, well, I don't think conservative politicians understand the science.
I think they understand it better than she does because it's easy to regurgitate the mainstream scientific idea that climate change is already upon us.
It's man-made.
It's irreversible.
It's going to be horrible and damaging.
It's another thing to try and understand to take out the natural shift in climate and climate from what might be or might not be man-made and how serious is it?
And what are the things we need?
That's much better.
And I think more conservative politicians understand that because it's not easy to go to a cocktail party and stand there swirling your Prosecco and say, well, I don't really believe that the climate is that.
So you have to be able to defend that.
I think they understand that better.
The other thing that she said is, well, Jason Kenney has to understand that he needs a climate plan if he's going to get his goods to market.
Yeah, what have we been doing the last four years under Rachel Notley and Justin Trudeau?
And how is that working out?
Like, you know, we got the carbon tax, we got the coal shutdown, we have all sorts of new regulations on the environment in Alberta.
And every time we conceded, every time we caved in something to the environmentalists, they just upped the stakes.
They moved the goalposts.
They changed what they claimed would satisfy them.
So this is just horse hockey, if you want, that we just continue following the same useless path we followed for four years, and somehow it's all going to work out.
Yeah.
Can I, you just made me think of something because I just went through what I regard, a bit of a rehearsing or reminding our viewers of how Catherine McKenna has gotten more and more shouty and strident really in the last three months.
I think she's just going back to those same talking points and as she, I don't know if it was jokingly or drunkenly said in the bar in St. John's, just keep saying it louder and louder and they'll finally believe you.
I thought that was a, you know, a revealed truth that she wasn't supposed to say.
Let me tell you something that I remember because it was so stark to me.
And Lauren, you tell me if you remember this too.
When Patrick Brown was defenestrated from the Ontario PC party and Doug Ford ran with a very heavy-duty anti-carbon tax campaign platform, and the other candidates sort of felt obliged to match him on that.
And so all of a sudden, the unanimity on the issue was gone.
I was shocked and I was surprised and fascinated by how upset Gerald Butts, Justin Trudeau's former right-hand man, was at that.
He was very upset that the Ontario PCs were no longer a party of the carbon tax.
And I thought to myself, well, hang on.
If you really think that you're right and they are now wrong, you should delight in this.
Unanimity Lost00:12:05
If you really think that the carbon tax is popular, you should delight in this.
He was protesting.
And here's why.
And let me put this theory to you, and I'd like your response to him.
When every single fancy person says, oh, yes, of course the carbon tax, and there's no reasonable alternative politician or journalistic outpost saying, no, no, the carbon tax is terrible.
People who in their bones know it's wrong feel, well, I guess I have to resign myself that it's going to happen because I guess I'm the only one who thinks this way.
But in the last six, 12 months, province after province has come out against it.
Jason Kenney is now repealing it.
Australia's federal election turned in part over the carbon tax.
The anti-carbon tax guys won.
And that's what Gerald Butts was afraid of, is that these ridiculous, childish, shallow talking points by Catherine McKenna, they're enough when there's no dissent.
But when people say, yeah, I don't believe that BS either, she just has to shout louder.
It doesn't work.
That's why it's so important to the other side on climate change that the science is settled.
Oh, because no one intelligent would ever possibly disagree.
There's no settled science.
Science is never settled.
And it's certainly not on this issue.
I mean, the number one climate change site on the internet in the entire world is called Watts, Watts, W-A-T-T-S.
Watts up with that.
It's run by a guy named Andrew Watts, and it has attracted all sorts of terrific scientists who don't agree and who discuss all the new climate news that comes out.
It's well worth finding it on the internet.
And it will instantly, you spend an hour on that site and you'll understand that there isn't settled science on this, that the people who say they're settled science have a political objective, not a scientific objective, but a political objective.
And that's exactly what you're talking about.
If we can convince the public that the science is settled, our political side wins if you are a climate change alarmist.
And so that's why they say over and over and over again that the science is settled and it's not settled.
And so it is important that premiers stand up who disagree with the climate, with the carbon tax and say they disagree with it.
Even if they do believe largely that climate change is man-made and it's coming and it's dangerous, they may think that the carbon tax is not the way to deal with it.
So it's very important that they say that.
I actually take great comfort from the fact that in poll after poll after poll, slightly under half of North Americans are convinced that climate change isn't really a serious problem.
And after 25 years of continuous propaganda being bashed over the head with this, it still doesn't jive with what they feel in their bones or what they understand from their own personal experience.
And so I do think that you're quite right.
People like Butts want very much to keep this tight lid on because they understand that there's an awful lot of people out there who are quite skeptical.
And if they let the lid off, then their whole consensus, their whole political plan falls down.
