Justin Trudeau’s weekly private jet trips to Tofino (BC) and Environment Minister Catherine McKenna’s Arctic flights—both generating high CO₂ emissions—went unchallenged by CBC, which instead advised ordinary Canadians to cut travel and buy carbon offsets. Contrast Trudeau’s $20M Paris climate delegation or McKenna’s $6K fashion photoshoot at a climate event: elites face no scrutiny. Meanwhile, CBC amplified flawed gun control claims like Wendy Kukier’s edited remark blaming legal owners for Toronto’s gang violence, ignoring stats showing licensed gun owners commit fewer murders (0.67 vs. 1.69 per 100K). As Canada heads to October elections, the host highlights media bias against citizens while praising his non-government-funded platform. [Automatically generated summary]
Today's show is about the CBC, which has some great advice for your family vacation.
And their advice is don't.
I mean, come on, think about the CO2 emissions.
Their advice is don't.
They don't have that advice for Justin Trudeau at his jet setting, though.
I'll give you the details.
Hey, before I do, can you do me a favor and consider becoming a premium subscriber?
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And we'll even give you a discount if you enter the coupon code Podcast.
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And it helps pay the bills.
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Think about it.
All right, here's the podcast.
Tonight, CBC holds Justin Trudeau to account for his weekly private jet vacations to BC.
Just kidding.
They say you're the problem instead.
It's August 12th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the 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.
Hey, did you hear about that $20 million party that Google threw for the world's rich and famous the other day in Sicily?
All the fancy people were there.
Katie Perry, the singer, Leonardo DiCaprio.
So the world's deepest thinkers, really.
It's practically the same guest list from the Nobel Prize for Physics reception.
They say that Prince Harry gave a speech there in bare feet.
So you know he must have meant it because bare feet is how you show you care about global warming, even if, you know, you and your family have multiple homes and your American wife is a full-tilt jet setter, you know, all the palaces.
I know that Rex Murphy did a great column about this in the National Post a little while back, and the British tabloids naturally love it.
They love stories about the royal family, the most privileged family in the country, pretending to be woke like Prince Harry and his bride.
But here's Forbes magazine.
They love to track how the billionaires live.
They covered this Sicily get-together too.
Just scroll through this.
Just look at it.
Here's billionaire David Geffen posing above his yacht.
People, look, they might look like they're living it up, but don't be deceived.
That's what it looks like, saving the world from overconsumption, from using too much fossil fuels, too many emissions.
What comedy.
But I couldn't find anything about this huge, huge event on the CBC.
I wonder why.
Not a peep.
Maybe because to criticize that big Google party in Sicily about global warming would mean they wouldn't be invited to it.
I wonder if they were invited.
The CBC's David Suzuki, he loves jet-setting.
He's probably not going to criticize richer and famouser celebrities for doing the same thing.
Let me know if you can find anything about it on the CBC.
I spent a fair bit of time searching for it and I couldn't.
That's odd.
But then again, the CBC would be setting a precedent to report on that kind of bad behavior.
Maybe they'd have to report on the lavish luxury lifestyle shown at all the global warming conferences, including at the United Nations.
Best not to open that Pandora's box, especially since Justin Trudeau and his jet-setting global warming minister, Catherine McKenna, are amongst the most profligate.
You'll remember, McKenna actually hired a fashion photographer in Paris to snap pictures of her at a global warming conference there.
She spent $6,000 of your money getting in fashion photos.
Trudeau literally brought the biggest delegation in the world to that same conference.
Hundreds of grifters and scammers and lobbyists.
At least Google in Sicily was spending its own money.
Trudeau spent your money.
Yeah, you can see why the CBC state broadcaster didn't report on that.
So if the CBC won't hold the rich and powerful to account for Google, you know, the billionaire tycoons, or for politicians living like billionaire tycoons, who will the CBC hold accountable?
Well, you, of course, the government broadcaster isn't very good at holding the government to account on behalf of the people, but maybe it can hold the people accountable on behalf of the government.
And so they are.
If you thought it through and you can't give up a particular trip, there are things you can still do to minimize the impact of your air travel on the environment.
That's the state broadcaster.
Who's the you there?
If you've thought it through, who are they talking to?
They're talking to you.
They're not talking to Justin Trudeau or Catherine McKenna or the Google tycoons.
The CBC state broadcaster can't hold the Canadian government to account.
They work for the Canadian government.
They won't hold David Suzuki to account or the billionaires at Google.
So instead of holding the rich and powerful to account or even just hypocritical politicians, it's you they're scolding.
