CBC’s coverage of the Coastal GasLink pipeline dispute sided with unelected Wetsuweten hereditary chiefs—Frida Hewson and Smoglegem—blocking a $40B project tied to 10,000 jobs and $958M in Indigenous benefits. Reporter Bethany Lindsay omitted support from elected leaders like Troy Young (Witset First Nation) and ignored natural gas’s cleaner profile vs. oil/coal. Critics argue CBC’s bias aligns with anti-fossil fuel narratives, ignoring Indigenous economic gains while framing protests as legally valid under traditional law despite a January 2 BC Supreme Court injunction. The debate exposes tensions between media framing, Indigenous governance, and energy development, questioning whether federal enforcement will prioritize dissent over court orders. [Automatically generated summary]
Today I take you through a rare piece of good news in the battle for oil and gas.
It's a court ruling issued by a judge in BC a couple days ago commanding some rogue Indian activists to get out of the way of a natural gas pipeline project.
But what's so interesting, even more interesting than that, is how the CBC obscures the truth, hides the key facts from you.
Well, I'll give you those key facts.
But before I do, let me invite you to become a premium subscriber of The Rebel.
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Well, you get the video version of this podcast, which I think is pretty cool.
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Okay, here's the show.
Tonight, rogue unelected Indian chiefs illegally protest a natural gas pipeline.
And guess whose side the CBC takes?
It's January 2nd, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say is government about why I published them.
It's because it's my bloody right to do so.
Look at this headline in the CBC today.
BC Supreme Court grants injunction against Wetsuaten protesters in pipeline standoff.
And then the sub-headline says, ruling gives RCMP mandate to enforce order related to coastal gas link project.
Let me read a little bit from the story.
A BC Supreme Court judge has issued an injunction against members of the Wetsuaten nation who have blocked access to a natural gas pipeline project inside their traditional territory in northern BC.
Justice Marguerite Church granted Coastal Gas Link's application for an interlocutory injunction in a Prince George courtroom on Tuesday, restraining protesters from barring workers from getting through their checkpoints along a remote logging road near Houston, B.C.
So just to slow down for a moment, Coastal Gas Link is the pipeline company that's building a natural gas pipe from the BC interior to the coast where it will then be shipped to customers probably in Asia on those big LNG tankers.
That stands for liquefied natural gas.
Natural gas, as you probably know, is the cleanest burning fossil fuel if you're worried about that sort of thing.
And environmentalists say they are.
So this LNG project isn't just great for jobs in Canada.
It also displaces more polluting sources of power in Asia like Chinese coal-fired power plants, same in Korea, Taiwan, Japan.
And here's the thing about natural gas, both in its gaseous state and in its liquefied state.
Well, unlike oil, you can't really have a spill.
It's gas, so it just mists into the air.
There has never in history been a catastrophic LNG tanker accident, never once.
But even if there would be, God forbid, it's not going to be like the Exxon Valdez where the oil mucks up the beach and gets ducts covered.
I mean, God forbid, if there were an accident, and may there never be one, well, the natural gas would just evaporate.
So what's the objection to it again?
It replaces higher carbon coal-fired power plants in Asia.
And coal also has particulate pollution, as in when you burn coal, it releases more carbon dioxide than natural gas, but also little particles in it, pollution.
That's where smog comes from, right?
So you've got clean burning natural gas from Canada replacing coal in Asia.
How's that not a win-win?
You've got a brand new, state-of-the-art, ultra-safe pipeline being built.
And God forbid, again, if anything goes wrong with the pipeline or the ship, there's no environmental impact.
It's natural gas.
There's not going to be a spill.
And what I've learned from studying the oil sands and pretty much every logging and mining project in Canada is that it's a disproportionate employer of Aboriginal people because that's who's living up there.
And a lot of the jobs, surveying, clearing brush, truck driving, are skills that Aboriginal communities can quickly provide.
Now, we all want the Aboriginal community, especially northern reserves and towns, to be brimming with Aboriginal doctors and lawyers, and I hope that day comes soon.
