Sheila Gunn Reed examines Justin Trudeau’s June 2019 re-approval of the TMX pipeline, where he pledged $7B for clean energy while critics like Sapphora Berman—co-chair of Rachel Notley’s oil sands advisory group and anti-logging activist—accuse him of electioneering. Calgary’s Mayor Naheed Nenshi faces backlash over secrecy, rising taxes, and union-funded campaigns amid a $4B budget crisis, with businesses demanding reform over frivolous spending like a $150K "sinkhole" arena circle. The episode reveals how Trudeau’s green rhetoric clashes with economic realities, exposing deeper political and environmental contradictions in Canada’s energy transition strategy. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, the Trans Mountain Pipeline project was just re-approved by Trudeau.
Will the second time be the charm, or will this summer of discontent being threatened on Canada by the anti-pipeline movement scare the feds away from finally starting construction on this very expensive boondoggle?
It's June 20th, 2019.
I'm Sheila Gunn Reed, and you're watching 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 ask is government.
But why?
It's because it's my bloody right to do so.
Today, I am announcing that our government has newly approved the Trans Mountain Expansion Project going forward.
The company plans to have shovels in the ground this construction season.
We've also been listening carefully to Canadians and hearing about their desire for a cleaner future.
That's why we've decided that every dollar the federal government earns from this project will be invested in Canada's clean energy transition.
As Calgary Sun columnist Rick Bell puts it, pardon me if I don't get up and kiss Trudeau's butt.
This reannouncement of the pipeline first approved back in 2016 is just shameless electioneering from a government polling well behind the Conservatives in just about every poll I have seen lately.
I won't kiss Trudeau's butt over this fake pipeline promise, and it ain't going to save his butt either.
Albertans are mad as hell, and they see right through the empty promise to build the pipeline, a promise they're making one more time.
And Trudeau's former allies in the far-left environmental movement are also mad as hell.
They're turning on him for selling them out to hang on to power at any and all costs.
Nanos has the Liberals four points behind the Conservatives.
CBC's Poll Tracker has the Liberals at over six points behind the Conservatives.
And I bet that broke some hearts down at the Mother Corp to have to put that story out.
And as a consequence, the Greens are surging as Trudeau fails to offer the levels of environmentalism his base voters have come to expect from him.
Even American Democrats are mad at Justin Trudeau.
Here is Washington's far-left governor, Jay Inslee, engaging in a little foreign collusion of his own to landlock Canada's oil and gas.
He tweeted this.
When I announced my global climate mobilization plan, I said that confronting the climate crisis must become central to our foreign policy that goes for friends and foes alike.
The Transmountain Pipeline should not be built.
Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Russia, thank you for your continued service and advocacy, Jay.
By the way, don't people crap on Seattle streets as just a matter of routine these days?
So yeah, spare me the clean and green routine and get a handle on your own problems, Jay.
And that last point that I was making before would be fantastic about the ante's turning away from their golden boy if the antees didn't want complete and total destruction of the Canadian economy so that it can be rebuilt in such a way for us all to work on the government-owned wind farms of the future as maybe nipple greasers or as the sorry souls who have to wash the bird guts off the massive turbine blades.
And that's why I think Trudeau won't build this pipeline.
He's scared and he needs to get those green voters back.
So he's going to put up with the coming camp cloud redux and green lawlessness about to be unleashed on a beleaguered Canadian public.
Just look at this here.
Here is Sappora Berman.
You'll remember her as Rachel Notley's hand-picked co-chair of the oil sands advisory group.
She's a founder of Forest Ethics, remember that name, and an international program director of the anti-pipeline group, Stand Earth.
She actively organized against Trans Mountain while she was on the oil sands advisory group getting paid by Albertans to decide the fate and future of the oil sands.
All on Rachel Notley's watch.
And Berman cut her teeth in anti-industry activism 26 years ago in Clapwatt Sound, BC, engaged in what is known as now the war in the woods.
Anti-logging protests there led to mass arrests.
Violent anti-logging activists drove spikes into trees to sabotage innocent loggers.
If a chainsaw hit one of those spikes, it would damage the chainsaw at the very least.
And at worst, injure or maim or kill the logger if it caused the chainsaw to buck back out of the tree.
