The U.S. became a net oil exporter for four weeks, sending 138,000 barrels/day to Quebec amid Canada’s pipeline bans—like Northern Gateway and Energy East—driven by lobby groups like WWF, whose former president, Gerald Butts, now advises Trudeau. Meanwhile, Texas and Pennsylvania fracking booms created 200,000 jobs, reviving industry while Canada’s oil sector stagnates under regulatory hurdles. The episode also critiques cancel culture, highlighting the Toronto Public Library’s decision to host Megan Murphy (a TERF) on October 29th, despite protests, and compares it to past deplatforming cases like Ezra Levant and Barbara Kay’s analysis of Murphy’s marginalization. A November 14th Calgary talk by Ford, Shepard, and the speaker will address activist intimidation, with legal threats against venues and protesters. The decline of open debate, fueled by virtual mobs on platforms like Twitter, underscores how political correctness now silences mainstream dissent. [Automatically generated summary]
Today I tell you great news if you're an American.
Sad news if you're a Canadian.
Did you know that for four weeks in a row now the United States has exported more crude oil and petroleum products than they have imported?
They are a net exporter and they're only getting started.
They are our chief competitor now.
They're going to sell oil to the world while we can't even get a pipeline built.
Oh.
And they're selling oil to Quebec, 138,000 barrels a day.
I'll go through the details for you.
Hey, before I do, please consider becoming a premium subscriber.
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Okay, here's the podcast.
Tonight, America is now a net oil exporter and Quebec is one of its major customers.
It's October 24th and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say to the government will water publisher is because it's my bloody right to do so.
I almost can't believe it.
The United States is a net exporter of oil.
When I wrote my book, Ethical Oil, not even a decade ago, that seemed impossible.
America was importing about half of its oil needs every day.
Canada was the biggest and best source, but after that and some oil from Mexico, it was pretty much awful dictatorships all the way down.
Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, just awful places.
Not only was that sending American money to those evil regimes, but it hobbled America's political maneuverability.
How can you ever get tough with Venezuela if you're buying a million barrels of oil a day from them and of course sending them tens of millions of dollars a day for that oil?
How are you going to put sanctions on someone like that if that's what you wanted to do?
That's why I thought the oil sands were such a great solution to the U.S. energy problem.
Keep all that money here in North America with friends.
And of course, there are so many American companies invested in the oil sands.
It's really almost like paying themselves win-win-win.
But foreign-funded anti-oil lobby groups, well, they were the ones winning.
Those lobby groups included the World Wildlife Fund, whose president was Gerald Butts.
You can see the World Wildlife Fund on the list of front groups that were funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund in this anti-oil sands campaign plan from 2008.
This is one slide from the campaign plan.
Here's another slide.
You can see their plans to block various Canadian pipelines.
And you remember the president of the World Wildlife Fund and what he had to say, right?
We think that the oil sands have been expanded too rapidly without a serious plan for environmental remediation in the first place.
So that's why we don't think it's up to us to decide whether there should be another route for a pipeline.
Because the real alternative is not an alternative route.
It's an alternative economy.
Well, you know how that story ends.
Gerald Butts went on to become the principal secretary to Justin Trudeau, his rasputin-like figure.
Butts also hired a bunch of other Rockefeller Brother Fund lobbyists from that same tar sands campaign group to be the chiefs of staff in Canadian Energy Department, the Canadian Environment Department.
So there was no need for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund to lobby the government anymore because they staffed the government now with Gerald Butts at the top.
And thus the Northern Gateway pipeline was killed by Trudeau, even though it had already passed environmental reviews.
The Energy East pipeline was killed because Trudeau changed the rules governing the application.
He killed it.
Two big pipelines.
And if that wasn't enough, Bill C-48 banned tanker traffic off the coast of BC just for another layer of the blockade, but only off the west coast.
Saudi oil tankers are still welcome to arrive on the East Coast sale right off the St. Lawrence Seaway, right into Montreal.
Oh, and any new oil sands facilities themselves must now pass the gender tests in Bill C-69.
So yeah, that's us in Canada.
We elected a blackface drama teacher, Groper, as prime minister, and he handed over the keys to the American-funded anti-oil sands lobbyists.
And it's still going.
Get this.
Yesterday, Justin Trudeau pretended to be in listening mode towards Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Why do you think that your party got totally wiped out in Alberta and Saskatchewan in this election?
