Ezra Levant outlines Rebel News’ Canadian election strategy: seven weeks of direct, grassroots reporting across 100 ridings, confronting left-wing politicians like Elizabeth May and NDP’s Ann McGrath—who called police after questioning—while exposing alleged media bias, including CBC’s $600M taxpayer-funded bailout and "shampoo questions." Their new book, The Libranos, targets Trudeau’s inner circle (Bill Morneau, Gerald Butts, Dominique LeBlanc) using unsponsored lawn signs and Jumbotron trucks to bypass subsidized mainstream coverage. Populism surges amid economic frustration—globalization’s job losses, elite-driven social policies, and uncorrected narratives like the 25% Indigenous victim claim—mirroring Michael Moore’s 2016 analysis of Trump’s appeal as a revolt against elites. Levant’s $100K+ campaign aims to challenge media orthodoxy with relentless, unfiltered scrutiny. [Automatically generated summary]
Hey there, I got a humdinger of a podcast for you today.
I am telling you my not-so-secret campaign plan for the Rebel in this election.
It is not a political campaign plan.
It is a journalistic campaign plan, and I hope you like it.
Hey, before I let you get to that, can I invite you to go to the Rebel.media slash shows and become a subscriber to our premium content.
You get the video version of this podcast.
That's the main thing.
You get Sheila Gunread's show.
You get David Menzies' show.
And of course, you get the satisfaction of helping pay our bills, which means something.
All right, here's the podcast.
You're listening to a Rebel Media Podcast.
Tonight, finally, the Canadian federal election is upon us.
And we've been planning for it here at The Rebel for months.
I'll tell you what we're going to do and how you can help.
It's September 9th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
You've got 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.
Any day now, the liberals will formally call the election, but who's kidding whom?
It's been on for months.
In recent weeks, Liberal MPs have been making dozens of spending announcements, totaling billions of dollars.
I mean, they don't even try to hide it.
They're doing what Liberals do, diverting taxpayer dollars to their friends, the people they want to make their friends.
So the electoral districts they're worried about losing and the few they think they can pick up.
And of course, the most important Liberal Party handout is to the media party, Trudeau's $600 million bailout.
Just to take the Toronto Star, for example, that one newspaper receives $115,000 a week from Trudeau a week.
That helps to understand why there's these insanely pro-Trudeau reports, even worse than normal.
A more ethical newspaper would have a disclaimer underneath any story touching on federal politics, disclosing that they receive money from Trudeau while they report about Trudeau.
Of course, it's not just the newspaper publishers who are partisan now.
Most working journalists are too.
Unifor, the giant union that represents thousands of journalists, has set up a third-party campaign group, and they're going to pour hundreds of thousands of dollars of their own journalist money into anti-conservative campaigns.
In one way, I guess it's better than using taxpayers' dollars.
They're using their own money, but in another way, it's worse.
Every journalist you see on TV reporting on the campaign has taken money from their own paycheck, given it in union news to campaign against the conservatives.
That's not disclosed after the reports either, is it?
But come on, by far the biggest contribution any journalist makes to Trudeau isn't their own cash.
It's their embarrassingly fawning questions of him or their lack of questions.
Here's my favorite example from the last campaign.
And remember, this was before the bailout.
Take a look.
The one that the entire country wants to know.
What shampoo do you use?
What a disappointing answer this is going to be.
Whatever happens to be hanging around at the time.
Oh, that is so embarrassing, but not as embarrassing as this.
Last book you've read or the book you're reading?
The just finished The Patch, which was Chris Turner's history of the oil patch.
But I'm also about to start the new Ken Follett, the third book that is the sequel to Pillars of the Earth.
That's your nerdy side?
No, that's my sci-fi.
Nerdy side.
No, no, it's not sci-fi.
It's just a sweeping historical epic, I'm sure, but I haven't started it yet.
What kind of music are you listening to right now?
If you have time.
Or podcasts?
Podcasts?
No, I don't.
I've tried.
I run regularly, and I've tried to do the podcast thing, but it hasn't really said.
I don't like people talking in my ears when I'm trying to run.
I like to sort of vibe out.
That's Rosemary Barton of the CBC state broadcaster.
She couldn't be more in love.
I swear, the way she looks at Trudeau is embarrassing.
I mentioned this because not only is Barton a CBC government journalist, she's on the panel of debate moderators in the only English language debate that Trudeau has agreed to do.
You know how bad Trudeau is at public speaking, right?
I mean, when he's off script, he's awful, like this monstrosity.
What do you and your family do to cut back on plastics?
We have recently switched to drinking water bottles out of water, out of when we have water bottles, out of a plastic, sorry, away from plastic towards paper, like drink box water bottles sort of things.
Or this, I don't know if he was high.
Remember this?
We need to ensure that we are working together with our allies to find a path forward there, because a nuclear power like North Korea that has shown a level of irresponsibility and fundamental irresponsibility.
to not use a word like crazy, which I will not use, is of real concern.
Yeah, no, Rosemary Barton thinks Justin Trudeau, Mr. Is the reincarnation of Winston Churchill.
I think the Liberals feel like they, after a pretty tough spring, have got themselves into a place where they've got the momentum.
Polls are showing them tied or slightly ahead with momentum behind them.
Some pretty good numbers in Ontario and Quebec showing up.
So on balance, I think they're saying the shorter this thing is, the better.
The fewer debates there are, the better.
The faster we can get this thing over with, the better.
But he's good at that stuff.
Like, that's the part I don't understand.
He's a good campaigner.
He's shown he's a pretty good debater.
Why not leave him the time to demonstrate that?
Yeah, so that's one of the media party moderators of the only English language debate.
