Sheila Gunn Reid and Ezra Levant expose the Trudeau Liberals’ use of the UN to silence dissenters like themselves at COP28, after being denied media accreditation by Canada—mirroring past blocks at COP22 and migration talks. Reid highlights Rebel News’ crowdfunded independence against state-funded media (CBC) that unfairly labels Western critics as bigots while respecting Quebec separatists. Their upcoming trip to Madrid, funded by donations at rebelun.com, aims to challenge climate narratives, including past UN coverage like diesel equipment scandals and confrontations with figures like Greta Thunberg. The episode underscores how government-backed media weaponizes institutions to suppress free speech, while Rebel News stands as a defiant platform for fair debate. [Automatically generated summary]
Hello rebels, I'm Sheila Gunread and you're listening to a free audio-only recording of David Menzies Friday night show Rebel Roundup and tonight we're talking about a little bit of everything.
Wexit and Western separation, the UN climate change conference in Madrid, and that snake in the grass, Ron McClain, betraying his friend Don Cherry.
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And now please enjoy this free audio-only version of David's show.
Welcome to Rebel Roundup, ladies and gentlemen and the rest of you, in which we take a look back on some of the very best commentaries of the last week from some of your very favorite rebels.
I'm your host, Sheila Gunread, filling in for the intrepid David Menzies as he's enjoying a well-deserved break.
Alberta is seething and for very good reason.
The Trudeau Liberals have obstructed the oil patch with the help of former Alberta Premier Rachel Notley.
And now, Western separation is real and it's growing.
And Ezra Levant hosted back-to-back town halls in Edmonton and then in Calgary to discuss the issue.
Different Views on Wexit00:10:41
Then, I have news.
Keen and I are going on a mission to hold the federal government to account halfway across the world.
Yes, we're going to Madrid to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in December.
Then, we've got your comments on Kian's video where he gave your Support Don Cherry petition to that snake in the grass, Judas Ron McClain in Edmonton.
Those are your rebels.
Let's round them up.
I want to tell you what the role is of Rebel News.
I think it's a role that other media could be playing, but they won't.
And that is to be the house or the host of this conversation.
There has to be a conversation going on about Alberta and the West's place in Canada because there's a lot of problems.
We all know that.
You can't deny that there's problems.
There's very many problems.
And yet to merely express that there is a problem and seek a solution, whatever that solution is, we don't even know what form it might eventually take.
To merely question it, you're called all sorts of names.
You're attacked personally.
You're called a bigot, a racist.
You're called a nationalist in a bad way.
I don't even know how that word has turned into an epithet.
Your personal history is doxxed and you're personally attacked in a manner that no other group with a legitimate, let alone an illegitimate grievance, has done to it.
Quebec separatists, Quebec sovereigntists, when they come forward, they're treated with the great respect, the greatest extra respect, extra care and handling.
But someone expresses a discontent in the West, and they're immediately attacked not just by political rivals, which is to be expected, but by the media that claims to be the way we as a nation talk things out.
I've especially been disappointed in the last month to see how the CBC and the Toronto Star, but the CBC worse than any, have sneered at and attacked people.
And the attacks are one thing.
I mean, I think Westerners are sort of used to that.
But the saying, fake friends and real enemies, that's the CBC for you.
The real enemies are the West.
I mean, for example, for decades, they've allowed an anti-oil sands lobbyist.
David Suzuki's foundation had half a dozen registered anti-oil sands lobbyists while he was given pride of placement on the CBC lineup for decades.
How does that even work that a registered lobbyist against the oil sands can be with the state broadcaster?
Well, there's your giveaway.
It's a state broadcaster.
Real enemies for sure, but the fake friends that I see published in the CBC, oh, dear Albertans, we deeply care about you and we feel for you.
And can you guys just get with it and phase out the oil sands?
All of their we love you op-eds seem to end that same way, don't they?
By telling us that we're the problem.
I think the role of Rebel News is to host the debate in a way that allows people to express themselves and to find the answers without attacking people, without demonizing people.
So we've just wrapped up two very, very successful Wexit town halls.
It was more than an airing of the grievances, though, was it?