But if you really want to give real jobs to those communities now and have those young people successfully fill those positions, there couldn't be a better fit than natural resources projects looking for skilled and semi-skilled workers.
Lots of on-the-job training.
I've seen it with my own eyes in the oil sands, so it's absolutely no surprise to me that a disproportionate number of employees on this big pipeline project are local Aboriginal men and women.
By the way, there's not a lot of jobs up there.
But I'm reading to you from a CBC story that says an Indian community is so dead set against this pipeline, they had to be ordered by the court to get out of the way.
Well, so which is it?
Do the local Indian communities support this pipeline and the jobs from it and other benefit agreements?
Were there outright grants for everything from displaced hunters and trappers to sponsorships of Aboriginal culture events?
So which is it?
Whose side are the Indians on?
Well, the CBC knows.
Wetsuatan Nation members, Frida Hewson and hereditary chief Smoglegem, the two named defendants in the action, had argued the checkpoints are legal under Wetsueten law because the company doesn't have permission from the head chief of the dark house hereditary house group to enter or pass through their territory.
The judge rejected that.
Let me read some more.
The defendants may genuinely believe in their rights under Indigenous law to prevent the plaintiff from entering dark house territory, but the law does not recognize any right to blockade and abstract the plaintiff from pursuing lawfully authorized activities, Church wrote.
The judge said the company has all the necessary permits and authorizations and had met the legal test for an injunction.
14 people were arrested in January 2019 when RCMP moved in to enforce the interim injunction order.
Now, I kept reading this story.
You can see it's a big story.
But it wasn't until the 10th paragraph down, I counted, that I discovered that in fact, every single Indian band in the area, every single one that elects its members, you know, they all want this pipeline built.
Every one of them.
Let me quote.
This is from paragraph 10.
The company says it has signed agreements with all 20 elected First Nations councils along the pipeline route.
But hereditary chiefs in the Wetsuet and First Nations say the project has no authority without their consent.
Hang on.
So you've got 20 elected First Nations councils, but someone who says they should have political power because of who their ancestors were.
The CBC puts them front and center in the story and hides the fact that all 20 elected councils love this pipeline.
This is a very long story, but not a single Indian chief or council member or even just an ordinary status Indian who supports this pipeline.
Not a single one of them could be found to comment in favor of this pipeline.
Or is it that not a single one of them was even asked to comment?
The CBC author here is named Bethany Lindsay, and I think she's the whitest woman in Canada other than people who suffer from albinism.
And she knows that the good kind of Indians from the CBC point of view are the ones who fight against oil and gas pipeline companies.
And the bad kind of Indians in the CBC's point of view, well, I guess all 20 out of 20 Indian bands along the way are the bad kind of Indians.
So Bethany Lindsay, who, I don't know, sees herself as some sort of great albino liberator like Daenerys Targaryen or something, she knows whose side she's on.
She's the great liberator who knows better for Aboriginal people than they know for themselves.
That's why she mentions the law-breaking cranks by name and champions them in the story and ignores any Aboriginal person who she disagrees with who loves this pipeline.
Is that bigotry?
You're damn straight it's bigotry.
Well, look, if your only source of information is the CBC, you're going to have a very limited and twisted view of the world.
So I actually went and read the court ruling myself.
Can I read a few facts from it that Khaleesi Bethany Lindsay didn't think were important enough to put in her story?
Let me quote, I'm just going to quote from the lawsuit here.
This is the court order, the judgment.
The estimated cost to build the export facility and the pipeline project is approximately $40 billion.
Oh, just that, just that.
The plaintiff has entered, the plaintiff being Coastal Gas Link, has entered into long-term transportation service agreements with LNG Canada joint venture participants, and it is estimated that the plaintiff, that's the pipeline company, will spend approximately $6.2 billion to implement the pipeline project.
Oh, just $40 billion, just $6 billion for the pipe.
I thought journalism was about who, what, why, where, when, you know, giving you the basic facts.
That's a pretty big what to leave out of the story, don't you think?
Now here's from the court ruling again.
Here's outlining the benefits of the pipeline.