Here's another one, Althea Raj.
Are you starting to get a feeling for how this election coverage is going to go?
The only person they all love more than Justin Trudeau is Elizabeth May.
And I think there's a contest on who they hate more.
Do they hate Andrew Scheer more than Maxine Bernier?
They hate Bernier because he speaks bluntly about the issues they don't want anyone to talk about, immigration, global warming, political correctness.
So they hate Maxime Bernier's candor, but they hate Andrew Scheer because he's the one whose party could actually beat Trudeau in the election.
Here's an aggregation of all the publicly available opinion polls in the election done by Eric Grenier for the CBC.
You can see Andrew Scheer is just slightly ahead of Trudeau, 33.8% to 33.5%.
Really, it's a statistical time.
So that's an average of all the polls.
But if you scroll down a bit, you'll see how Grenier predicts it will convert into seats because the liberal vote is more efficient, as they say.
Trudeau's 33.5% will likely translate into many more seats than Scheer's 33.8% because whether, I don't know, 60, 70, 80, 90% of people in any given Saskatchewan or Alberta riding vote conservative, they still only get the one seat.
Liberals, by contrast, will likely sneak through a lot of seats with just 35 or 40%.
Obviously, these poll numbers are about to change in the campaign, but right now, it's looking like a Trudeau minority.
If I'm reading his numbers right, it looks like he's predicting 162 seats for the Liberals and 140 for the Conservatives.
That's out of 338, so that's not a majority.
It's close.
But can you see what I see?
This election is volatile.
If you flip just one seat per province, from the Liberals to the Conservatives, it's pretty much a perfect tie, isn't it?
That would be 152 for the Liberals, 150 for the Conservatives.
It's just flipping one seat per province from Liberal to Conservative.
We haven't had an election that close in more than a generation.
If something were to boost one party or reduce one party by just a couple of percentage points, it could make the difference between a Trudeau majority and a Trudeau minority, or between a Trudeau minority and a sheer minority, or between a sheer minority and a sheer majority.
It's possible.
I like Maxime Bernier's policies a lot, and I like his style, I like his courage.
I wish Andrew Scheer was a lot more like him.
Hopefully, Bernier will make Andrew Scheer find some courage on at least a few key conservative issues just to stop those votes from splitting off on Scheer's right.
But really, there are only two parties that can win on October 21st, and that's Trudeau's Liberals or Scheer's Conservatives.
And it's so close, wouldn't you say?
I mean, the polls are essentially tied.
Now, we haven't seen the brutal ads from the Liberal campaign yet, or more likely, from their third-party surrogates, including American surrogates, including Unifor, the journalism union, and the 100-plus left-wing third-party campaign groups, like the 100 that campaigned for Trudeau last time.
They'll do the nastiest work against Scheer on behalf of the Liberals, so Trudeau can himself pretend to be positive.
But of course, the nastiest work will come not from any campaign group, but from the media party itself, from Rosemary Barton, from Althea Raj, from the Toronto Star, from all the U.S.-funded gutter media.
Like the three worst media in Canada are American.
Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, and Vice.
They're all hard left-wing.
Each of them has been disgraced in their own way.
It's bizarre to me that Althea Raj of that U.S.-based gutter site, Huffington Post, will be on the one English language debate panel that Trudeau does, but Bob Fife of the Globe and Mail will not be.
But that's easy to understand.
Bob Fife isn't trustworthy from Gerald Butt's point of view.
He dared to break the news about Trudeau firing Jody Wilson-Raybold over the SNC Labland scandal.
So Bob Fife cannot be trusted, and so Fife and the Globe are banned from participating in the debates.
Can you name a single scandal or piece of accountability journalism from the Huffington Post or the CBC that they've ever done about Justin Trudeau?
Yeah, me neither.
There are literally hundreds.
I don't mean dozens.
I mean hundreds of stories in the Huffington Post about how sexy Justin Trudeau is.
It's like reading 50 Shades of Gray.
Hundreds of stories.
Here's just a sample.
Just one quick mention, and never again, though, of Trudeau sexually assaulting Rose Knight in Creston, B.C. 100 about how sexy Trudeau is.
Just one story quickly buried about his sexual assault.
So yeah, get ready for seven weeks of shampoo questions and isn't he hunky.
So what should we do here at Rebel News?
What should we do?
Should we campaign against Justin Trudeau?
There are a few registered third-party campaign groups out there on the right.
They'll be outnumbered 10 to 1 by the left.
They'll be outspent 100 to 1 by the pro-Trudeau super PACs.
But should we do that?
Well, no.
Because we're not a political party.
We're not a political campaign group.
We're not members of any party here.
We're independent.
We criticize any and every party when we think they're wrong, and we praise any party when we think they're right.
Andrew Scheer, ask him.
He stopped coming on my show after I grilled him a little bit too hard about his support for mass immigration.
Yeah, I'm not a member of any party.
Our role is not to campaign as a party or like a lobby group like Unifor.
Our role is to report the news.
and give you our opinion on the news.
That's what journalism is.
And like most Canadian media, we champion causes we like.
I mean, the CBC, for example, their main causes are transgender, including for kids, and marijuana use, just going by what they publish.
The Toronto Star has socialist views hardwired right into their newspaper.
They even believe in the state control of the means of production.
That's right in their corporate bylaws in their manifesto called the Act Atkinson principle.
So we're a little bit like the Star and the CBC, but we're less extremist than the Star or the CBC, partly because we have to earn our support from Canadians every day.
The political extremism of the CBC or the Star would mean they don't have real public support.
They would go out of business without Trudeau bailing them out.
They'd just be gone.
So I guess I come back to the question, what are we going to do during this election?