I thought we'd have a festivous miracle here and we sold out.
But there was pretty thoughtful questions from the crowd, and you did pretty well at bringing together a thoughtful panel.
I think I brought up the thoughtfulness.
But we had Kian and we had Lauren Gunter and yourself.
And I think that we addressed some questions.
I don't know if we offered some solutions, but we gave people a place to at least ask the question without being told to shut up.
Yeah, I mean, we certainly didn't answer this.
We didn't put the puzzle together, but we were starting to flip over the pieces and see what goes where.
The idea of Wexit means different things to different people.
And when you start to give a definition, some divisions emerge.
Some people think it means just Alberta separating.
Others say, well, Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Others say the whole West.
Some people think it means being independent.
Some people think it means joining the United States.
Some people think it should be part of the British Commonwealth and stay loyal to the Queen.
Others want a republic.
Some people think it should have a federal party like the Blocket McClaw did.
There's so many different things it could mean.
And maybe it means more than one of those.
But I think that has to be figured out.
And what's the goal?
And most importantly, what are you willing to do to make it happen?
The one thing I said that I think is really the test is if you say to the rest of Canada, if you say to Justin Trudeau, I want this, this, and this, he's going to ignore you.
We know that because he has the votes.
He just wants to.
Or fight us.
Yeah.
You have to have an or else.
If you're serious, if you're a negotiator.
If you're in any negotiation, if you can't walk away from the table, if you can't have an or-else, you're not going to get it.
And that's, I think, the problem of Wexit.
I mean, Donald Trump has taught us you got to be tough in a negotiation, and you can only be tough if there's an or-else.
And I don't see that yet.
I see the rebels' role here as hosting this conversation in good faith and letting people talk freely and make mistakes in their thinking, but figure it out, and not to jump on people, which is what the CBC and the media party will do.
Quebec was allowed to have its sovereigntist, separatist movement and different gradations thereof without being pounced on.
I think Western Canada, which has legitimate grievances, should be allowed to work it out without sneering from the CBC.
I think the attacks against Western separatism or whatever you're going to call it, are going to be more brutal than anything you've ever seen in Canada because there's an underlying affection and even jealousy of Quebec in the establishment.
They have a very flavorful culture.
They know who they are.
They believe in something, whereas Trudeau's world is post-national emptiness.
But you just described things that I would say, qualities I would definitely attribute to Albertans and that, you know, we are distinct.
We do know exactly who we are.
We are different.
We do have a certain flavor about us.
But I think our flavor gets frowned upon because our flavor is distinctively conservative.
You know, you're right.
It's funny how a sense of nationhood comes together.
To use Hong Kong as an analogy, I think the struggle they're in for their values, who they are and who they are not, has forged a new Hong Kong identity.
I think Alberta has an identity, but the battles it's going through now is forging it more, and the battles to come will make it even more distinctly so.
And I think that feeling, words like values, feelings, belonging, they're necessary if you want to start a country or a movement.
Otherwise, what are you?
And Quebec was very good at doing that.
They had the folk singers, they had the artists, they had the intelligentsia, they had the professors, they had the dreamers to envision what it could be like.
I think Albertans are more engineers and geologists and accountants that use the thinking part and not the feeling part.
The way our conversations are, I think if Wexit is going to have a future, it needs to have both head and heart.
I think too, it's happening in a different time in a different place.
We are in an explicitly anti-conservative world.
The media is anti-conservative.
If we have someone who, I think the movement needs sort of a Nigel Farage, that sort of charismatic leader who doesn't really care.
But if that person were to step forward, he's got to go through the media before he can ever get to the people to change hearts and minds.
Yeah, Nigel Farage didn't just come out of nowhere.
He's been fighting this fight for many years.
And boy, was he vetted by the media, but he survived.
And he was careful about his reputation.
There was a question that befuddled the federal conservatives a couple weeks ago when they had the first caucus meeting.
I know for a fact there are MPs disgruntled and senators disgruntled with Andrew Scheer.
But the obvious point is you can't beat someone with no one.
And if you don't like Shir, who do you propose?
Peter McCain?