And if the spike didn't stop the tree from being cut down, then the spike would remain in the tree to damage equipment at the sawmill and maybe even harm someone there.
Forest ethics was born directly of those protests.
You see, their ethics did not include not endangering dads and brothers as they went to do an honest day's work.
Of course, Berman's days of physically terrorizing hardworking men just trying to earn a paycheck are over.
She doesn't have to do the dirty work and get her hands dirty anymore.
She has cannon fodder, useful idiots who are part of her climate change doomsday cult to get themselves arrested for sabotage, violence, trespassing, vandalism, and, oh yeah, assaulting police officers.
You see, Berman has a bigger job now.
She can signal to Canada's competitors that Canada will remain closed for business because our feminist prime minister is scared of crossing her and ending up on her bad side.
Here is Berman on the Qatar State broadcaster, Al Jazeera, telling the Saudis, the Iranians, the Venezuelans, and the rest of OPEC that their market share is safe and sound in her capable hands.
Just watch.
The fact is, the market is moving away from high-cost, high-carbon oil, which is what we have in Canada.
And demand is softening.
Many countries around the world are banning the fossil fuel car, and that's why investors pulled out of this pipeline in the first place.
So our federal government bought it, is using $7 billion of taxpayers' money to buy this pipeline and build the expansion.
They could be using that $7 billion directly to fund clean energy without increasing pollution.
Does anyone know what the carbon tax is in Qatar?
Right, nothing.
But this seditious activist has no problem bashing her country to them.
And back at home?
Well, Berman is threatening us, in a manner of speaking.
Berman is sending a message, a strong message, to those of us who want pipelines full of freedom oil exported to the rest of the world to displace OPEC's tyranny oil.
The message is that Berman will make sure her cannon fodder idiots and true believing sacrificial lambs are willing to do anything to stop the pipeline.
Just look at this speech here from Notley's favorite anti-oil proxy, Sapphora Berman.
Canada, it's time to warrior up and stop TMX from coast to coast to coast.
Sign up for the fight of our lives.
This is a climate emergency.
It's time to act like it.
Now, I've never heard that phrase, warrior up, and I'm already starting to get sick of hearing the phrase climate emergency.
I know what it means to cowboy up.
We say it here on the prairies.
It's the rural version of the phrase, man-up.
But what about warrior up?
I mean, besides the fact that it's a pretty strange phrase for a white woman to say as a battle cry, if you're the kind of person who cares about things like cultural appropriation, and I bet Berman is one of those people.
What does it mean to warrior up?
Well, it's synonymous with industrial sabotage, communist-inspired anarchy, and violence from a website that acts as an online how-to guide for those wanting to follow Berman's advice and, quote-unquote, warrior up.
This project is inspired by the infrastructural sabotage carried out by Indigenous warriors in the territory dominated by the Canadian state during land and water defense in the last decade.
We want to be a resource for anarchists and other rebels carrying out actions against the economy of death.
How can we make these actions more effective, safe, creative, and reproducible?
The website gives advice about how to make and plant Molotov cocktails and how to engage in the sabotage of infrastructure and heavy equipment.
The author of the website says, and I quote, I feel strongly that instead of bombs, a concentrated effort should be made to use well-designed, portable incendiary devices, since a potent raging fire will always do more damage than a low-strength explosion.
Now, no, I'm not saying that this is exactly what Berman means when she says her cult followers need to warrior up.
But quite a few of them just might take it that way.
And it's not as though Berman herself is averse to using sabotage as a form of civil disobedience, as we know from her time fighting the war in the woods.
But what I am saying is that the media will absolutely give Berman a pass for this.
They won't even acknowledge what could easily be interpreted as a call to very serious violence from her.
Instead, the media will write another long-winded, sympathetic story of her self-reported death threats that she blames on Jason Kenney, of all people, and pro-oil sands activist Robbie Picard without ever asking her to produce evidence of these so-called threats.
You know, as long as she's not a frustrated, out-of-work conservative jokingly saying, lock her up, I guess everything she says is fine.
Stay with us more Up Neck after the break.
Approving pipelines isn't the only thing happening in oil country, deep in the heart of oil country, oil country HQ, Calgary.
Well, they've had some problems of their own lately.