We're not going to be a third-party campaign group.
That's not our style.
I think we've got a better plan, though.
We're not going to take on the Liberal Party.
That's the job of the other parties.
We're going to take on something far, far worse.
Something that's going to be much more vicious and much less honest than Trudeau.
We here at Rebel News are going to take on the media party.
The CBC, the Toronto Star, all the bailout media, all of the cat ladies of Canadian journalism who wish they were Justin Trudeau's girlfriends.
All of the U.S. clickbait gutter sites.
That's our job.
And we're going to do it by living up to our motto, telling the other side of the story.
That's our motto at Rebel News.
So what does that mean?
Well, it means we're going to do actual journalism in the field, on the street journalism.
We're going to cover up to 100 different ridings over the course of the next seven weeks.
We're not just going to give you our opinions from here in our studio.
We'll be out where the candidates are, asking them real questions.
It's something we're getting pretty good at, or more to the point, the media party is getting pretty bad at from lack of practice for them.
Let me show you a couple of examples.
This is an example from the Alberta election campaign this spring.
In this case, our reporter, Kian Bexty, was doing some real accountability journalism with an NDP candidate named Ann McGrath.
Take a look at this.
This is just a part of his video.
Hi, Anne.
Would you mind if I asked you a quick question?
Who are you?
My name is Kian.
I'm with The Rebel.
Oh, no, I'm not talking to the Rebel.
I'm wondering if you can tell me, do you regret running as a communist?
Anne McGrath's Candidacy00:15:34
I'm not talking to the Rebel.
So you don't regret running as a communist?
I'm not talking to the Rebel.
Can you tell me why you ran as a communist?
I'm not talking to the Rebel.
Do you think that the residents of Calgary Varsity know that you're a communist?
I'm not talking to the rebel.
Do you think it should be treasonous to run as a communist during the Cold War?
I think that you should be registered as a third party because you're not an actual media outlet, so I'm not talking to you.
So you don't want to tell the residents of Calgary Varsity why you ran as a communist candidate?
I'm not talking to the rebel.
The rebel is not a media organization.
Okay, well, I think that communism isn't a reasonable ideology to run under.
Do you think the capitalists should all burn stuff?
Do you think the capitalists should all burn?
Please go away.
I just want to know the answer.
It's simple questions.
Do you think that the media has given you reasonable scrutiny for your past?
Go away.
I'm not talking to the rebel.
Has any other media organization asked you?
I'm going to call the police.
Okay, we're in public, so I'm allowed to ask you these questions.
I'm not allowed to ask you questions.
Not on a sidewalk when I've told you I'm not talking to you.
This is harassment.
Harassment.
public figure and a communist who wants to represent Albertans.
This is harassment.
It's not harassment.
It's reasonable questions.
I just want to know why you're a communist.
You're calling the police because I'm asking you why you're a communist.
You're harassing me on the sidewalks.
You can go to your car.
You can leave.
Police, please.
So what happened there?
She freaked out after he asked her one question.
And I don't know if you were timing that, but it took her only about 90 seconds to go from hello to literally calling the police.
He didn't swear at her.
He didn't shout at her.
He didn't threaten her.
He didn't touch her or block her.
He just asked some accountability questions of a public person on a matter of public interest on a public sidewalk.
And she just lost her cool.
You know, I think she went a bit crazy, actually.
It is a little bit crazy to call the police on someone for doing journalism.
Some might say that's actually a little bit communist.
By the way, the police actually did come and they agreed.
Anne McGrath was a bit of a kook.
I mean, obviously, if you are following her, right, it could potentially be construed as harassment, potentially.
I'm just saying, right?
I'm not starting out like that today, right?
Obviously, if somebody asks you to leave their property and stuff like that, you have to comply and do that.
Other than that, there is nothing else but we just said we'd come talk to you.
Understood.
You were obviously down here when we drove over and they were down there, so that's totally fine.
Yeah, that video blew up in the election so much.
It was the number one most watched video in the entire Alberta election of any media outlet.
So much so that Anne McGrath felt compelled to renounce her communist past at the next all-candidates debate.
It had become such an issue.
I want to acknowledge, also, something that's come up about my youth, and I want to assure you that I am not a foggyist.
Four decades ago, when I was a young student, I was a member, and I deeply regret that.
It was a mistake, and I'm very sorry.
Incredible.
Of course, we had a little bit of fun with it too.
So I'm in the billboard truck.
I'm very excited still.
And we just left the University of Calgary.
Campus Security came and kicked us off.
Not much of a surprise.
I guess they told us that we needed to book the space.
I didn't know that you needed to book roads.
But whatever, it was kind of expected.
We're on our way to Rachel Notley's campaign stop now.
It's just outside of Calgary Varsity, but it's being co-hosted with the communist Anne McGrath.
So we're going to go park outside of the event and see if we can catch some Notley or some Notley supporters looking at the board.
So I'm standing right outside of the breadline at Rachel Notley's campaign stop here with Anne McGrath.
Oh my God, that was so much fun.
Anne McGrath, in the end, lost by just a few hundred votes on election day.
Did we do that to her?
No.
She did that to herself by being a communist, by calling the police on a journalist.
She did that.
We just did, what's that old word again?
It's so rare these days.
That's right.
We just did some journalism.
We just asked some questions.
We told the other side of the story.
Not one single media party reporter had ever asked her about her communist past.
One voters really, really wanted to know about that.
I mean, don't you think if someone is a communist or a Nazi or some cult member, something like that, it's in the public interest to know?
It's journalism to ask about it?
No other media did we did.
We told the other side of the story.
I think that's why Ann Mcgrath freaked out.
She had literally never been asked a tough question before by a journalist, ever.