I think there's a lot of thinking to do on that and a lot of listening to Albertans, as I have endeavored to do over the past number of years.
But obviously, I'm going to have to do a lot more to ensure that not, you know, why did this happen is not the central issue we have.
The central issue for me is how do we move forward in a way that responds to the concerns that Albertans and Saskatchewanians have clearly expressed.
Yeah, did you actually believe that?
Here's what Trudeau's star candidate, his star MP in Quebec, Stephen Gilbeau, tweeted today, a day after those crocodile tears.
He says, may I remind Premier Scott Moe of Saskatchewan that 70% of Canadians just voted for parties that support carbon pricing.
Oh, and by the way, haha, you lost twice in the courts.
Moe calls for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to cancel the federal carbon tax.
In your face, Saskatchewan.
So I guess we know who's in charge of winning over Alberta and Saskatchewan in the new Liberal government.
By the way, I've read the Bloc Québécois support for carbon pricing.
I read their policy platform.
They actually use a different phrase in carbon tax.
Do you see it at the top there?
Para question verte?
That means green equalization.
Now, I've read this in my weak French, and then I translated it into English.
And yeah, the Bloc Québécois, which is now the third largest party in parliament, they do believe that there should be a carbon tax.
They sure do, you bet.
But only on other provinces.
They say only above-average emission provinces like Alberta and Saskatchewan should pay the carbon tax, and the rest of the money should go to Quebec in green equalization.
I'm serious.
So yeah, they support a carbon tax, but only on the West.
And they want all the revenue too.
I'm not even kidding.
You can check it out yourself.
So that's us up here in Canada.
That's what became of our great opportunity.
How about the United States?
Well, here's a hint of how their leader treats their oil and gas workers.
Here he is talking in Pittsburgh, talking to their booming fracking industry, which is primarily natural gas.
It's created 200,000 jobs, huge source of natural gas.
Say, look.
American energy belongs to hardworking men and women like you who get up every day and make this country run.
Today, I'm proud to declare that I've delivered on every single promise I made to this conference three years ago and much, much more.
Everyone.
Yeah, what a difference.
It saved that state of Pennsylvania, by the way.
They were shutting down coal and steel.
It was looking like a disaster.
It was like right out of one of those sad Springsteen songs about shutting down the old mill.
But then fracking and natural gas came right in the nick of time.
200,000 jobs in Pennsylvania alone.
And by the way, lower natural gas prices for everyone in the state, too, which also means lower electricity prices since their power plants use natural gas.
I'm a bit jealous, aren't you?
They're literally building new factories in Pennsylvania.
I've seen it with my own eyes.
And factories are actually coming home to America from foreign countries in part because the energy is so cheap.
But look at this.
Look at this news here.
This is from an analyst in the Department of Energy.
For the first time ever, the U.S. became a net total petroleum exporter on a four-week average basis.
In the week ending October 18th, the era of U.S. net petroleum exports has begun, or at least is highly likely to.
And do you see that chart there?
What it means is that the U.S. didn't just have one special day where it exported more oil than it imported.
That's now normal now.
That's happened four weeks in a row now.
The United States, far from importing half its oil as it did when I wrote Ethical Oil a few years back, it's now sending out oil into the world on a net basis.
Yeah, sure, it still imports some oil, especially from Canada.
I mean, wouldn't you?
Because we have no pipelines to the sea, so we can't sell our oil to anyone else except for the Americans.
So that's called the monopsony.
When there's only one customer, we have to sell our oil at a massive discount to world prices, sometimes as much as $35 a barrel, less than the world price.
So we sell oil to the United States at below world prices, and they sell their oil to the world at world prices.
They're smart.
We're dumb.
In fact, and this is so incredible, we actually buy their oil at world prices, more of it all the time.
Look at this chart by the U.S. Department of Energy also.
That's U.S. exports to Canada, to Canada.
How is it possible that that's growing with the advent of our oil sands?
The oil sands really kicked into high gear around 2004.
And I'd say they were sort of at maximum velocity 10 years later, 2014.
Can you put that chart up just for another second?
But the pipelines were delayed and delayed and delayed and banned and blocked.
And look at that, record oil imports from America to Canada.
While U.S. fracked oil got stronger and stronger and stronger, and they took advantage of the market.
Now they ship their oil up here by train primarily.