Those benefits are expected to include A, creation of approximately 2,500 jobs during peak construction on the pipeline project and a total of approximately 10,000 jobs during peak construction across the export facility, the pipeline project and associated upstream development.
B, substantial federal, provincial, and local, municipal, and regional tax revenue.
C, long-term financial benefits to the 20 indigenous bands along the pipeline project route as a result of project benefit agreements forecast to total more than $338 million cumulatively over the life of the pipeline project.
D, contracting and employment opportunities in proximity to the pipeline project, including more than $620 million in contract work to Indigenous businesses for upcoming construction and additional opportunities for Indigenous and local businesses expected in total approximately $400 million.
And E, investment to support community programs, events, and provide training and educational opportunities to local communities and First Nations.
This is the best thing that has ever happened to these 20 Indian bands.
But forget about money.
How about Aboriginal rights?
How about some of the Indians who actually want to work and signed a deal?
They don't want to just protest on behalf of some American-funded environmentalist group.
They actually want to build their future.
Well, the court heard from them, even if the CBC's Bethany Lindsay silenced them.
There are a number of examples in the court ruling, but I just want to take the time to read from one of them.
Here's from the court ruling.
Troy Young, a Wetsuwatan person, descendant of hereditary chief Namox of the Tsayu Beaver clan, is the general manager and director of Kaya Resources Inc., a company owned by a Witset First Nation Limited Partnership and a Wetsuetan member-owned company.
So they're Indians.
Kaya Resources Inc. has a contract to provide work, including clearing, heli-logging, road building, security, and first aid services in Section 8 of the Pipeline Project.
Mr. Young, who's an Indian member of the band, deposed that CAIA has a direct connection to the local First Nation community.
In addition to local employment opportunities through Witset's ownership interest in Kaya, a portion of the company's profits can be expected to go to the local community.
A delay in construction of the project would have a severe impact on the local Wetsuetan community and the Wetsuetan people.
A substantial number of local First Nations persons are expecting to be employed to perform work related to the project.
These jobs would be well-paying and could provide a means of supporting further economic development in the community by providing access to valuable skills training that would positively affect how people live in the community.
The project provides a real opportunity for positive change in the community.
Now this is from the court ruling, because the CBC is not going to tell you this.
The court ruling has several stories like this.
Real Indian band members hiring real Indian band members.
These are legal terms under the Indian Act.
These are people who vote for Indian bands.
The bands themselves approved all this.
And these are entrepreneurs.
They have been unpersoned by the whitest woman at the CBC.
There are a few points to learn from this, I think.
The first and most obvious is that you just can't trust the CBC.
They are damned liars.
You can't trust the network of, well, what's the CBC?
They hire the registered anti-oil sands lobbyist David Suzuki.
Can't Trust The CBC00:02:25
You can't trust them to tell you the truth about oil and gas pipelines.
They lie or they deceived as they did here.
20 out of 20 Indian bands along the group want this thing to proceed, but the CBC sides with a few cranks.
I'm sorry, you cannot trust the CBC, not even for facts, let alone opinions.
The second thing is a reminder that in fact private companies in Canada mining oil sands pipelines, they're the only people providing real meaningful work for Aboriginal folks in the North and in the country in general.
These are not fake work jobs.
They're real jobs.
You heard some of them described.
First aid security, clearing, heli-logging, skilled, semi-skilled.
Those are awesome jobs.
Now we all learned the lengths that Justin Trudeau said he was prepared to go.
He was prepared to break the law to allegedly save a few thousand jobs for SNC Lavland in Montreal.
Now he was lying too, by the way.
Those jobs were never in jeopardy.
But Trudeau, who would do anything for a fellow Quebecer, well who's going to do something for thousands of British Columbians, especially Aboriginal people?
Trudeau won't lift a finger for a $40 billion project.
And anyone who claims to care about Aboriginal people, well, where are they today?
But the most important thing, and I know this and you know this, but people who rely on the CBC for their worldview don't know this.
It's to realize how fake and fraudulent opposition to the oil sands and pipelines are.
This is the natural gas, but it's the same opponents to all of it.
They're fake.
It's a few actors and lobbyists with high-priced lawyers, most of it paid for out of the U.S.