The government broadcaster will tell you how to live.
They'll make sure you're good enough for your rulers.
They'll hold you to account on behalf of your rulers.
It used to be the reverse, but these days, really, are there even any journalists left in Canada who aren't paid in one way or another by the government?
Now that the $600 million newspaper bailout is going through, we don't take a dime, of course.
We never will, which is one reason they hate us in the government.
Catherine McKenna, the Global Warming Minister, is probably the worst in the whole cabinet.
I think she probably travels even more than the foreign minister.
She took a private jet the other day all the way up to the Arctic just to put out a press release.
You can do that from your office, sister.
But how else can she tweet a picture of herself fishing in the Beaufort Sea, or whoever that was, the Arctic Ocean somewhere?
Well, you know, she has 24 staff who work on her social media.
I'm not kidding when I say 24.
Maybe one of them could have given her some little tips like, you know, fishing in high heels isn't the wisest.
But then again, it doesn't look like there's any fishing line in the rod.
It doesn't seem to be.
So I guess there's no risk of slipping in your high heels when you hook a big one if there ain't no fishing wire in there.
So what is the CBC's accountability journalism up to now?
Justin Trudeau flew from Ottawa to Tofino on the west coast of Vancouver Island, then back to Ottawa, and then back to Tofino and then back to Ottawa and then back to Tofino again and again all summer.
Not a peep from anyone in the media party about either the environment or the financial cost.
Here's Bob Macken, one of the few independent journalists in this country.
He's out there in BC.
He tried his best and Trudeau's answer was awful.
And Macken had a supplemental.
Here, watch this exchange and maybe think, why didn't this very interesting exchange make it to CBC?
Hi, Prime Minister Bob Macken of Breaker.news.
This is your fifth trip to British Columbia since May 22nd.
You've got a cash for access fundraiser tonight.
You've had two on May 22nd.
You had one last week in Victoria.
You've been flying out at great frequency.
I know there's an election approaching, but by calculations of experts, it's more than 10,000 liters of fuel jet fuel to go back and forth between Vancouver and Ottawa and about 20 tons of CO2.
And you're also spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, which will be Canadians to find out, especially with access to information and that system that you actually haven't improved as you probably would in 2015.
Why isn't the Liberal Party of Canada paying the entire bill of your trips out to British Columbia at this time?
First of all, we were pleased to transform our electoral fundraising system at the federal level to demonstrate a greater degree of transparency and openness than ever in the past.
And we've continued to encourage the Conservative Party and the NDP to follow the new rules put down, including proactively inviting the media to come attend our public fundraisers that are held in public locations.
These are things that we've made so that Canadians can continue to have confidence in the electoral financing.
Secondly, as you know, as Canadians know, BC is a second home to me.
This is a part of the country that matters deeply.
And too often, decisions made in Ottawa have negative impacts here in BC when people aren't connected here on the ground.
Perfect example of this was the Harper government's decision to shut down the Kitts Coast Guard base, which was something that left all Vancouverites of all different political stripes scratching their heads, wondering how people could so not know how important this base is to Vancouver, to people across the lower mainland.
So these are the kinds of things that means we have to have a federal government that is here and present and going to continue to engage with working with them.
This is an important part of the prime minister, and I'm very happy to be here as prime minister in British Columbia, which is a second home to me.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is not the prime minister right now, but the costs, the costs of this trip and why the liberal party isn't paying.
Can you at least say how much the cost is to taxpayers for this current trip, which includes tax, which includes a fundraiser, which also includes your time off in Tofino?
How much are taxpayers paying for these?
The Prime Minister has a responsibility to be Prime Minister for all Canadians, and that is part of why I spend an awful lot of time getting out there and meeting with Canadians, listening to them, being at important events like this.
It is, in fact, one of the best parts of my job to get out and meet with Canadians right across the country, whether it's town halls where we have an opportunity to take questions from the general public and actually respond to those questions in a way that no other party leader does, whether it's coming out from important announcements that demonstrate that the cuts that Conservatives consistently put forward end up harming our environment and harming Canadians.
These are the kinds of things that make a big difference in people's lives, and that's why I'm so glad to be back here in BC.
Questions about your spending, sir?
Questions about your spending.
Please answer about your spending, sir.
Hi, Prime Minister.
Yeah, that's too much accountability there, Bob.
You've had too much to think, sir.
Now fill out your grant application like the rest of the media party does and shut up.
So back to the CBC's advice.
It's not advice to Catherine McKenna, the great Fisher person.
It's not to Justin Tofino.
It's advice to you.