They've got a tax revolt on their hands and they aren't being very transparent with the taxpayers about the amount of money they spent on their thankfully failed Olympic bid.
Calgary's Tax Transparency Crisis00:14:22
Joining me to talk about all that and more is my friend Willie Macbeth from Safe Calgary.
William, thanks so much for joining me today.
Oh, thanks for having me, Sheila.
It's always great to be here.
The first thing I want to talk about, you watch Calgary City Hall.
watch Calgary City Hall.
The controversial idea brought forward by Nenshi's biggest pain in the butt, Jeremy Farkas, he wants to have a council tracker posted on the front page of the city website to show everybody how the people they send to office vote on certain issues.
And apparently this is a controversial idea.
Go figure.
Yeah, you know, you would think that something so fundamental as how your local representative voted on a key issue would be information that is easily accessible on the city of Calgary's website.
But actually the city of Calgary is one of the worst when it comes to making information easily accessible to voters.
Now, I think for people who have focused on Calgary municipal politics, they'll remember that the Manning Foundation used to do a council tracker where it analyzed votes and counted the number of times a councilor voted to increase the size of government or counted the number of times the council voted to hike property taxes.
But acquiring that information required a team of researchers to go through PDF minutes of council and committee meetings and then input that data manually into spreadsheets for tracking.
It was a hugely costly and time and resource intensive activity because the city of Calgary just doesn't want you to know how people vote.
In fact, the only way you really would know how council votes is by watching city council.
And for most people, watching city council makes them feel pretty queasy after the first few minutes.
So it's not something that a lot of everyday people do.
And so when Jeremy suggested that we have an easier way to see how our elected representatives vote, councilors lost their minds.
It's the only charitable way to describe it.
You know, it's so crazy how they really don't want the voters to know what they're doing.
It is bizarre.
And Calgary City Council is one of the most cloistered and closed up city councils in the entire country.
No, you're absolutely right.
I mean, of course, back when we had a council tracker, we knew that Calgary City Council spent more time meeting in secret behind closed doors than any other city council in Canada.
In fact, I think it meant in secret more than every other city council in Canada combined.
Calgary meets in secret hundreds and hundreds of times a year in cities like Ottawa and Winnipeg and Edmonton, which are rough, you know, sort of in that sort of big, big-ish city range.
They're meeting once, twice, five times at most, and it's to discuss highly sensitive information.
Whereas Calgary, the position seems to be it defaults to being in secret.
And once at a blue moon, they'll do something in public because, you know, that's how you lead a world-class city is by giving scraps of information to voters so that they never really know the full story of what's going on at City Hall.
You know, speaking of wanting to be a world-class city, thankfully, thanks to the hard work of the good folks at Safe Calgary, Calgary's quest for an Olympic bid was quashed.
But we still don't really know the true cost of the Olympic bid.
And all the reports haven't been released yet.
There are still 12 reports that remain unreleased.
And again, Nenshi's nemesis, Jeremy Farkas, says that, you know, every single receipt should be released to the public so they know what was spent to try to sell Calgarians on this terrible idea and how much public money was used on it.
I think you're absolutely right.
I mean, getting from start to finish, from the entirety of this three-year odyssey, getting any information about these Olympics was like pulling teeth.
And at every opportunity, Calgary City Council and the people running the Olympic bid process kept that information out of the hands of voters.
In fact, I think voters of Calgary will remember that we were promised a full financial costing of the Olympic Games several weeks before the vote.
And in reality, they only got it to us in the dying hours of that plebiscite.
And even then, it didn't provide as much detailed financial information as voters needed in order to make an informed choice.
And, you know, their strategy was, well, just trust us.
Well, I have to say, trust is earned.
And this is not a city who has earned the trust of voters.
So you're right.
Here we are, coming up on eight months or nine months past when this vote happened.
And we still have no real clear financial picture about how much was spent and what it was spent on.
We know some, but we don't know enough.
And certainly we don't have a picture of what kind of resources and discussions and promises were being made about these Olympics behind closed doors.
And for those of us who follow City Hall, we're not reflexively against any project.
We want to see projects on their merits and see what are the upsides, what are the downsides, what revenue does it generate, or what will it cost.
And the frustrating part of Calgary City Council is it never gives you that information on any major decision.
And I think a lot of voters have said enough is enough.