So two things happened.
She was personally insulted by it and got emotional.
She, she was outraged and entitled that a mere journalist dared to ask her, the princess, a question.
So she didn't control her emotions.
And second of all, she simply had no practice answering tough questions because she had never been asked a tough question before.
Now, if you're thinking that's not journalism, oh yes, it is.
My friends, it's standard form journalism for any political figure on the right.
Think about it, the late Rob Ford, his brother Doug Ford, Jason Kenney, Stephen Harper heck, Donald Trump, anyone on the right.
That's how the media is towards them.
I remember during the fake Mike Duffy scandal when an enterprising CTV reporter got up in the dead of night to go downtown in Otta to catch Nigel Wright, who always went jogging at like 4 a.m.
That was great journalism.
But it never happens to.
Journalists on the left does it, who never have tough questions put in tough situations to them.
And and the jumbotron truck that we use there, that's just having some fun.
It's like an editorial but it's on a truck, not a newspaper.
It's fun.
The CBC does this all the time to candidates on the right.
They had a whole campaign against Stockwell Day, calling him Doris Day, remember.
The CBC even set up a fake website using Jason Kenney's own name.
It's fun when the left does it.
It's cute, it's it's journalistic humor.
It'll be fun when we do it to tell the other side of the story in this upcoming campaign, won't it?
That's journalism.
As in, we're going to provide in this election the most useful thing you can imagine, balanced coverage.
We won't be asking Trudeau to go out on any dates with us.
That's already being well covered by Rosemary Barton and Althea Ratch.
You know another one of those debate moderators, Susan Decorder.
Her brother was actually a liberal party campaign worker.
Yes, so we'll let those liberal gals cover the liberal angle and we'll tell the other side of the story through accountability journalism on the street, not just giving our opinions from the studio, not just by analyzing the events of the day that someone else covers, but by going out and putting a microphone to politicians who've never been asked a tough question before in their lives.
Remember when our Key And Becky asked Selena Cesar Chervan a basic, friendly question, it took her 90 seconds to go from hello to dropping f-bombs at him.
Take a look, are you serious?
The rebel, you're gonna come talk to me, why not?
I'm happy to speak with you, do you?
I mean, the report said that there was genocide happening.
Should we prosecute world leaders who oversee genocide?
I'm gonna, i'm gonna leave you and the rebel to come up with your own dissertation about what we'd love to hear a comment from you.
I'm sure you'll take it and you'll twist it in any way possible, but it's the truth.
Whatever you say, i'll publish the whole thing.
I'm sure i'm.
I'm sure you will.
Should we prosecute world leaders if they oversee a genocide?
I think you should be looking in your own house before looking in other houses.
I'm not committing genocide.
Do you think I'm committing genocide?
I have other stuff of perpetrating lies, doing whatever you want, inciting hate, inciting misinformation.
I don't think that helps at all either.
How did Justin Trudeau bring you back on board after he yelled at you?
What do you mean he brought me back on board?
You seem quite happy with him.
Are you expecting some sort of an appointment?
Nobody brought me back on board.
You just speak with a prime minister and let him touch you after he verbally assaults you.
I decide what I do and when I decide to do it.
Do you forgive Justin Trudeau for yelling at you?
I decide what I decide to do when I decide to do it.
And do you forgive him?
I decide what I decide to do and when I decide to do it.
Why can't you tell me?
We could do this all day.
Until he gets your office.
No, you could keep going.
You could keep going.
I really have nothing good to say to the rebel.
So I'm not sure why you're entertaining this line of questioning, but just wondering if you forgive someone who verbally assaulted you.
Anyways, how are you done?
Thanks for chatting with you.
Are you done?
Oh, the big guys here and you're done.
I mean, I can keep coming.
Did you just call me a pussy?
Wow.
Now, she's out of politics.
She was fired by Trudeau, so she's a lame duck.
But imagine if, in the middle of the campaign, some other liberal candidate, someone just totally lost their mind like that, swearing, shouting, abusing, whatever.
Imagine if Trudeau himself did that.
You don't actually have to imagine.
He loses his cool all the time.
People like Joshi Garrow are celebrating their birthday poisoning.
You see it?
You addressing this world?
Thank you for being here.
Thank you very much for your donation tonight.
I really appreciate the donation to the Liberty Party of Canada.
Kean's great at asking those questions, and he's not the only one on our team who does.
Here's my friend David Menzies.
Just by chance, he bummed into a Liberal MP.
Just a deer in the headlines.
Look at this dopey guy.
What brings you out to the Walk with Israel, Mr. Lovett?
Pardon me?
Sorry?
Yep, not interested in doing media at this point.
Thank you.
How do you feel about the fact that Justin Trudeau made two commemorations about the Holocaust and never mentioned the Jewish victims of it?
Do you stand by your prime minister?
We're here today celebrating Canada-the Canada-Israel relationship, and that's what we're going to do proudly and strongly.
Ouch, that was cringeworthy.
So here's what I mean.
Here's what we're going to do.
Our five journalists, we're all going to hit the road.
And the airways.
We're going to cover candidates across the country, even the far north.
We're going to show up for Trudeau events and for his cabinet ministers and for his no-name backbenchers.
And we're going to ask accountability questions that they have never been asked before.
It's journalism.
It's not campaigning.
But no one's ever done that kind of journalism before.
Now, some will answer well.
Some will run away and some will lose their cool.
Outrageous, anyone dare ask some questions.
I mean, the CBC never does.
It's outrageous anyone would.
Didn't we buy you off?
Hey, didn't we pay you off?
Isn't 600 million enough?
Of course, we're not just grilling the liberals.