I mean, really.
You have to be better.
I'm sorry, you're not good enough.
What, do you fly a couple times a year?
I think the average Canadian probably flies a couple times a year.
Maybe for a family event like a wedding, maybe for a business trip.
I think the average Canadian only flies rarely.
It's actually, for most people, a luxury to save up for.
I'm lucky.
I get to travel for journalism.
But most Canadian families travel maybe a couple times a year.
By jet, I mean.
People drive a lot, but to fly somewhere it's a special thing.
But to the CBC.
Well, they're here to tell you you're the problem.
Air travel emits a lot of carbon, but there are ways to fly more responsibly, people.
I mean, come on.
Will you, citizens, stop being so irresponsible?
Not a word about the Google jet set.
Not a word about Justin Trudeau and Tofino.
It's you, people.
It's you peasants.
Oh, and they found an expert because I'm interested, like you are, in hearing what a government expert from a government university has to tell the government broadcaster about what I do on my family time.
Let me quote.
Ryan Katz Rosine, a University of Ottawa professor who studies sustainable transportation, recognizes there are lots of benefits of travel and specifically flying.
But he said the need to act on climate change, quote, does warrant asking ourselves whether a family vacation that requires traveling thousands of kilometers by plane is really necessary and whether the benefits of a given trip can be achieved without flying.
I mean, what are really the benefits of going to a wedding?
Your family vacation, I mean, really?
So they have some tips.
For you, of course, not for Trudeau.
I mean, he flies in a five jets.
I mean, we've shown you, and I know this is impossible to believe, but here are the actual documents that the catering, that is the food and wine on Trudeau's flights can be $100,000 per flight.
I don't even know how that's possible, unless everyone got like a pound of caviar and a bottle of Dom Perignon.
But even that wouldn't add up to $142,000.
How'd you spend $142,000 on food for one flight?
Trudeau does.
But he's the CBC's boss, so they don't have advice and tips for him.
Their advice is for you.
Fly economy.
Extra legroom comes at more than a financial cost.
A first-class ticket can generate two to four times the emissions of an economy class ticket because packing more passengers in each plane increases efficiency.
Some airlines like Sunwing and UK-based EasyJet offer only economy seats.
Oh, and can you please pay from your own wallet for offsets, as in give the money to someone who says they're going to do something really environmental with us, something, something, pay someone somewhere to ride a bike or something, something is sort of a moral penance for you flying.
Let me quote.
Consider buying offsets.
Many airlines give you the option to buy offsets.
That is, invest in projects that reduce carbon emissions, such as tree planting or green energy.
In theory, that can help counterbalance the impact of your emissions.
But expert warned that offset programs are not always effective and may inadvertently encourage people to fly more.
So do you got it, you little people, you mere citizens, you taxpayers?
You got to pay a carbon tax, and you should pay money to some offset scam.
But Trudeau can fly as much as he likes because he's Trudeau and you're not.
And you'd better not think too big.
And that family vacation, that family reunion will rethink it.
I mean, know your place, you peasant.
When it comes to reducing the carbon output of aviation, avoiding flights as much as possible is still the best option.
We'll have more soon on how the airline industry can reduce its emissions.
Toronto Star Controversy00:11:52
Okay, talk to you soon.
You know, it's a simple rule of thumb when it comes to environmentalists.
I'll believe that they believe that we're in a climate crisis when they start acting like it.
When you take a private jet to Sicily and then sail on your $100 million yacht while talking about reducing carbon emissions, I know you're not serious.
When you take a private jet up to the Arctic to put out a press release and a photo, I know you're not serious.
When you take a private jet to Tofrino half a dozen times a year, I know you're not serious.
I know you don't believe it.
We all know you're not serious.
We all know it's a scam.
The CBC knows it too, but they're all in on it, which is why they've decided to make you and me the only ones who have to have a smaller, unhappier life.
I mean, come on.
Do you really ever have to fly to your daughter's wedding?
How about just watching it on Skype?
I mean, that's the CBC's advice, isn't it?
Stay with us for more.
Welcome back.
So one of the wonders of the age we live in is that we can live a life of luxury and ease that even a couple of generations ago would have been unthinkable.
If you ask a millennial hipster in Brooklyn where food comes from, they'd say, duh, the grocery store.
And where does electrical power come from?
Duh, the wall socket.
It's that kind of disconnection from anything more red in tooth and claw that I think leads to so much leftism.
One of my favorite tricks at any anti-oil protest is just to go from head to toe of the protester pointing out all the things they're wearing that are made from plastic.