That's what blew up in Lac Megantique, Quebec.
Look at those oil cars.
There's a train full of fracked oil coming into Quebec from the United States.
I got nothing against America.
I got nothing against trains, and I got nothing against fracking.
I love all three.
I'm just telling you what it was that blew up.
I've never heard of a pipeline blowing up, and certainly not in the middle of a city.
Hey, but that's Quebec's choice.
They prefer American oil to Alberta oil.
They're the biggest importers of foreign oil in our country, by the way.
Here's a report from Canada's energy regulator.
Scroll down a bit.
You can see we import most of our oil imports from America.
That's the dark blue.
But Saudi Arabia is next.
That's the light blue.
And then that orange is Azerbaijan, if you can believe it.
Can you imagine that Canada, with the third largest reserves in the world, the oil sands, is importing any oil from Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan?
Can you find it on a map?
Do you know where Azerbaijan is?
It's that obscure country.
It's landlocked to the world.
It's on the Caspian Sea, but that's not part of the oceans.
The Caspian Sea is actually a lake.
It's a big, salty lake, but it's landlocked.
How on earth is it easier and cheaper?
And how does it even happen that oil gets from Azerbaijan to the ocean and then to Quebec from literally the opposite side of the world as opposed to us just bringing it in from Alberta on a safe high-tech pipe?
Well, because Quebec politicians and Ottawa politicians hate Alberta oil.
They don't hate oil, just Alberta oil.
Scroll down a little bit more on that same chart.
Scroll down to the importers of oil by province.
Now, New Brunswick actually imports the most, but just to the refinery.
They then disperse that oil to the rest of the country.
That bar chart shows the total foreign oil imports by province.
So you can see New Brunswick.
That's where the Irving Refinery is.
They love their Saudi oil and their Azeri oil.
That's what you call oil from Azerbaijan.
Can't get enough of this stuff.
The gray bars is the foreign stuff.
The blue is U.S. oil.
Quebec is the biggest importer of U.S. oil.
See that?
138,000 barrels a day, the dark blue.
That's up from 108,000 barrels a day the year earlier.
They can't get enough of that Donald Trump oil.
They love American oil.
And they love their Saudi oil too.
Isn't that funny?
The province that brought in Bill 21, the province that's banning niqabs in the public service, they're buying Sharia oil from Saudis and Azeris, as well as their Trump oil.
Not Alberta.
I mean, and America is not importing Saudi oil that much.
They still do import some foreign oil, including from us in Canada.
Like I say, they buy our Canadian oil at a discount and sell it right back to us at full price.
Texas Pipelines Expansion00:02:25
They're not dumb.
But they're now competing against us for oil exports around the world.
I showed you a clip of Trump in Pennsylvania.
Look at this from the New York Times.
Look what he's doing in Texas.
And look at this map in the Wall Street Journal.
Look at the pipelines they're building in Texas.
Where are those pipelines going?
They're going to the sea.
They're going to the sea.
They're exporting.
They're pumping as much oil in Texas as they are in Alberta now.
You don't take oil to the sea if you're planning to bring it to California or New York.
That is oil that will be put on a tanker ship and will go to Europe or India or Japan or maybe even China, wherever.
They'll be there first with their oil exports, just like they'll be there first with their fracked natural gas, LNG, liquefied natural gas, while we're busy shutting it all down in Canada.
You know, you see sometimes some conspiracy theory shows on TV, who killed the Avro Arrow?
That was going to be the Canadian fighter jet that would dominate the world, or who killed the electric car.
Well, probably nobody did.
We've got Teslas, and they don't really work that great.
But both of those questions are rooted in head scratchers.
Why aren't these great ideas happening, right?
Probably good reasons for both.
I'm not an expert, but I think I'm almost an expert on oil and pipelines and politics.
And I know this.
The world used more oil today than it did last year.
And it's going to use more oil next year than it did today.
And that's going to keep going for the foreseeable future as China and India buy their cars.
America is who's going to produce it and ship it and get rich off it.
While our blackface groper and his virtue signalers carbon tax our own oil industry to death.
Gee, why on earth would Alberta separatism be flourishing?
Stay with us for more.
Defending Female Rights00:05:29
Welcome back.
Well, deplatforming is the new approach of the left.
They don't really believe in debating.
That's too hard.
And, you know, you might not win a debate.