You see this on a bunch of issues.
This is why populism is a rising force in Western politics in North America and in Western Europe, because the elites have for too long insisted on certain consensuses which are starting to fall apart.
In England, it's Brexit.
In Western Europe, it's immigration.
Oh, no, no, no.
No matter how many refugees pour in, flood in, it's just all positive.
And if you say it's not positive, you must be a racist.
And no, there's no Islamic extremism.
If you say so, you're an Islamophobe.
If you think that there isn't climate change, oh, then you're a denier.
On and on and on.
There are all of these elite consensuses that are slowly starting to irritate ordinary people.
Free trade is all good for working people.
There's an interesting part in Stephen Harper's new book on populism where he talks about, you know, free trade.
We on the right said free trade was perfect good.
And it is in theory.
But he said what Trump understood that most conservative politicians did not was it displaced an awful lot of ordinary voters.
And those people were never properly dealt with by the people, the proponents of free trade.
So it's all of these things.
It's climate change.
It's free trade.
It's immigration and a whole bunch of other issues where there's these, as you say, people like Butts who want to keep the lid on things because if they let the lid off, if they acknowledge that they might not be 100% right, then they lose the political agenda.
You know, you remind me of a story we covered the other day.
I don't know if you caught it.
It was a leak of the Ontario caucus of the federal liberals to the CBC.
Now, normally when the Liberal Party leaks something to the CBC, they want it to get out.
But this felt like a real leak.
And I say that, Lauren, because of what was in it.
This was a lengthy survey of Ontario Liberal MPs.
And they said, hey, can we stop talking about how great this carbon tax is?
And they said that for them, it wasn't even in the top list of issues to campaign on.
I think it was number seven.
I'm going from memory.
Climate change numbers.
Yeah, it was low down.
And they said the number one issue that people would spontaneously raise with them was actually immigration.
So that goes to your point, is that if we're all constantly told 97% of people, scientists agree, everyone agrees, there's no debate.
Oh, well, I guess I better go along with it.
But as soon as people say, oh, someone else doesn't agree, and there's someone else, and a whole election, then a premier, then we can start to say, yeah, the emperor has no clothes.
We're very social creatures.
There's the madness of crowds.
Everybody's going this way.
I better go with them.
If dissent breaks out, there's no telling where it'll lead.
And there still is an inherent respect for institutions.
I've been a skeptic so long that I don't have much respect left for right, left, center, doesn't matter what it is.
I'm always dubious of whatever people who are in charge try and tell me.
But there are still a lot of people who say, well, you know, if scientists think that this is a real problem, maybe we should listen.
I don't have time to investigate it on my own.
So, well, I best trust the people who make a living out of doing it.
And that's how it happens.
It certainly has some herd mentality involved in it.
There's the safety and numbers thing as well.
But there's also this idea, well, I'm working so hard.
I'm trying to take care of the kids.
We're keeping the house going.
We're planning our holiday.
We've got soccer to get to.
Got to get dinner on the table.
If the people who make a living or spend their lives examining this say that there's a problem with the climate, geez, I better believe them.
Yeah, yeah.
You're right.
And that's why it's disappointing sometimes when leaders, political leaders who do know better, who have the time to investigate, say, well, I'm worried about being name-called.
I'm worried about being put on the uncool list.
I'm worried about being marginalized.
So I will knowingly go along with it just to avoid the hassle of it.
That's a different, like if a severely normal person who has to trust someone because they're a real person, I get it.
But if you're supposed to be a public policy expert, a researcher, political leader, there's no excuse for you other than cowardice.
Now, maybe discretion is the better part of valor, but these days, especially in Alberta, which has suffered so much from this mania, we need people to stand up.
Now, Jason Kenney, you know, repeal the carbon tax.
I don't care what your rationale is.
That's happening.
But I do think that we need Conservatives to challenge the science.
It's hard to do, but I think once one person does it, others will follow.
Last word to you, Lauren.
Do you think that the carbon tax will be repealed in Canada the same way it actually was repealed a few years back in Australia?
I think if the Conservatives win, it'll be repealed.
I am not yet so confident of Andrew Scheer as a master campaigner that I think he's going to defeat Justin Trudeau in October.
But if he wins and if he pushes hard enough on this, he could win.
The Australian Liberal National Coalition, which is their right-of-center party, wasn't expected to win.
Nobody predicted them to win.
Talkingheads and the pollsters all had Labor winning.
And they had as their number one issue the prevention of the return of the carbon tax, and they won.
So I think Scheer can just hammer on that and hammer on that and hammer on a couple of other things, and he might win.
A surprising victory.