Certainly, in our opinion, the Olympic vote was the line in the sand that said, we don't like how you do business, City Hall.
And we are not writing you yet another blank check to just spend our money because, oh, just trust us.
We're going to get it right.
Yeah.
And, you know, speaking of blank checks to just go around spending money, you know, there really is a tax revolt going on in Calgary right now with businesses actively posting their tax bills online and showing just the massive increases in their tax bills.
And Chestermere, a neighboring community, is lowering their taxes to try to attract some communities from or some businesses to their community from Calgary.
And I just don't think City Hall really gets it yet.
Like they have had a little bit of, well, you know, we could have handled this a different way, blah, blah, blah.
But they're not saying it's time to cut taxes.
It's time to examine pensions.
It's time to examine salaries.
They're not there yet.
And in the meantime, businesses are rallying against City Hall in a way that I have never seen before.
I think we can honestly say this is an unprecedented situation here in Calgary, what we're seeing with small businesses.
You know, when we talked a while ago, there had been a rally happening on the steps of Calgary City Hall where small businesses were demanding action from a city council that had failed to show leadership on this issue.
What was interesting was when that rally wrapped up, many of those small business owners went inside to sit in the gallery, in the public gallery, and they wanted to speak to council.
They wanted to share their information, to tell the stories of how their businesses are struggling, of how they're having to lay off staff or reduce hours or even contemplate closing down altogether because they can't afford their tax bills.
Well, first of all, council took a vote and it only passed by one to let any business owner speak at that council meeting.
So a near majority of council didn't think it was important enough to hear from small business owners at the council meeting discussing property tax crisis for small business owners.
So that to me sums up Calgary's attitude right there.
Well, we recognize there's a crisis, but let's not hear from any of the people who are actually facing this crisis in their day-to-day lives.
And then city council said, Well, then what would you cut?
What would you reduce as a service for the city in order to do it?
And the small business owners rightfully said, Excuse me, you were elected, city council.
You ran, you put your name on the ballot, you get paid a very generous salary, one of the highest in Canada for city councils, and you get a great pension on top of it.
We're not going to do your job for you and look for savings in the city of Calgary.
Don't put it on us.
You made this problem, and it's your job to solve it.
You know, hold on a second here, William.
Are they taking suggestions how to cut spending down at City Hall?
Because I think you and I have some ideas, especially when we both did a little bit of research to shine a light on some of the more ridiculous salaries down at City Hall, like their walking coordinator and their, you know, livable cities or whatever it was, livable streets, I think of the livable streets coordinator.
What on earth is that?
I mean, good Lord.
But yeah, I mean, City Hall is littered with all kinds of crazy positions that really could be shown the door or that are just ridiculously overpaid.
These people could go the way of the buffalo through attrition.
You don't even have to fire them.
You just have to not rehire them and not post for them.
But I mean, even that is too difficult and too controversial for City of Calgary to do, the City of Calgary to do.
And it feels as though they are very scared of the public sector unions, I suppose, as most governments are.
No, and I think when push comes to shove, you're absolutely right that that is where their biggest fear lies.
So we're not out of this tax crisis yet.
I think it's really important that people know that even though council did vote to cut taxes by 10%, what they actually voted was to cut the tax hike by 10%.
So taxes are still going up hugely for businesses across the city.
What council did at their meeting did nothing to fix the larger problem.
I also want to say they're trumpeting their spending cuts.
And they said, we've cut $60 million at the city of Calgary and we've cut 500 positions, which is a figure I love because actually, if you dig into it, what they're cutting is proposed spending increases and proposed hires.
So they're not actually cutting spending.
They're cutting how much they were going to increase spending, but they're still increasing it.
And to put into context, you know, Andrew Farrell, who, you know, we have a great relationship, Drew Farrell and I, one of our city councilors here, she said, well, these cuts are too deep and too drastic.
The city of Calgary is a $4 billion annual operation.
$60 million represents 1.5% across a $4 billion operation.
We raise spending on average above 5% a year and have since 2010 when the city of Calgary stops publishing numbers before that.
So in my mind, if you've risen grown spending by 40% over an eight-year period, you can't then turn around and say a 1.5% reduction is too drastic for the city to grapple with.
And you're right, it comes down to unions.