And so, who is the person?
Who's the indispensable man or woman?
Who is the person?
It's hard to think of who that person is.
And I don't think Brexit would have succeeded were it not for Farage.
I know it wouldn't have.
Who is that person?
The quintessential Albertan right now is Jason Kenney, and he's a federalist, and he's the Premier.
So who would it be?
It's not Brian Jean.
It's not one of the mayors.
They're crazy.
Is it a cabinet minister or former cabinet minister?
Is it a business leader like a Gwen Morgan or a Brett Wilson?
I don't know.
And that's part of the problem.
Because in our politics, we personify things in a leader.
We need a champion.
And until that person is there, I don't know if the parade will be marshaled.
What's Next?00:02:36
It's sort of marching off in all directions now.
I'm brainstorming as I go here too, Sheila.
I think that's what this is all about, was brainstorming.
I guess my last question is, what's next for us in all of this?
Well, I was very glad to do this.
Totally sold-out event today, standing room only.
We had 500 tickets.
They all sold in less than a week.
Almost sold out last night in Edmonton.
That's pretty amazing.
And by the way, there were other Wexit-style events going on same week.
So the demand is there.
What can we supply to this demand?
We can supply a forum, we can supply fairness, we had some logistics and operations.
You mentioned that maybe we would host an essay contest or something.
Like, there's things we can do.
I've got to figure that out a bit.
I don't know if we'll do anything else before Christmas.
It's only a month to go.
But in the new year, I expect we'll dig in more on this.
I want to take the time to think about it.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.
If our viewers have thoughts.
People want something.
There are some things we can do.
And at the very least, we can be there to give a fair shake to the people who are doing it in their own way.
You and Kian were at Danny Hozack's event.
I think if we are journalists for other people, that's a very important role to play.
Like the Western Report and Alberta Report did for Preston Manning and the Reform Party in the 80s.
I think it's for us, I think our job is to just facilitate the conversation.
We have maybe access to people that these folks don't.
You know, that we can bring the thinkers to the table so that they can ask the questions.
And frankly, I'm proud of what we pulled off here tonight.
Oh, yeah.
And we have assets that we take for granted at the Rebel.
We also have a large audience.
I think that we fit a lot of roles.
And people trust us too.
You know, we're five years old almost, and we fought the fights that are important to Albertans, including oil and gas fights.
You personally have gone to the global warming conferences, for example.
So I'm going to think about it.
I don't feel like I have a good answer for you right now, but it's a reminder that there's a missing piece here and we can help provide it.
Great.
Stay with us more up next after the break.
Side Story from Morocco00:07:16
Justin Trudeau's liberals have spent the last four years trying to use the United Nations as a proxy to prevent us here at Rebel News from holding them to account at international conferences.
The Liberals have been using the UN to deny us credentials, but that hasn't prevented us from doing the work we do to hold the government accountable for the policies they are drafting behind closed doors in far-flung places.
The UN Climate Change Conference is in Madrid, Spain this year, and Kian Bexty and I are going together.
Just take a look at this.
This is my video explaining why the UN banned us and why that ain't stopping us from crashing their expensive Spanish party.
Rebel News is headed to Spain to the UN Climate Change Conference, and boy, the Liberal government won't be happy about it.
Now, we won't be taking a carbon-neutral catamaran like teenage truant climate activist Greta Thunberg.
We need your help to get there the old-fashioned way.
Kian Bexte, tracking down Greta Thunberg in Edmonton and then confronting her adult handlers, as well as my coverage of the Greta Thunberg climate rally, where we greeted her with our crowdfunded How Dare You billboard truck, are two of our most seen videos of 2019.
Why is that?
Well, it's because people are desperate for the other side of the story, the normal person's side of the story.
The minivan driving, hockey mom, oil patch dad, daily commute on bad roads in cold weather, when six months of the year is winter side of the story, when the mainstream media and our politics are just so saturated with one side of the climate change narrative, the narrative that a carbon tax on everything you do will somehow change the weather.
And because of our journalistic mission here at Rebel News to tell the other side of the story, I've gone to the big annual United Nations climate change conferences in Morocco, Bonn, Germany, and Katowice, Poland.