So why not ban the other side from even speaking, denormalize them, deplatform them, shut them up, remove them from the Overton window of possible ideas?
Well, amazingly, that has come to the Toronto Public Libraries, and the Toronto Public Libraries have stood for free speech.
Now, 10 years ago, that would have been so obvious, but these days, it's very refreshing.
And here to tell us about the case that has put the Toronto Public Library on the front lines of political free expression is our friend Barbara Kaye, who has a column about the subject in today's National Post.
Barbara, great to see you again on this very important subject.
Yes, thanks for having me, Ezra.
It is an important subject for sure.
Well, I really enjoyed your article.
Let me read the title and encourage our viewers to check it out.
It's called How Feminist Megan Murphy Fell Victim to Progressives' Double Standards.
And that's the thing.
She is a pretty hardline feminist.
I mean, not someone that I would normally see eye to eye with, and I don't honestly think you would either if I know you.
But the fact that she is now the one being shut up by radical trans activists, I tell you, this free speech thing is very interesting.
It sure is.
And I agree with you.
Yes, I am totally on her side, but people like you and me would normally not be.
We would have very different views.
And I think this is maybe the only thing I agree with her on, but I agree with her 500% on this one.
And the fact that she is being marginalized and made to feel like an enemy of the people for holding a view that is pure common sense is really quite scandalous.
Why don't you tell our viewers a little bit about her views?
She's a feminist in the literal meaning of the world.
She's for women, and she objects to the biological fiction that a man who gets his twig and berries removed and takes some hormones becomes a woman thereby.
So she is what is called a TERF by the trans radicals, a trans exclusionary radical feminist.
That's just a fancy way of saying a woman who believes that women are women and men aren't women, even if they say they're women.
For that, she's been thrown in the dustpile of political incorrectness.
Exactly.
I'm told that, well, I've been told before that TERFs, the word, the acronym TERF, is considered derogatory.
And what we're supposed to call people like Megan Murphy are gender crits.
So, okay, fair enough.
She's a gender crit, and I'm a gender crit, too.
So, what she's saying is that definitions are important.
And you can't define, you can't take the word woman and say that it means a person with a vagina, also a person with a penis.
If the person with a penis thinks that he is a woman or wants to be a woman or would like to live his life as a woman, you know, if he has gender dysphoria, that's a real thing.
He's a trans woman then, in that case, and then it's she.
Trans women are real.
Most trans women live their lives in perfect harmony with everyone else.
They are not political.
They are not trying to edge out females, actual females, from their safe spaces.
But the trans activists are trying to take the definition, and they have been successful in implanting it into the culture to mean anybody who identifies a woman not only presents as a woman, but is literally a woman, which literally they cannot be.
And all she's doing is saying you can't be something that you're literally not, according to your DNA.
And the reason she's so adamant is because if the culture and if our elites and if our politicians and legislators say that that is the case, that anybody who identifies as a woman is a woman, then there's consequences that flow from that, legal consequences and social consequences that flow from that.
And it makes formerly sex-specific spaces like locker rooms and prisons, rape shelters and athletic categories, it opens them up to male bodies with a mental idea that they are women.
And she is not transphobic.
She is defending female rights, women's rights.
And I'm with her because I don't want to be in a locker room with a male body.
And I don't want my daughter, who's a great athlete, to be up against a six foot two, 200 pound athlete who thinks or wants to be a woman so that they can participate in women's sports.
So she's standing up for all the right things.
I'm with her.
Oh, so this library thing is she's supposed to be in a panel discussion October 29th at a branch of the Toronto Library.
Protesting at the Library00:04:04
And of course, many people are protesting.
There's women raiders that are protesting.
There's trans activists that are protesting.
The union, the library union is not comfortable.
They're protesting.
And pride, pride is protesting because they'll have to rethink their relationship with the library if this terrible woman is allowed to give her opinion on gender in this panel discussion.
So that's the background of all the kerfuffle around Megan Murphy this time.
Yeah, about five minutes ago, historically speaking, Megan Murphy would have been the toast of the town, a young feminist woman, you know, doing it for herself.
But now she's being thrown aside because there's something, you know, in the game of politically correct poker, there's a higher hand that was just played.
And it's not, it's shocking, but it is not surprising that the library union wants to silence her.