I did a little wandering through councilor donor reports.
So of course, even though we're not great at putting out information, it took me about 15 minutes to dig through the city of Calgary website to finally find it.
You can find the reports from the 2017 election on how much city councilors raised and spent on their campaigns.
And it is clear that public sector unions, you know, the big city unions and their allies and affiliated groups are the single biggest donors to some of our more progressive, i.e. tax and spend happy city councilors.
And so of course they're terrified of having to cut spending and pensions and benefits and perks because they know that it means attacking the people who put them into office and who funded their way to the comfy. well-paid jobs that they're all sitting in now.
And when we say city of Calgary jobs are well paid, let's be completely clear.
Economist Jack Mintz, who respected economist who's done a lot of work on public finance and public finance reform, analyzed spending data for the city of Calgary.
An average position, the average for a city of Calgary position is now $115,000 a year in salary and benefits.
That's the average.
So if we've got, you know, how high do entry-level jobs have to be paying here at the city in order to get to an average of $115,000?
That's huge.
I can't think of another industry where that's the average wage.
And I think it's one of the reasons why everyday Calgarians, and particularly small business owners who are facing a crisis right now, are so fed up with city council's lack of leadership and the fact that they say, well, you tell us where to cut.
Or, well, we can't cut more than just the little bit off the top because it's too drastic.
No, we need structural reform.
We need it now.
And if this council won't do the job, then we need a council that will in the next election.
Well, and, you know, there are things that the city does that they shouldn't be doing that the private sector could be doing.
For example, running golf courses.
Why does the city, A, own golf courses in the first place?
B, why are they losing money on golf courses?
Well, I think I probably know the answer why they're losing money on golf courses.
And it probably has something to do with salaries.
There's probably no reason why the beer cart girl needs to be a part of the public sector union making, you know, public sector union wages.
Thankfully, the city's closing the one golf course, but only after they spent years losing money.
I think $165,000 they lost last year on running a golf course.
Why Golf Courses Lose Money00:05:51
Yeah, it is funny.
I mean, maybe you could argue that the city should be running a golf course if it was making a great profit off of it.
And that was being used to, you know, help fund city operations.
It's not.
The city is losing money on a golf course.
And what I think is a little bit ironic, of course, is Councilor Farkas, the hero of the everyday Calgarian, the everyday taxpayers and business owners.
He said, well, let's cut our own council budgets by a small amount in order to show that we're sharing in that pain.
And he was derided by his fellow counselors who said, oh, it's a meaningless amount.
It's only going to work out to $70,000 or $80,000 saved.
Well, yeah, and now they're heralding the closure of this golf course saying, oh, we're going to save $150,000 a year.
It's like, well, okay, first of all, you've been losing that money for, you know, goodness knows how long.
Second of all, why is $150,000 saved so much more impressive than the $70,000 that Councilor Farkas had got saved for taxpayers that you make fun of them for?
So the relationship on council is, I think, now dysfunctional.
There is simply no respect on the part of many counselors for those who have tried to stand up for fiscal responsibility and for sensible policy.
And they're behaving like children in the sandbox now.
There's name calling.
They're being mean girls, frankly.
They're doing to Jeremy Farkas the you can't sit with us routine and forcing him outside of their little clique of city councilors when they when they make decisions and discussions.
It's frankly sad.
But I think many, I hope Calgarians, and I hope actually voters in every municipality who have councils like this, take a good hard look at who they're electing every single election and sending to City Hall and saying, you know what?
If we're not happy with the outcome we're getting, the thing we have to change are the people we're sending to City Hall in the first place.
So that's what we have come to believe, that frankly, reforming this council is just not possible.
We're looking forward now to how we get a better council in 2021.
Well, and this council really is out of touch with the concerns of the regular Calgarians.
I mean, off camera, you and I were talking about this latest discovery of public art that's somewhere near the Great Plains Arena.
And, you know, I came across it on Twitter and it looks like a sinkhole, like a failed, architecturally unsound landscaping project fenced off with security fencing.
And apparently it cost $150,000.
It sits near the Great Plains Arena and it's supposed to represent a face-off circle.
But I mean, walking past, you wouldn't think, what a breathtaking piece of public art.
The community is sure enriched by this.
I would be like, kids, don't go near there.