Now, these are meetings where politicians, unelected bureaucrats, and international elites make policies and decisions in a far-off land that make your life more expensive every single day back at home.
And they want to do it behind closed doors and without any scrutiny.
And when I applied to go to my first UN conference, they tried to keep me out by saying they do not accredit advocacy journalists, which is absolutely crazy because the entire conference is full of pro-carbon tax journalists.
What the UN meant was they weren't going to accredit a pro-fossil fuel, anti-carbon tax, anti-global warming doomsday cult journalist like myself.
Now we fought that ban and they eventually let us in.
I went to that first conference in Morocco where I showed you the parking lots full of idling buses and the disposable Potemkin village built in the middle of the Moroccan desert to house the thing.
I also showed you how this conference on using less of everything was watering the desert ground every morning to keep the dust off the shoes of the delegates going into the climate change meetings.
And I showed you what it was like for the rest of Marrakech outside of the conference.
Oh yeah, and I also confronted a Canadian delegate and his press secretary, an Aboriginal chief from Manitoba who went to Morocco to bash the oil sands, one of the largest vehicles for wealth and jobs for Canada's Indigenous peoples.
And for that, for telling the truth, and for doing my job, I was banned from these conferences going forward at the request of the Canadian government.
Actually, it was because of my dangerous questions in Morocco that all rebel journalists were banned from all UN conferences, including David Menzies, who tried to report on the UN Compact for Migration conference.
Incidentally, back in Marrakesh.
Just look at this letter here.
This is the UN declining my request for media accreditation again, even though I jumped through all of their hoops to get it.
And this is my own government using the UN as a proxy to stop me from reporting on things that matter deeply to Canadians that are happening in other countries.
It reads, declined due to complaints received about the organization from government delegates at COP22, that's Morocco, concerning harassment.
Now, I've never harassed anybody in my entire life, and I recorded all my interactions with people in Morocco.
Contrarian questions amount to harassment when the liberal government is on the receiving end of them, I guess.
However, banning me for a false and completely ridiculous reason has done nothing to prevent me from doing real journalism from these conferences.
And frankly, I'm a little glad to be outside the conference because when you're inside of them, sure, the Wi-Fi is good and the air conditioning is great.
But all you get is press releases.
And then you're stuck with a bunch of journalists who are happy to be contained and managed and regurgitating the official narrative coming out of the conference completely verbatim.
I think after four years, you at home probably know that's not my style.
When I went to Bonn, Germany and Poland, I showed you all the crazy things that were happening outside the conferences.
Like the hundreds of diesel-fueled heaters and light towers they were using to power their anti-fossil fuel conference.
Like the Greenpeace sailboat that was actually also powered by diesel and the weirdo art installations that accompany these conferences all across the cities they're in.
And I'm going back this year, even though yet again they've declined my accreditation at the request of the Canadian government.
The UN might be able to keep me out of the boring inside of the conference, but there is still a ton of news to find out there on the streets.
The conference is in Madrid this December, and instead of going with a videographer, I'm going with my friend and colleague, Kian Bexty.
Two troublemaking rebels are always better than one, and Kian is not afraid, as you know, to confront people and ask them tough questions.
Kian and I are also pretty self-contained.
We are our own cameramen.
We do most of our work out in the field from our cell phones.
We've rented an Airbnb and booked the cheapest flights we can find to keep the costs of our trip low.
But it will still cost us thousands and thousands of dollars for both of us to get there and work and tell the other side of the story you won't learn about in those regurgitated liberal press releases they call stories over at the CBC.
Cost-Conscious Crusade00:05:50
Now, can you help us cover the cost to go to Madrid?
You can donate to offset the expenses of our trip at rebelun.com.
While you're there, you can see some of our previous work too.
Now, we don't get a billion and a half dollars from Justin Trudeau like the CBC does to do our journalism.
And we will never take a penny in bailout money from any government.
We rely on the generous support of our supporters to do the work that we do.
We are fiercely independent.
That's never going to change.
We are going to track down the newsmakers and show you what really goes on at these closed-off conferences that cost the taxpayer thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to send our politicians to.