Don't you think that kooky green party needs some questions asked of them?
Do you guys remember the Steve song?
Welcome back.
Who knew Cotter was spelled K-H-A-D-R?
Welcome back to Omar Cotter.
It matters to say it.
Welcome back, Omar Cotter.
You're home.
Does it strike the race?
I didn't take my time.
No, you didn't.
There's a lot unusual about your speech list, but we're going to take off.
Omar Cottery, you've got more class in the whole f ⁇ ing cabinet.
Thank you.
Yeah, not her finest moment.
Elizabeth May herself, but also her insane candidates.
They're never scrutinized by the media, never.
It's almost cruel to scrum Jagmeet Singh.
Other than a pretty face, there's not a lot of there there.
But that's the point.
Other than that one interview that Terry Malewski once did with him asking about his support for Sikh extremists, I've never seen him asked a tough question ever.
I think he should be.
As should Andrew Scheer and Maxime Bernier.
We'll ask everyone tough questions.
We always do.
But look, asking Shear and Bernier tough questions is pretty well covered by the media party right now, don't you think?
I mean, they scrum Bernier and Scheer all the time with gotcha questions, with personal attacks, with smears, with digging up things they said 20 years ago.
I mean, look, we'll put real questions to those guys too.
I have myself.
But the real void in this election isn't going to be a lack of questions for the candidates on the right.
It's going to be a lack of accountability questions for candidates on the left.
We at the Rebel tell the other side of the story.
That's our motto.
And we will fill in those gaps in this election.
So that's the biggest part of our plan.
I expect in the next seven weeks, our journalists will collectively cover up to 100 ridings across the country.
I expect we will make up to 100 flights amongst all of us.
From Newfoundland to Vancouver Island, from Whitehorse to Montreal, everywhere in between.
Real questions, looking for real answers.
Look at this one.
Look at this one.
Minister, could I grab you for a quick question, please?
David Menzies, wearable media.
Minister?
Sir, can I just grab you for a quick question on a clarification point?
Just trying to find out, does it mean that the legal rights of migrants that are being given in the compact are already in Kinesi?
Well, sir, we actually tried to...
It's a private room.
Private room.
Well, we tried.
Oh, that was embarrassing.
I think Eyman Hussen is generally genuinely terrified of David Menzies.
Well, who could be scared of David Menzies?
What's he going to do?
Give you a big old hug to death?
Come on.
Or look at this.
Kent Hare, the sexual predator, the liberal in Calgary, Trudeau's sexual predator, liberal.
I'm serious.
He was kicked out of the cabinet for sexual misconduct.
He's still running for the Liberals.
Look at him trying to speed away from Key in his wheelchair.
Oh, that's cringeworthy.
Or here's my friend Sheila Gunnreid, who followed Christia Freeland all the way to London, England to ask this question.
Minister Freeland, all of our reporters have been blocked by the United Nations preventing us from reporting at any of their conferences, both the COP climate change conferences and at the Migration Pact Conference.
Lawn Signs and Books00:11:35
We know through writing, the UN confirmed to us that that was done at the request of the Canadian government.
We also know that your government has met with our competitors in the Parliamentary Press Gallery to block our organization from reporting on events organized and managed by the Parliamentary Press Gallery.
Your government has also been admonished by the Information Commissioner, the Privy Council office in particular, that we're blocking our access to information requests into the Prime Minister's office.
What are you going to do tangibly to change that when you get home?
Yeah, that's the stuff.
That's the stuff.
Have you ever seen Christy Friedland ask the tough question before?
You have not.
I want our reporters to travel non-stop.
A seven-week sprint.
Nobody working from the office.
Everyone working from the hustings.
Like the candidates.
That's where they are.
I want us to be the most interesting journalists in the campaign.
I don't want our people riding the official campaign bus for any party.
Why?
So we can be spoon-fed talking points in a controlled situation by Gerald Butz or whoever the equivalent of Gerald Butts is on the Conservatives or the NDP.
I want the authenticity of asking real questions when we want to ask them, not when Gerald Butts approves.
And I want to hear the raw answers, whether it's calling the police or calling us names.
And I want Canadians to see that.
What do you think?
Do you think that'll be valuable?
Five rebels asking questions every day.
And I mean real questions, not the kind of, what kind of shampoo questions that we've been getting lately.
And I want to talk to Canadians too.
I don't want to just talk to the pundits.
I want to talk to real Canadians to hear from them.
To do streeters, as we call them, asking the man on the street what they really think.
I don't care what the left-wing pollsters and pundits on the CBC and CTV lobbyists panel think.
I know what they think.
They all agree.
Omar Carter is the real victim.
A carbon tax is a good idea, at least for the little people.
If you oppose open borders immigration, you're probably a racist, et cetera, et cetera.
No, no, no, no.
I also want to talk to real Canadian, severely normal people.
So I want to roll out more of those Jumbotron trucks to get the conversation going.
We love doing those.
And I want to do something that should have been done four years ago, but wasn't.
I want to vet Canada's prime minister.
And I have.
I vetted him and his whole team through the lens of corruption.
And so I'm pleased to announce to you, my friends, a new book called The Libranos, What the Media Won't Tell You About Justin Trudeau's Corruption.
It's a quick read.
The paperback version is only 138 pages.
Or you can get the e-book if you prefer, read it on your Kindle, whatever.
It has the collected facts about Trudeau and his corrupt team, from corrupt Bill Mourneau to corrupt Gerald Butts to corrupt Dominique LeBlanc, all the crooks, all the Libranos, as we call them, all the facts the CBC doesn't want to tell you because they're worried if they tell you, they'll have their subsidy cut off.
And you know, I want to spread the word about the book through these lawn signs.