I've recently lived through a little bit of that when the movie theaters, the art house movie theaters in Calgary and Edmonton, who signed a contract to have a book launch with me, ripped up that contract under pressure from their own staff as well.
It is no longer surprising the deplatforming.
What is so surprising and encouraging is how firm the head librarian is.
But let me first show you, Barbara, and I'm not sure you've seen this.
The mayor of Toronto, John Torrey, a more spineless man one could not find.
Listen to him being asked about this case.
Here's a video clip of him a few days ago.
And so the library has its own policy with respect to when people should and should not be able to rent rooms on their premises.
They have taken the decision in this case that this particular person should be able to give their talk in a library building.
I don't think it's appropriate for politicians to substitute their judgment for actually making these decisions because we have a duly appointed library board and we have library management who oversee a written policy in this regard.
I simply indicated I was disappointed at that decision.
My office asked the library to reconsider the decision.
They indicated that they had carefully studied it and were not going to reconsider it.
Barbara, he just said, oh, it's not appropriate for politicians to meddle.
And then he said, oh, but I tried to meddle and she pushed me aside.
What a terrible, terrible man he is.
That's bad.
That's bad.
Yeah.
Since when does the mayor keep a list of what you can and can't say in a public place?
Does the mayor also have a list of books that he doesn't want in the library?
Does the mayor have a list of ideas that are or aren't acceptable to him?
It's so gross that every jumped-up bureaucrat and low-level politician, I'm sorry, the mayor of Toronto, yeah, he's a mayor of 2.5 million people, but he's one of dozens on council.
And frankly, in the scheme of things, he's a bit of a nothing.
For him to accrete unto himself the power of being censor-in-chief of all cultural debates is a little bit gross and a little bit jumped up.
Yeah, he's just, look, he just wants to gain points with the purity crats, you know, of the city.
And really, the competition to be the purest, most politically correct, the most with it politician is really pretty pathetic.
And he had no business getting involved with that and all.
And as I pointed out in my column, oh, so John Torrey, where were you when the Toronto Reference Library hosted Max Blumenthal, which won't be a name that is familiar to most of your viewers, perhaps, but this is a so-called journalist whose main thing in life is to vilify Israel night and day and to call them Nazis and to say that every day for the Palestinians is worse than Kristallnacht.
And he's so odious, he's so disgusting that the European, the German parliament barred him from taking part.
They actually deplatformed him because they consider him an anti-Semite.
And of course, even though he's Jewish, he is an anti-Semite.
They're the worst kind, of course.
Free Speech Controversies00:09:19
Anyways, but John Torrey didn't peep.
He didn't make a peep then.
And of course, when I called the program director, the Toronto Reference Library, it was all about free speech, free speech.
I said, well, what about a debate between somebody who has responsible views?
Well, you know, free speech, free speech.
So the only people that protested were a few Jews and nobody else.
And it went on as scheduled.
It never made the news even, I mean, that it was controversial.
You know, the double standards are really pretty sickening.
This gender Issue has just taken over our universe.
And it's the only thing people want to be in on.
And it's such an incredible trend.
Yeah.
You know, it's funny, you made me think of, again, I'm sorry to refer to it, but the deplatforming and libraries, it made me think of the other week when I was in Calgary and for a book launch, and we were kicked out of the theater or not allowed in the theater that we had a signed contract with.
There was an independent bookstore literally next door.
It's called Pages Bookstore in Kensington.
Two-story, huge bookstore.
I can't understand how they're still in business with chapters and Amazon as their competitors.
It was 100% empty.
There was no one in the entire store except for three staff.
And we said to them, we'll give you all the profits from the book sales.
Just let us have the book signing in your office.
So that would have meant thousands of dollars in basically free money for them.
And they said no.
I asked them, I went in there.
I said, do you sell Mein Kampf, Hitler's book?
And they said, yes, we do.
And I said, as well, you should.
It's a historical work.
We should know about it.
We should understand it.
We should read it.
I mean, I don't think it should be like a Bible for people, but we should understand why it's, we should understand what it is.
They would sell Mein Kampf, but they wouldn't sell my book.
That's where we are today.
But let me show you one more thing.
And I don't need to show you it.
I learned about this from reading your column.
The head librarian, and her name is Vickery Bowles.
She has been so admirable on this.
She's held the line.
And you, I didn't know this because I don't listen to the CBC.
She was interviewed by Carol Off, an old communist battle axe of the CBC.