No normal person wants to stop pipelines.
I know this because normal people realize that pipelines are normal.
You have several pipelines going into your very own home.
You have a dangerous and explosive pipeline.
Natural gas for your stove.
And you have a toxic pipeline.
Your sewer pipe.
You see how absurd it is to call something so banal, so normal, like a pipe?
So safe, so ancient, really.
I mean, the Roman aqueducts were pipes.
Dangerous, toxic.
Well, you have to be as stupid as a CBC reporter to believe that.
I'm glad this court saw through the BS, even if the CBC couldn't.
But the real question now is, will the RCMP uphold the law?
Green Zone Siege00:04:34
Or will Justin Trudeau order them to stand down and side with the lawbreakers?
What do you think?
Stay with us for more.
Well, this is imagery from the U.S. Embassy Zone, the Green Zone, in Baghdad, Iraq, on December 31st.
This was once a highly secure area, and outside are Iranian-backed militia groups, lightly armed, but armed nonetheless, who seem to be having their way and in fact tried to smash through the door, throwing things over easily, climbing up.
It looked like it might turn into, and you can see the Hezbollah flag there, it looked like it might turn into another Benghazi, but on a much larger scale, until Donald Trump ordered the Marines in from Kuwait.
They arrived, including on the Osprey helicopter plane.
I don't even know how to describe it.
It's a unique vehicle.
At least 100.
And the whole place was secured without loss of life.
Donald Trump, oh, here you can see the Ospreys landing in the green zone to secure it.
Donald Trump later tweeting that it was the anti-Benghazi, of course, Benghazi referring to the U.S. Consulate in Libya that on 19 occasions begged Hillary Clinton for some sort of security reinforcement that did not come and resulted in the murder of four Americans here after one cable.
Donald Trump responded, the left seemed crestfallen.
They were lusting for a catastrophic failure that did not come.
Trump did a victory lap and said, that's how we roll under me.
And what does it say about the region and Iran and the United States' multi-year commitment in Iraq?
Joining us now to answer those difficult questions is our friend Joel Pollock, senior editor-at-large from Breitbart.com.
Joe, great to see you again.
Happy New Year.
Happy 2020.
Thank you.
You know what?
I was very scared when I saw the early images on December 31st.
It felt so much like those terrible images from Benghazi or even, I don't know, in Mogadishu even earlier where Americans were devoured by a local community that they went there nominally to help and protect.
To see local militias turning against America and smashing their way through with impunity was terrifying to me.
Tell me your thoughts as an American, and I know I think you formerly served in the armed forces, if I'm not mistaken.
Tell me a little bit more about what happened on December 31st, January 1st in Baghdad.
Well, I didn't serve.
My wife is in the Navy Reserve.
Thank you.
Sorry for the confusion.
Although, you know, very supportive of my friends who did.
So, you know, look, I think people weren't alarmed by what happened in Baghdad, mostly because people expect trouble in Baghdad.
I mean, I don't want to joke about a very dangerous part of the world where Americans have lost their lives and so forth.
But, you know, that clip of the violence and the gunfire in Baghdad, you know, sounds like another day ending in why.
I mean, that's how many Americans probably react to it.
Baghdad's where you expect trouble.
And so we have the green zone.
We have heavily fortified institutions there and installations because we expect violence.
And 10 years ago, we were talking about mortars being heard or crashing in the green zone.
So it's not entirely unexpected.
So people just didn't react in the same way.
I think that the Trump administration was also careful not to overreact.
Iranian Regime's Strategy00:15:17
Iran has tried for several months to try to provoke the Trump administration into doing something militarily.
And the reason they've done that is they are suffering terribly from the sanctions.
In fact, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said a couple days ago on Tuesday of, I think it was the last day of December, he said that the sanctions that the Trump administration has put in place have cost the country 200 billion US dollars.
That more than outweighs the 150 billion or so that Iran received through the Iran nuclear deal in the form of frozen assets and cash in the middle of the night.
So the Trump administration has really hurt Iran and its ability to project power in the region and around the globe.