We've ordered lawn signs, folks, just like we did for Sheila Gunnreed's book about the Alberta election called Stop Notly.
Look, when I used to write books like Ethical Oil, every media outlet in the country interviewed me about the book.
My books were reviewed widely.
That's not going to happen here.
If any media party journalists were to review my book, even negatively, even to mention my book, they would risk losing their bailout subsidy.
It's just a fact.
So we need a 100% grassroots citizen-based marketing strategy to spread the word about Trudeau and his Libranos.
That's where the lawn signs come in.
They're not party ads.
They don't promote one party or another.
They promote the book.
But they're perfect for anyone who wants to show their opinions about the first prime minister in Canadian history to be convicted of breaking the law, not once, but on five counts.
So that's our campaign plan.
Not a political campaign.
It's a journalistic campaign.
A plan to tell the other side of the story.
Our competitors are not the liberals.
Our competitors are the media party.
And our advantage is we are not bought off by any of the political parties like they are.
We can be honest.
We can be independent.
And so we are going to swarm the campaign trail.
We're going to crisscross the country.
We're going to scrum politicians on the streets at the doors.
We're not going to be managed and scripted like the government journalists at the CBC.
And I promise you, I will not go on any dates with Justin Trudeau like Rosemary Barton did.
Boy, she's in love.
I think we'll make a big difference, don't you?
Dozens of great in-the-field reports, Jumbotron billboard trucks to build buzz about our coverage and to stimulate a national conversation like Jessica Svitonevsky did here with our fake feminist billboard.
She parked it right outside a Liberal Party fundraiser.
That's a good idea, right?
And the book.
We've published, I don't know, about five books so far here at The Rebel.
Every single one of them has been a bestseller, despite none of them being reviewed by the fancy media.
We actually don't need their help.
We'll promote the book ourselves.
And we have lawn signs promoting the book.
It's a real book, real journalism.
There are other books out there about Justin Trudeau right now.
Did you know that the CBC's government journalist named Aaron Warry has just pumped out a book about Trudeau?
I thought it would actually be called 50 Shades of Gray or something, giving Wary's affection.
I'm serious.
Remember Aaron Warry?
He was the actual CBC journalist who flew to Davos on the taxpayer's dime with the CBC to write stories about Justin Trudeau's socks.
I'm not kidding.
Aaron Warry was the sock journalist.
So there's a bunch of Trudeau books out there by the bailout media.
My book, The Lobranos, is the only one not subsidized by the subject of the book, Trudeau himself.
I predict we will sell more copies of The Labranos without any government subsidies than those love letters published by the media party.
That's my prediction.
So that's our plan.
Flying and driving journalists around the country non-stop for seven weeks, but not telling the political parties where we'll be on any given day.
Jumbotron trucks to get the conversation going on main streets across the country.
A 138-page book with everything you need to know about Trudeau that the CBC won't tell you.
And thousands and thousands of fun lawn signs that you can put right on your own front step.
That's the Rebels campaign plan, not a political campaign plan, a journalistic campaign plan.
Our budget is just over $100,000.
And we've quietly, we're quietly raising that throughout the summer from Canadians who want to help us.
We still need to raise close to six figures for the lawn signs, for the Jumbotron trucks, mainly though to help cover the cost of crisscrossing Canada.
I mean, besides the airfare, our journalists on the road need car rentals, motels, things like that.
Five journalists, seven weeks, 20 Jumbotron trucks, one best-selling book, 20,000 lawn signs if we need that many.
And 37 million Canadians sick not only of Canada's political establishment, but the suck-ups in the media party too.
Do you like the plan?
Do you like that campaign plan, that journalistic campaign plan?
If so, I'd appreciate your help.
We'll publish our final budget after the campaign is over for full disclosure.
The main costs will be travel.
Look, if you donate your money to a political party, you're limited in what you can give.
And only individuals can give.
Companies can't donate.
We're not a political party.
We're not a super PAC.
We're just journalists.
We won't be campaigning politically.
We'll be journalisming.
We'll be asking accountability questions of all the parties.
We'll be talking about all the issues, and we'll be having a lot of fun.
We can't give you a political party tax receipt, but we can promise you we'll make more of a difference dollar for dollar than any other group out there because we are 100% independent.
So help us out if you can.
We need around $100,000.
The reason I'm not being precise is because if we don't raise it all, we'll do less.
But if we raise more, we'll do more.
I'd like to raise $100,000 for our full TILT campaign.
We sure could use your help.
We'll publish the full budget afterwards so you can inspect it.
Look, you already pay for the CBC and the Toronto store unwillingly.
Trudeau forces you to through your taxes.
If you want to voluntarily help us out, I'd be grateful.
And in return, I promise you the best journalism in Canada.
Thanks.
Please go to Campaign2019.com to help.
Well, speaking of elections, there's something that I think every one of the parties, except perhaps Maxime Bernier's People's Party, wants to tamp down, and that's populism.
People who reject the entire system, the entire game, not just a player in the game.
And joining us now to talk about it is the author of a column in the Edmonton Sun called Political Correctness is More Fuel for Populism, our friend Lauren Gunter, who joins us now via Skype.
Going, great to see you again.
Good to see you.
Well, thanks very much.
Why don't you take us through your column a little bit?
You start off by referring to Sean Speer, who used to be an advisor to Stephen Harper, and he wrote a bit of a warning.
Why don't you tell us what that warning is and how it might apply to Canada?
Well, first of all, Speer said that if you leave a whole class of people behind economically, when you expand your economy or you move your economy in a new direction, that class of people are going to perhaps rebel.