You'll fall in a hole.
I think you're right.
I don't think anybody seeing Calgary Public Art will think to themselves, oh my gosh, am I in Paris?
Am I in Milan?
No, they're going to look at that and say, obviously, they didn't do an engineering study before they started digging that hole because the top of it's caving in.
And great, we're spending $150,000 on yet another monstrous piece of public art.
We've just spent all of the money we've saved from closing our money-losing golf course.
Isn't that city council summed up in a T?
What are their priorities?
Obviously, it's not getting serious about our fiscal crisis.
It's, you know, give with one hand, take away with the other, and let's, you know, let's ignore the fundamental issues facing our city.
And I think it's why so many Calgarians are finally saying enough is enough.
And we're seeing rallies in the streets and on the steps of City Hall demanding change from City Council.
Well, I do think that Calgarians are starting to pay attention, but I think you guys at Save Calgary play a big role in that.
Where can people find you?
How can they get more information?
And more importantly, how can they support you?
Because you guys really do operate on a shoestring budget and you really punch up every single day.
Oh, well, thank you.
Well, we certainly don't have the kind of resources that apparently the city of Calgary has to throw around at every project under the sun.
That's for certain.
You can check us out online, savecalgary.com.
We also have presence on Facebook and on Twitter.
And the ways to really help out are, first of all, sign up to our mailing list and get our weekly newsletters, share them with your family and friends, and encourage them to become better informed on municipal issues.
Obviously, making a financial contribution helps.
We don't get money, surprisingly, from the big city unions.
Apparently, our call for salary reductions and pension reform doesn't go over so well with those who are getting the pensions and the salaries.
So we rely on what little money Calgarians still have left after they pay their tax bills as contributions in order to fund our operations.
So certainly if you make a contribution to us, we use it in turn to hold city council's feet to the fire.
And I think that from the perspective of fiscal responsibility, there aren't enough voices doing that.
And if we lose Save Calgary, then I don't know who else is going to step up and try and fight for fiscal reform down at City Hall.
Boy, you guys are a group that Mayor Nanci would love to see just disappear off the political landscape, but I doubt that you will.
And I think that Calgary needs you more than ever.
William, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Thank you for being so generous with your time with us today.
Stay with us more up next after the break.
I'll be back with your questions and comments.
Now this is the part of the show where Ezra normally takes questions or reads viewer comments.
Catherine McKenna's Transit Critique00:02:28
Even sometimes he reads his hate mail.
Now, I personally like your comments the best.
And since I'm in the driver's seat today, that's exactly what we're going to do with the time we still have together.
Rebel correspondent Jessica Switanovsky, apologies, Jessica, if I butchered your last name, which Google speech to text frequently changes to switching off to ski.
Well, she was recently in the Philippines chasing the story of Canada's much-traveled garbage ship.
Jessica found some common ground with a Greenpeace activist in Manila on the topic of first world garbage colonialism.
Liza Rosie writes, taking care of your own garbage.
What a concept.
I'm impressed with the Philippians taking control of their own backyard.
I like that duterte kicks, but countries need to put the kibosh on trash traffickers.
I am embarrassed for Canada and whoever knew that this was going on and the effect it was having on the countries ending up with this trash.
Great interview, Jessica.
Great interviewee as well.
You know what?
I completely agree.
And I think Jessica is doing great work and real journalism from on the ground in the Philippines.
And thank you to everybody out there who helped cover the cost to send her there to bring you the other side of the story.
And you can see the rest of her stories at garbageship.com.
Now on to my story about Catherine McKenna taking chauffeur-driven limos to events to lecture other people about taking public transit.
You literally can't make this stuff up.
Bruce Acheson writes, what a hypocrite McKenna is.
Imagine being chauffeured to a bus barn to promote public transit.
No wonder people call her climate Barbie.
She couldn't be seen riding with the proles.
That wouldn't do for somebody so privileged and supposedly important.
Ain't that the truth, Bruce?
And the theme of this entire liberal government is just that.
Rules for them and their fancy friends and separate rules for the rest of us.
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thanks so much for tuning in and thank you, Rebel Headquarters Office staff, for turning what I've given you into the show that everybody's watching.
I'm back guest hosting again tomorrow, so I'll see everybody back here in the same time in the very same place.