And I've dealt with Carol Off a few times over the half century I've been around.
And she's so woke and she's so feminist, but I guess she's found something more fun than being a feminist.
And it's being an anti-feminist on behalf of trans extremists.
Let me play for you a couple of clips from that interview.
And I'd like your thoughts on it, Barbara.
So here's the first exchange.
This is Carol Off, a Marxist interviewer at the CBC, and Vickory Bowles, the librarian who is standing for free speech in Toronto.
Take a look.
There are limits to free speech.
I'm sure you know that.
And when free speech is hurtful or harmful to others, it is something that is shutting down the free speech of others.
I'm sure you've heard that argument before.
Yes, I have.
And you don't agree, obviously.
No, I don't.
I think that free speech is important, especially when marginalized groups are being, people are trying to shut down marginalized groups.
The marginalized groups being those who deny the rights of those trans people who are feeling this is hurtful.
So what about those minority rights?
What consideration are you giving to those minority rights?
Well, we're giving everyone consideration in this situation.
And we strongly value our relationship with all members of our communities here in Toronto and elsewhere.
But we have to, you know, if public institutions aren't going to stand up for free speech and allow civil discourse to happen, then I don't know where that is going to happen.
There were so many strange things said by Carol Off that if Megan Murphy is allowed to speak, that shuts down the speech of others.
I don't even, that wasn't even.
That was just stupid.
That was just stupid.
But, you know, the point of, it was quite a, you know, it was a fairly lengthy interview and Carol Off was relentless.
Like every single question, it wasn't a question.
Was a statement with a question at the end, a question mark at the end.
I've never seen an interview so obviously biased and so obviously meant to put the interviewee totally on the defensive, totally uncomfortable, and not give them an opportunity really or to imply in their own questions that the person that they are interviewing is kind of not only wrong, but a bad person.
And, you know, as journalism goes, that was, to me, scandalous.
Well, we have one more clip from, actually, we got a bunch of clips, but I mean, you're right.
The whole thing was that battering ram.
That's why it was doubly impressive that this Vickery Bowles just held the line.
It's just bizarre to say by giving Megan Murphy the right to rent a room and say something in that room that denies rights to others.
There's just no connection there.
It's just saying words.
And Vickery Bowles wasn't having any of it.
Here's another excerpt from that radio debate.
Take a listen.
Sometimes what we call free speech is hurtful speech.
And we have situations, as you know, the numbers are that about 20% of trans people have been physically or sexually assaulted due to their identity.
Even more have been verbally threatened or harassed.
So how do you safeguard them physically and their rights if you feel that it's within others' rights to express ideas that deny those people their rights that actually go the distance of making them feel more isolated?
Well, I am committed, and the library is committed to offering safe and welcoming space for everyone, including members of the trans community.
And we are aware that the upcoming room rental has caused anger and concern and hurt among members of the trans community and others.
But as a public library and as a public institution, we have an obligation to stand up for our democratic values and principles.
Again, this absurd, baseless, uncorroborated aspersion that there's a good chance of violence, that's practically defamatory of Megan Murphy again.
Just absurd.
But good for Vickery Bowles for just like she's no Andrew Scheer.
You're not going to wear her down in 90 seconds and getting her to collapse as Andrew Scheer did in basically every tough interview he ever gave.
He just, he said, fine.
He would just, to avoid the discomfort of a short-term interview, he would just collapse.
I don't know where this Vickery Bowles came from.
I frankly never heard of her before this, but she was unmoved.
Yes, yes, she was strong.
She was strong and she kept her cool.
I was very impressed with her.
And the thing is, when she said that she heard complaints from the trans community, I'm sure she did, and I'm sure she was sympathetic.
By the way, being for freedom of speech doesn't mean you're not aware that some free speech inflicts some hurt feelings.
It doesn't mean you have a heart of ice.
It just means you've made the decision that allowing free speech is a higher societal value than being a bubble wrap blanket around everyone with a thin skin.
Sure.
Well, listen, when you can only see the offense given to one group, even though another group may be offended by that other group when they speak, I mean, you know, we have a conflict of what people think are rights here.
And in this issue, it hasn't been sorted out very well by our legislatures because they have not taken the trouble to inquire into the definition of the word woman.
So it was very natural and very inevitable that all this confusion would flow.