And that's the source of an awful lot of thinking now on populism: is that people who are left behind by globalization, lots of times assembly line workers, sometimes people who work in farming and other manual labor, they got left behind because we moved jobs overseas, we moved production overseas to where labor was cheaper.
They were forgotten.
And part of Donald Trump's victory in the United States, part of the Brexit victory in the UK, both come from people who are marginalized or dislocated by globalization.
So I think Spear is right there.
But I think another thing goes back to something that goes back to even something you wrote almost 15 years ago in the war on fun.
Petty Nagging and Preaching00:03:06
It's all of this petty nagging and preaching and hectoring from elites that you don't eat properly, you don't use the right pronouns, you aren't sensitive enough to this group or that group.
And on and on, our straws are choking turtles in the ocean.
On and on and on.
Nothing that ordinary people do is good enough or right for people in the enlightened elite, the people who see themselves as benighted and above the rest of us.
And I think after a while, those drip, drip, drip messages that you don't commute properly, you should be on transit, not in your own car.
You should be on a bicycle rather than your own pickup truck.
On and on and on.
After a while, that fuels populism too, because people just get tired of being nagged and they say, you know, enough's enough.
And I don't like the system anymore.
Yeah.
You're so right.
I just can't help notice that the latest thing from the establishment, and I'm using that word generically, is don't eat meat.
Let's all become vegetarians or even, and I know it's insane, but I'm seeing it everywhere, this crazy call to eat bugs, to eat bugs.
And I can assure you, I mean, I have visited the United Nations in New York before.
I have never seen such a lavish, like it is exquisite.
They wouldn't eat any cut of meat other than the filet.
I mean, these are, they have five-star meals, the finest wines.
Absolutely.
And that, I think it's that we know they don't mean it for themselves, but they mean it for us.
It was the same thing about don't fly, don't commute.
We got Megan Markle, who took four private jet flights in 11 days, telling us that we got to drive less or vacation less.
It's not just the insanity, it's that they're not even pretending they're doing it too.
No, exactly.
Google had a conference on Sicily by private invitation only to discuss the environment.
300 invitees brought 144 private jets.
Like, you know, spare me, please.
Please, just stop telling me these things.
And I think that's part of the populism too.
It is economic dislocation.
If you don't worry about your job being cut, if you don't worry about where your next paycheck's going to come from, you're happy with your house, you're happy with your vacation every year.
Maybe some of those other things, the political correctness things don't bother you.
But as soon as you are also being pressured on the economic side, then boy, it's extra hard to take that self-smugness from elites that, you know, oh my goodness, well, French fries are just awful.
You have a bag of fries every once in a while because it's a nice relief from the stresses of your everyday.
Economic Dislocation Matters00:02:03
You don't need some skinny dietician who thinks a rice cake is a sufficient meal to nag at you with a little pinched face and say, oh my goodness, you're not doing the right thing.
And after a while, being told again and again, being told that your concern about the levels of illegal immigration into the country are nothing but racism, after a while, you just say, no, it's not.
Like there's a legitimate reason to debate this, to talk about whether or not this is a good idea, a bad idea.
Maybe you can convince me it's a good idea.
But it's not wrong to ask the question.
Another thing that came up last week, and I've written about it, it'll appear in papers either today in some places or tomorrow in other places, is the missing and murdered Indigenous girls, women and girls.
They jiggered the numbers, right?
They said repeatedly in their report that 25% of murder victims in Canada were Indigenous women and girls.
It turns out it's closer to 6%.
And while that's still disproportionate because they're 4% of the population, it's a 1.5% disparity, 1.5 times disparity, as opposed to a 7 times disparity.
So again and again and again, these sorts of things.
Then when they're informed that there's this error, a huge error in their report, which is the basis of their claim that the rest of us commit genocide against indigenous women and girls, they say, oh, it doesn't matter because it's really an important problem.
So it doesn't matter whether the numbers are right or not.
What matters is we've identified the problem.
That's the kind of elitist, smug thinking that I think is fueling populism.
You know, you covered a lot of ground there, but you made me for a second think about when our young reporter Kian Becky went to the opening of Chick-fil-A in Toronto late last week.
There was two competing groups protesting.
Elite Smugness Fuels Populism00:03:48
There was a vegan, like a vegetarian extremist group, and then there was an extremist gay group because there were a lot of gay folks in line to get their chicken.
Keon interviewed a ton of people.
It was every color, every race, every religion.
He bumped into a gay, engaged couple who said, we're just here for the chicken.
And what a contrast between the severely normal people in line around the block and this small group of shouting, hectoring activists, by the way, at odds with each other, the gay rights activists and the vegetarian activists.
And everyone in line was sort of saying, shut up, I'm sick of you, including people of every minority that are supposed to be outraged by this chicken sandwich.
I thought it was a hilarious video, but I think it sort of made your point.
There's an American stand-up comedian, and I'm sorry, I don't, the name doesn't come to me off the top of my head, but he has this thing about, well, you know, Chick-fil-A came to my town and I decided, given their political and religious views, that I just could not put up with their chicken sandwiches.
I vowed that I would boycott their chicken sandwich.
I still get the nuggets, of course.
That's a good one.
You know, it does come down to economics, I think, because a lot of these things they'll enforce through a regulation or a tax or a ban, or if you get too far off, they'll try and hound you out of your job or boycott your company.
So even though social things have an economic angle to them, let me tell you an example from the UK.
You mentioned the UK, and I think you're so right.
Brexit was a lot of people who were what I call the forgotten people.
I'm not the first to use that term.
There's a progressive Muslim who used to be quite radical, but now is a real liberal.
His name is Majid Nawaz.
I think he's very thoughtful.
And he's sort of a frenemy of our buddy Tommy Robinson.