Kian and I are accountability journalists, and we are going to Madrid to continue that mission.
If you can help us, you can do that at that donation page, rebelun.com.
Lovely, yeah.
Lovely speech.
Thanks.
Thank you.
That's awesome.
I was hoping I'd be able to present you with this petition.
Okay.
It's 90,000 folks who signed it who support Don Cherry.
Great.
Who they watch your show and they're disappointed that he was fired for standing up.
They want your show.
They want you, yourself, and Don to be standing up for veterans.
And they're really disappointed that you didn't stand up for him.
So we're kind of curious with this finder.
We're kind of wondering if you think Don is actually racist.
Sorry, I don't know.
Do you think Don is actually racist?
No.
Why would he be a fan of her?
Excuse me.
Excuse me.
Mom, please.
Excuse me.
This is absolutely an educational institution.
No, no.
That is unacceptable.
Don't touch him, actually.
Your graphic.
Everything today has been racist.
What's your name?
It doesn't matter what his name is.
Are you fault?
That's his wife here.
No.
Okay.
This is a.
Well, you know what?
I actually, I don't mind the support.
Okay, I don't mind the support.
What we don't mind.
No, these are supporters.
These are supporters of Don.
We are also a supporter of Don.
So I don't mind that.
We appreciate that support.
We really hope that you're taking it.
But you are crucifying my husband as a result of that.
There's sides being aware of the people who are in the sign.
I think that we've been very aggressive to him and in a moment where that was unacceptable.
Do you think, did you see my husband?
He's almost in tears.
Do you think he wanted this to happen?
Why didn't he stand up for him?
Send him away.
Why wouldn't he quit his job?
Why would he quit his job?
Because a Canadian saint was fired for no reason.
A saint?
Do you think he was racist?
Do you think Don is racist?
Write a letter.
Sorry, what's up?
Do you think Don is racist?
I wouldn't say the word racist.
Do I think he's a bigot?
Possibly.
Do you think Don Cherry's a bigot?
Possibly.
That is our Kian Bexti in Edmonton, where Don Cherry's former coach's corner partner was accepting an honorary doctorate of laws at the University of Alberta.
Kean popped in to hand McLean a copy of some 90,000 plus signatures Canadians had offered in support of Don Cherry after Ron McClain threw him under the bus to save himself because Don was a little less than polished while asking Canadians to just wear the poppy.
And we discovered what Ron's wife actually thinks of Don Cherry.
She called him a bigot.
On that video on YouTube, Mike Hamelin writes, After how many years, and she insults the man who helped and supported her husband.
What a disgrace.
Yeah, a little self-awareness from the McLean's would be nice.
No one would know Ron McClain's name, and Ron McClain's wife would not have the comfortable life she enjoys without the larger-than-life, sometimes unvarnished personality of one Don Cherry.
Nobody tuned in for Ron except, you know, maybe his wife.
SG1 shares the same sentiment, writing, she owes her entire life to Don Cherry because Ron would still be reffing minor hockey if it wasn't for grapes.
Ms. Lil Pig1 writes, Do you think Carrie ever said this to Cherry or his wife when they would meet all those years?
It's easy to call people names when you don't have to look them in the eyes.
Well, Ms. Little Pig One, that's even your real name.
We do know that Don Cherry watches our work and he's even shared some of it on Twitter.
So if he didn't know what Ron McClain's wife felt about him after all these years, he certainly does now.
And Pip One writes, You were crucifying my husband.
He was almost in tears.
Wow, the hyperbole, backstabbing, and victimization of this woman.
The only time opportunists find their spine is for their personal benefit, never for others.
Treacherous.
Good on you, Kian.
Isn't that fascinating?
Ron's wife did turn Ron into the victim in all of this.
In reality, he's just receiving the righteous condemnation of his duplicitous, self-serving behavior.
Well, everybody, that wraps up this relaxed fit, stretchy pants edition of Rebel Roundup.
Thanks, David, for trusting me with your show.
Thanks, folks at home, for tuning in.
Thank you in the office for turning this into a watchable episode.