But the people on one side of this debate are taking the line that only trans people have rights that have to be respected, even if they impinge on the natural rights of women.
And they won't agree that there's anybody else that has rights in this, you know, or interests.
in this in this issue.
And that's terrible.
Yeah.
Well, listen, I have a question for you.
I saw on Twitter that you are giving a talk in my old hometown of Calgary, along with Kaylin Ford and Lindsay Shepard, two young women who have been deplatformed in the past.
Lively Debate Expected00:08:00
Can you give us a few details about that?
When is that?
We have a lot of viewers in Calgary.
Some might want to go.
And I must tell you that I am pessimistic and I am once bitten twice shy, as they say, when it comes to deplatforming.
And I'm actually a little bit worried that you're going to be talking about deplatforming, that you yourself might be deplatformed at the talk about deplatforming.
Well, I guess that's a risk we have to take.
The event is on November 14th.
It's 6.30 p.m.
And I'm sorry, I can't remember the name.
I believe it's at a tavern.
So perhaps these are people who are sympathetic and who are not going to be railroaded by protesters or activists.
I would hope so.
I wouldn't want to get out there and find out that the event had been canceled.
It's going to be, I think, a lively event.
These are two young women who are dynamite.
Both Kaylin and Lindsay are young women I admire greatly.
And we're going to talk about cancel culture, exactly the kind of thing we've just been discussing.
And we'll be bringing other examples in.
Perhaps we'll bring in Ezra Levant's book signing.
Well, I'd love to go, but I certainly don't want to step on your toes.
You have a real theme going on there, and I think I would just be a happy observer in the audience, happy to buy a ticket.
I think we might send a reporter to report on the event, and God forbid, if there was an attempt to shutter it, I should tell you that the theater in Calgary and Edmonton, they both canceled on us, even though we had a signed contract.
And in the end, only literally one crank showed up to protest each event, whereas hundreds of ticket buyers showed up.
I'm a little nervous.
God forbid it happens.
I hope we can talk again because my new approach, and forgive me for bringing this into an interview about your great op-ed, my new approach is sue people for inducing a breach of contract.
So if someone, if you have a contract with this pub, and it sounds like you do, and someone bullies them, pressures them, threatens them, interferes with them to cause them to breach it with you, it's well-settled law going back more than a century that you have a cause of action against the threateners, the bullies.
And it's strange to think of your event as like a bear trap or like fly paper that would attract these malicious bullies to catch them.
But I think either way, it's win-win.
If your event goes ahead, that's a great conversation that the world should hear.
God forbid, if your event is canceled, well, you've caught some bullies and let them go before a judge and explain why they think in a free country they can bully a bar into canceling an event.
Anyway, I'm getting off topic, but I'm really nervous for you.
I got to tell you, Barbara, I know the world we're in these days, and they don't believe in debate anymore.
They believe in silencing people.
I do know that.
Well, I'm going to assume this, you know, Kaylin is organizing it, and she's a political person who's quite savvy.
So I assume she's arranging appropriate security.
Although I can't imagine that there would be a need for it, although people will say there's a need.
Oh, it's not the security.
Yeah, my point about there only being one cranky protester is just that.
That none of these internet bullies actually show up.
They just hop and puff, send an email, send a tweet.
But that's terrifying to a bar owner who's never had a critical word spoken to them their whole lives.
Sure.
Yes, you're absolutely right.
Well, I won't be looking after that end of things.
I imagine that those who are organizing it are extremely au courage with how people operate on social media and what are real threats and what aren't.
So I'll leave it to them to do the smart thing.
Fair enough.
Listen, I didn't mean to get so of course.
It's very relevant.
It's very relevant.
I mean, what I'm writing about today, what I had in my column today is absolutely relevant.
And I'm sure, obviously, is one of my examples that I'll be giving.
You know, Murphy's, this particular protest is one that I'll be using as an example for sure.
Well, hopefully the venue owner will be as courageous as Vickory Bowles was.
And hopefully the mayor of that city won't be as foolish as Toronto's is.
I don't know.
He sometimes is a little foolish.
He was my debate partner way back in university.
For two years, Nahid Nchi and I were debate partners.
Really?
Yes, and we won the national debates two years running.
Wow.
And I would like to think that based on that rambunctious experience, he has a little bit of free speech left in his bloodstream because we certainly were troublemakers back in our youth.