You know, but you're right to be nervous about him, either his campaigning skills, and also, because he was Speaker of the House for almost 10 years, he's a compromiser by nature, a fight avoider by nature.
I'm nervous about it, but although I have my disagreements with him, he would be a vast improvement over Trudeau, and I think it's incredibly important that he wins.
He's a nice guy.
He's a smart guy.
I'm not sure he's got the royal jelly.
That's my concern.
Well, at this point, anyone but Trudeau, well, I don't want to say anyone because then you have Jenny singer Elizabeth.
Remote-controlled traffic cone.
Lauren, great to see you again.
Thanks very much.
Okay, you've got to.
Okay, there you go.
Our friend Lauren Gunter, senior columnist at the Edmonton Sun, he's got some great columns going on these days.
He's got one on this very subject, and Catherine McKenna, and he also has one on the Philippines garbage fiasco.
Stay with us.
My final comments are next.
Hey, welcome back on my interview with fellow McAleer, Peter.
Peter writes, I have the God's Nell DVD, and I love it.
I'm on the edge of tears all the way through because I know the story and how it ends.
God bless you, Phelm.
You are a force for good.
In an age of deception, truth becomes revolutionary.
I really like Phelm because he doesn't recoil from controversy.
He runs to it.
And I think if we all did that, we'd be a lot more successful.
I think the left is used to people cowering and caving in.
They don't really know what to do about a guy like Phelm, who not only fights back, but tries to turn their attacks on him into an opportunity.
I think if he does it right, and he's done it right in the past, he can turn this censorship by this theater into more PR.
I mean, nothing sells a play like the fact that it's being banned.
We're going to send our reporter Kian Becksy down there, so we'll show you what it's like.
Nathan writes, you might find that the doctrine of repeal, all acts of a legislature, is actually precedented in more modern times than the ancient Romans.
The Recissory Act of 1661.
I believe that this is what Kenny should do.
Also, there should be a referendum as to whether Notley gets a Premier's portrait as well.
You know what, Nathan?
I did not know about the Recissory Act.
I didn't go deep into it, but I looked on Wikipedia.
And you're right, I didn't know that, that in Scotland, a new parliament came and said those last eight years, that was all illegal.
They were drunk, I think was the allegation.
They were pretenders, they were illegitimate, so they just rescinded everything for eight years.
I'm going from memory.
So I did not know that.
So the Roman concept of damnatio memoriae, of literally destroying every statue, scraping off every painting, undoing every law.
Well, the 1660s, that's a lot more recent, isn't it?
Molecules Of Freedom00:02:24
On my monologue yesterday about freedom.
Oh, let me just say, before I go on the next one, I disagree with you on the portrait.
Her portrait should be on the wall because you don't want to forget people forgot what the NDP is like.
That's why they voted for them.
You need a picture of Rachel Notley, and every school child who walks by it must be told the story.
On my monologue yesterday about Freedom Gas, Phil writes, specia for the Russiski lessons and the many laps last night.
My friends, James, writes, from a comedic point of view, they're right.
Molecules of freedom, freedom gas, it's absurdly funny.
Fight the left on something else.
They're right about this one.
Well, I mean, look, freedom molecules, it doesn't come off the tongue easily.
I remember when France was doing something and some American congressmen wanted to rename French fries freedom fries.
It feels forced.
But you know, remember I wrote a book on this 10 years ago called Ethical Oil.
To me, that doesn't feel forced.
Ethical energy.
It doesn't feel forced.
In fact, it's got a sort of a sonorousness to it.
Freedom molecules, molecules.
No one uses the word molecule other than like a chemist.
But ethical oil, ethical gas, ethical.
I like ethical because it says more than just freedom.
Give me a second on this.
My ethical oil thesis was that Canadian oil, and this would apply to American oil too, is better in four ways.
And it's not just about freedom.
Here's how I say it.
Number one, it's environmentally responsible.
Number two, it's economic justice.
We actually pay people appropriately.
It's conflict-free.
We don't have terrorism or wars over it.
And number one, number four, it respects human rights, civil rights.
We don't throw religious minorities in prison.
We don't throw gays in prison like they do in OPEC countries.
So I disagree with freedom molecules because it sounds goofy.
And also freedom doesn't properly encompass environmental responsibility, peace, the treatment of workers, and human rights.
But I think rebranding energy with those four positive attributes, or just call it ethical, I think that is a good idea.
Four Pillars of Ethical Energy00:00:19
I'm glad Trump's doing it.
And the fact that Russia hates it is proof we're doing the right thing.
All right, folks, that's all we have for this week.
I had a great week with you.
Thank you for being with us.
Looking forward to the next one.
There's so much news these days, isn't there?
Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, good night.