We don't even realize how much of our lives plastic dominates.
They really were accurate in that movie, The Graduate, that plastics is the future.
It's true.
And one of the things that I think we become removed from in the last century, and I'd probably put myself in that category, is firearms.
I mean, it used to be, believe it or not, that even in New York, high school kids would walk to school with firearms to practice in shooting ranges in high school.
And that was just normal.
The idea of having a firearm was not considered weird or even political.
It was sporty.
It was something you would do like being a Cub Scout.
You use how to use a map, learn how to use a map, learn how to start a fire, learn how to use a compass, learn how to target practice.
These days, there's such a disconnect, and with that disconnect comes ignorance, and with ignorance comes fear.
And so let me read to you from the Toronto Star, perhaps the most disconnected newspaper in the country when it comes from things involving real life.
This is how they described Canadians who, you know, have a firearm for target practice or whatever.
Let me read to you an article in the Star quoting Wendy Kukier or Sukhier.
I'm not sure how to pronounce it.
I think Kukier fits.
They're quoting Wendy Kukier, an anti-gun extremist, and here's what they say.
Asked for her thoughts on how Toronto could be experiencing a surge in the number of shootings but a decline in gun-related deaths.
Kukier, the Coalition for Gun Control president, said that, quote, or this is the Toronto Star now, legal gun owners tend to be more effective in killing people because they spend time at target practice or hunting, unquote.
This was so stunning that after Reader Backlash, the Toronto Star just quietly deleted that from the article.
So they looked slightly less crazy than they were joining us now to talk about this little weird.
This is our friend Sheila Gunn Reed from Alberta who joins us firescape.
What do you think, Sheila?
What do you think?
I mean, there's no science behind that.
It's just pure bigotry.
Of course, the people shooting each other in Toronto, we're at a new record.
They're not lawful gun owners.
They're not farmers or ranchers.
They are urban gangbangers getting their illegal guns from the United States.
Just nothing there is true other than we get a true picture inside the mind of Wendy Kukier.
She just hates farmers, ranchers, and lawful gun owners.
She just hates them.
And that's not who's shooting up Toronto.
Yeah, and that's Toronto Star's expert.
But not only is that Toronto Star's expert, that's a liberal expert.
They trot her out, the liberals do, every time they need someone to push for more gun control.
She's their expert behind Bill C-71.
So that's the latest liberal omnibus gun control legislation that basically brings back all the things that Stephen Harper liberalized when it comes to gun control and outlaws more firearms just arbitrarily because they're black and scary.
And I think it was 50-50 reader backlash and 50-50 liberal, oh my goodness, you can't be that extremist and that bigoted.
I think Toronto Star got a phone call from the likes of Katie Telford and said, you better scrub just a touch of that extremism right out of there.
And they did, but they did leave some of Kookier's more kookier statements.
Like she said, and this is a direct quote.
So this just isn't even Toronto Star generalizing what she said.
This is a direct quote, quotation marks all around it.
She says, one of the terrible ironies is that when you see the proliferation of guns often associated with gang violence, you have lots of shootings, but fewer people are killed.
That's her terrible irony, by the way.
And then she says, because they don't spend hours and hours at the shooting range.
So she is lamenting the fact that the gangsters in Toronto aren't doing what I do and taking my lawfully owned firearm, my handgun, to the one place where I can use it, and that's at the range.
She's lamenting the fact that these, that, you know, that I'm well trained and that the gangsters aren't as well trained as I am.
Yeah, it's so weird.
And I think you're right about someone like Ralph Goodale or Katie Telford calling the Toronto Star and saying, hey, and I don't think they're saying, hey, that's substantively wrong.
They're saying, hey, don't say that in public because too many lawful gun owners will say, oh my God, you are calling me a would-be murderer.
You're saying, I mean, it's just so statistically wrong, by the way.
These gangland shootings in Toronto, and that's what they are.
They're not people who use a long-arm firearm.
They're not people who use a long shotgun that you might see used for skeet shooting.
These are people who buy a little handgun in Toronto, or maybe they smuggle it across the border from, you know, it's only a couple hours to America by car.
In their mind, the liberals hate people who look like you and me, people in Alberta, people in the rural parts.
But what they're really, the cognitive dissidents is that people who look like you and me and people in the rural parts, they're not the people shooting up these gangland shootings and they're not using rifles and shotguns, but that's where they're focusing their gun control energy.
I don't know.
I just found the whole thing sad that we have to go through this again.
I know it was 25 years ago that Alan Rock first tried to ban all the guns in Canada.