I've heard Nahid Nenshi weigh in on just about every other subject under the sun.
I haven't heard him on free speech.
I hope he hasn't gone woke left censor in his middle age, but I fear for the worst.
Barbara, I won't keep you another minute, but thank you for this.
Let me one more time read the headline of your column and invite all our people to read it.
It's called How Feminist Megan Murphy Fell Victim to Progressives Double Standards.
And it's written, of course, by our friend Barbara Kay in the National Post.
Good luck, my friend.
And you know what?
I'm going to try and be there at your Calgary event just to see how it goes.
And I'm interested in all three of you speakers.
That would be so cool.
All right.
Take care.
There you go, our good friend Barbara Kay, a real freedom fighter willing to talk about subjects that most journalists are just too afraid to do.
Stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
On my monologue yesterday about a Democrat in Massachusetts trying to ban the word bitch, Deborah writes, maybe these sensitive souls need to grow up and stop trying to tell others what they can and can't say.
What an insane world we're living in.
It's such a quirky thing.
I mean, banning any word is really weird.
Like, you know, you've heard of the Streisand effect.
Have you heard of that?
Barbara Streisand has this house on Malibu, right on the sea, gorgeous house.
And like every house in America, there's some aerial photo of it.
Look at Google Maps, right?
And someone took pictures of houses on Malibu, and one of the houses was Barbara Streisand's.
And it was no big deal.
No one was clicking on it until she sued to get that photo banned.
And then all of a sudden, everyone was extremely curious about her house.
They hadn't been until she sued.
In fact, evidence was almost no one looked at the photo other than Barbara Streisand and her lawyer.
But after she sued, everyone wanted to see what's Barbara Streisand's house all about.
Same thing with banning a word.
What's the word that's banned?
I want to know.
Oh, I want to say it now.
It's so weird.
And the bill, I read you the title of it yesterday.
It was about banning words plural, but he just wants to ban this one word.
I mean, there are far worse words out there than bitch.
You know, it's not a great word if you use it in a negative meaning.
There's also a scientific biological, it's a female dog.
That's a legit meaning of the word.
It's so weird that he chose that word to ban.
I think he's a weirdo.
I think he's trying to like preempt some Me Too thing or something.
Maybe he's a male feminist.
Is he trying to impress a girlfriend or something?
I agree with you, honey.
The word bitch is so bad, I'll get it banned.
Like, where, what?
I just don't even get it.
Joe writes, the disturbing thing about all this is that an elected representative in Massachusetts, the cradle of liberty and the American Revolution, would actually try to repeal the First Amendment.
Yeah, I mean, it's weird.
Old Issues, New Bans00:02:16
I mean, that's the thing, you know, the Liberty Bell and all those Americas, the Boston Tea Party.
There really is.
It's true.
Massachusetts, it is the place for so many American values took root.
But as I said yesterday, that's a universal story across the West, isn't it?
I mean, how it's not much stranger than the fact that in the United Kingdom, the home of Magna Carta and John Milton, they're banning things and Canada too.
On my interview with Derek Fildebrandt, Karen writes, I think I like the Western Standard.
I'll pop on by online and see what trouble I can cause in the comments section.
Yeah, I mean, I really enjoyed running that magazine when it was a print magazine more than a dozen years ago, and it was really fun.
And when I was looking through those old issues yesterday, the number one thing that struck me was how that was in the age before deplatforming.
We had mainstream people writing for us.
Even Andrew Coyne wrote for us once, if you can believe it.
We had mainstream advertisers.
We had Air Canada.
How much more mainstream does it come than that?
I can't remember all the advertisers, but it was just a different time.
And if you had a different opinion, people would say, oh, yeah, different opinion, but we've got to have that market.
But everyone's a customer and we're all Canadians.
It's all part of a debate.
And those days are completely gone.
Not only are corporations so absolutely scared of their own shadow now, but there are these roving mobs of fanatical censors.
Maybe that's the thing.
Maybe back a dozen years ago, without Twitter and Facebook, there wasn't a way for these virtual mobs to assemble.
So you'd actually have to take a piece of paper and write some letter of complaint.
And who had the energy to do that?
I don't know.
That's one of the things that made me the saddest when I was looking at the old issues of Western Standard is how not just the age of the magazine has passed, but the age of debate and allowing a range of opinion has passed too.
I'm so sorry to say.
Well, that's our show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night.