And he said, look, because the rest of us were so politically correct, we didn't allow anyone to talk about these rape gangs.
And so Tommy filled the void.
And it's us who should have been having a conversation when we shut the conversation down.
Why are you surprised that Tommy took it over?
And I think that's what's happening in Canada on immigration, on global warming, on carbon taxes, on paying Omar Qader, on a whole barrel of issues.
You're not allowed to talk about it.
You're not allowed.
Maxime Bernier, whatever else you think of him, he's been banned from the debates, but not the Green Party or the bloc.
Everything's cut off.
And you know what?
You do that for a while and people say, fine, then I'm going to go embrace someone who will let me talk about it.
You're actually driving people out of the establishment towards radicalism.
I think that's true.
And unfortunately, you can do that for so long that you drive people right over to a kind of populism or nationalism or racism that you don't want.
But because you've shut everybody else up, that's what frustrated people have left.
And that's really frightening.
You know, it's interesting in this whole globalization debate that globalization has worked in a lot of ways.
It has worked for a lot of people.
Back in the early 90s, the G7 countries controlled about 70% of the GDP in the world, and the developing countries, less than 20%.
Globalization's Unequal Boats00:05:16
Now the two groups are quite equal.
And so that doesn't mean that people in developing countries are as rich as people in G7, but it really has shown that globalization has helped lift a lot of boats.
But what we forget is in our rush to say it's a good thing is that there are an awful lot of really good people whose lives are not as good as they were 25 years ago as a result of globalization.
And then to even discuss that becomes forbidden.
And that's where the frustration begins.
And it really has become an important political issue.
Yeah.
We started by talking about Stephen Harper and his staff.
And I've seen Harper make this point himself.
I'd like to close with an extended clip.
So Lorna, I want to thank you for joining.
I really appreciated your column.
I like how you link both the economics and the social issues.
I'm going to close with a clip I've shown our viewers before.
It's from 2016.
And of all people, it's from Michael Moore, the schleppy far-left Democrat filmmaker activist.
But here he is, before anyone thought Trump would win, outlining why he thought Trump would win.
Not necessarily why he liked Trump, but why Trump was talking to America's forgotten people.
And when I saw this video three and a half years ago, I thought, oh my God, this is how Donald Trump will win, by talking to the forgotten men.
So Lorna, I want to thank you here, and I want to leave our viewers with this extended clip from Michael Moore that really opened my eyes.
So thanks for joining us today, my friend.
You bet.
All right, here it is.
And here's Michael Moore, which is a strange way to end, but you'll see my point.
Take a look.
Because I know a lot of people in Michigan that are planning to vote for Trump.
And they're not, they don't necessarily like him that much.
And they don't necessarily agree with him.
They're not racist and rednecks.
They're actually pretty decent people.
And so I wanted to sort of, after talking to a number of them, I wanted to sort of, I wanted to write this.
Donald Trump came to the Detroit Economic Club and stood there in front of the Ford Motor executives and said, if you close these factories as you're planning to do in Detroit and build them in Mexico, I'm going to put a 35% tariff on those cars when you send it back and nobody's going to buy them.
It was an amazing thing to see.
No politician, Republican or Democrat, had ever said anything like that to these executives.
And it was music to the ears of people in Michigan and Ohio and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the Brexit states.
You live here in Ohio, you know what I'm talking about.
Whether Trump means it or not is kind of irrelevant because he's saying the things to people who are hurting.
And it's why every beaten-down, nameless, forgotten working stiff who used to be part of what was called the middle class loves Trump.
He is the human Molotov cocktail that they've been waiting for.
The human hand grenade that they can legally throw into the system that stole their lives from them.
And on November 8th, Election Day, although they've lost their jobs, although they've been foreclosed on by the bank, next came the divorce, and now the wife and kids are gone, the car's been repoed, they haven't had a real vacation in years, they're stuck with the shitty Obamacare bronze plan where you can't even get a f ⁇ ing Percocet.
They've essentially lost everything they had except one thing.
The one thing that doesn't cost them a cent and is guaranteed to them by the American Constitution, the right to vote.
They might be penniless, they might be homeless, they might be f ⁇ ed over and f ⁇ ed up.
It doesn't matter because it's equalized on that day.
A millionaire has the same number of votes as the person without a job.
One.
And there's more of the former middle class than there are in the millionaire class.
So on November 8th, the dispossessed will walk into the voting booth, be handed a ballot, close the curtain, and take that lever or felt pen or touchscreen and put a big fing X in the box by the name of the man who has threatened to upend and overturn the very system that has ruined their lives.
Donald J. Trump.
They see that the elites who ruined their lives hate Trump.
Corporate America hates Trump.
Wall Street hates Trump.
The career politicians hate Trump.
The media hates Trump after they loved him and created him and now hate him.
Trump's Biggest F You00:01:27
Thank you, media.
The enemy of my enemy is who I'm voting for on November 8th.
Yes, on November 8th, you, Joe Blow, Steve Blow, Bob Blow, Billy Blow, Billy Bob Blow, all the blows, get to go and blow up the whole system because it's your right.
Trump's election is going to be the biggest f you ever recorded in human history.
And it will feel good.
Hey, what do you think of my campaign plan?
It's not a political campaign plan.
We're not going to be door knocking.
We're not going to be handing out leaflets for one candidate or the other.
We are going to be journalisming.
And what I mean by that is asking accountability questions where none have been asked so far.
We tested it out in Alberta and it went great.
I want to expand that nationwide.
Instead of doing it by car, I want to do it by plane.
Instead of doing one or two ridings, I want to do dozens, maybe a hundred.
You can find out more by going to campaign2019.com.