I feel like maybe Justin Trudeau's going to take another crack at it.
Do you see any evidence that the Liberals are going to bring in another Alan Rock, that they're going to try and license and register all the guns again?
Yes, I do.
Ralph Goodale has already mused in some interviews, I think one with CTV, that there is more gun control legislation coming, he says, to deal with gangland violence.
But there's no amount of gun control legislation can deal with gangland violence because these people are already breaking gun laws even to be in possession of them.
But he says that the liberals are going to campaign on it and it will be passed after the liberals are re-elected.
So, you know, it's sort of like Obamacare.
You've got to pass the law to find out what's in it.
We've got to re-elect the liberals to find out what sorts of gun control legislation they're going to bring in.
But you did touch on a really good point.
And none of this liberal gun control legislation is statistically sound in its reasoning.
There's very few people out there who are doing the analysis of the StatsCan data on shootings, but Professor Gary Mauser at Simon Fraser University has done that.
And statistically speaking, Wendy Kukier or any of the spinners down at the Toronto Star, they're far more likely to kill somebody than I am as a licensed firearms owner.
The data shows that 0.67 licensed firearms owners out of 100,000 would commit a murder.
And out of the general population, it's 1.69 per 100,000.
So, you know.
The rest of the population is one-third more likely to commit a murder than the firearms community, which as it turns out is the most law-abiding demographic in all of Canada, but the most targeted for legislation to control them.
That is a great little stat.
You know, please send me that.
I'd like to look at that source.
So what you're saying is lawful gun owners, statistically speaking, are less likely to commit a murder than people who aren't licensed, registered, whatever, like they don't have their license.
Did I hear you right there?
So if you have a gun license, you are scientifically, statistically speaking, one-third as likely, did I hear that right, to commit a gun crime as the general population.
So these are the safest, most trustworthy Canadians.
Yes.
Yes.
And to Wendy Kukier's crazy point, she's advocating for people out there to be less trained in firearm safety because somehow that will make people to become less effective killing machines.
But if the statistics play out, the more training that you have, the more safe society is because you just can't walk in and get a gun license.
You have to be trained.
You have to sit through the courses.
You have to pass a hands-on practical exam where you're handling a gun for safety.
It's not like multiple choice and then they give you your license and then you go home.
You're screened.
You have to have your hands on the gun.
You have to demonstrate to the instructor and then you have the comprehensive background check.
So Wendy Kukier's lamenting that, you know, thank goodness that these gangsters aren't going to the gun range.
Well, society would be far more safer if everybody went to the gun range.
Yeah, I mean, it's a joke to think that they ever would do anything formal, legal, lawful, training-oriented.
They're not interested in gun safety.
They're interested in gun unsafety.
They're not submitting themselves to background checks.
It's just such a strange parallel universe.
And I started off by talking about the disconnect between the liberal elites and how things really are.
I mean, guns are so alien to them, and anyone who would touch a gun, well, that's as strange and alien to them as a farmer who would kill meat for them or a oilman who would drill for oil that's made into plastic for them.
These people are in their own weird little universe, and it's quite something to see them talk candidly.
Liberal Elites vs. Reality00:01:44
Sheila, I appreciate your help on this story.
Thanks for doing, thanks for coming on the show today.
Thanks, Ezra.
All right, there you have it.
Sheila Gunread, our chief reporter and Alberta Bureau Chief.
Stay with us.
more ahead on The Rebel.
Hey, what do you think about my little story today about the CBC's advice to you that you should fly less, even for family affairs, even for family vacations?
I mean, it's one thing to tell a businessman you should use Skype, as if the CBC has any business advice, given that they lose $1.5 billion a year and would be out of work in two weeks if they didn't have the subsidy.
So getting business advice from the CBC is a joke.
But I suppose the CBC could say, hey, business people, talk by Skype instead of flying, as if business people wouldn't know how to save money and time on their own.
But the CBC's advice was have fewer family vacations.
That's their advice.
While Justin Schrudeau and Katherine McKenna tear up the world in a private jet.
You know what that is?
I mean, it's gross and it shows their sneering disrespect to citizens and taxpayers, but it's a premonition of the next three months as we head into the federal election.
Expect that kind of absolute gross non-reporting, non-accountability reporting.
The only people they hold to account in Canada are you, the voters, never laying a glove on Justin Trudeau or his team.
Expect a lot more of that as we head to the election this October.
I am so glad that we are not on Trudeau's payroll, unlike the $600 million bailout newspapers and the $1.5 million state broadcaster.
All right, folks, that's our show from today until tomorrow.