So the regime is now tottering because the Iranian people see that the regime is weakened and there are protests and all sorts of things going on.
So Iran has to find some way to weaken Trump.
Now there's one way of doing it domestically and one way internationally.
The international version of this is to try to separate Europe from the United States and particularly continental Europe because the UK is more or less on America's side when it comes to policy with Iran or against Iran.
So the Iranian regime would like to make it look like Trump is marching the world toward war, that this sanctions policy he has is really just a first step toward a repeat of another disastrous Middle East incursion.
This is just the third Iraq war and the rest of the world is going to suffer for it.
So if he can create the impression that Trump is on a hair trigger and is just ready to fight, then he can start to create a wedge between the Europeans and the Americans.
And Trump wisely has not allowed Iran to do that.
He has not allowed Iran to provoke any sort of outbreak that would allow Europe to pull away and to insist that the United States drop the sanctions and so forth.
So Trump has handled that pretty well without giving Iran too much leeway.
He's made it clear that the United States will respond to direct attacks on our allies, but he's left enough ambiguity there.
And some people say he's been too weak.
He didn't respond to the Saudi Arabia missiles and so forth.
But Trump has allowed things to remain ambiguous.
He also infamously last year called off airstrikes against Iran.
I think there were 150 or so cruise missiles that were ready to go, something like that, and he called them off.
So Trump has let it be known that he's willing to go to war with Iran, but has not been foolishly, I think, provoked into some kind of action that would result in international condemnation.
The other part of this is domestic politics.
Iran knows that if a Democrat gets into the White House, they're going to try to bring back the Iran deal, which would be great for Iran, because Iran already got everything it needs out of the Iran deal.
It got all the money.
It got all the concessions.
And all that would remain would be for Iran to voluntarily comply or offer to restrict its own development of nuclear weapons.
Well, you know, that's not going to happen, but Iran knows that the Democrats are going to be desperate to show some sort of outreach and so forth.
So they want to weaken Trump politically.
And having this embassy riot on the eve of the new year in the United States heading into an election year was, I think, a way to make Trump look bad.
The media, of course, played into that, calling this another Benghazi, even though it wasn't.
And the Iranian regime, that is, they really wanted to see if Trump would respond militarily.
Now, he did, but not by firing live weapons.
He sent Marines.
He has beefed up security there.
So I think what you're seeing is Trump playing the Iranians pretty well.
And he knows that time is on his side.
The protests continue in Iran.
Iran has to shut down its own mobile phone networks, its own internet to try to stop these protests from spreading.
That's not helpful.
Iran's economy is basically in free fall.
Of course, that's not helpful.
Tehran smells bad, apparently.
If you've been reading news about that, they are using dirty fuel to run their economy.
And so the city smells bad.
It's an unpleasant place to live.
So all of that is building up towards political instability that hopefully soon in our days, as we of the tribe like to say, will result in the collapse of the regime and hopefully in a peaceful way and the creation of something new in Iran that is whatever it is, whether it's an Islamic democracy of some kind or a secular, whatever it is, at least hopefully it won't rely on belligerence towards its neighbors to maintain the integrity politically of the regime.
Well, let me ask you, because I think it was just 100 Marines that came in and tear gas and they were able to put things down in a non-lethal way, if I understand what happened when the Marines came.
But I also see news that the 82nd airborne and the thousands of troops may be headed to the region.
Can you do I have that fact right and can you explain what that purpose is?
We've been talking about a buildup for a long time in the Middle East, particularly the Persian Gulf region outside of Afghanistan.
There, Trump is still looking for ways to draw down the number of troops.
But Iran is clearly seeking confrontations.
So it's possible that they might cross a line where Trump has to respond.
If that happens, he needs to respond quickly.
He's not going to have days to wait before troops arrive in the region.
So already, when that attack on the Saudi oil field happened several months ago, we were sending additional troops to the Persian Gulf to beef up our forces there.
I think we just brought an aircraft carrier home for rest and repairs and that sort of thing, but we did send another aircraft carrier to the region when that happened.
So we are creating the capability of responding very quickly if something happens.
You need to have both.
You need to have both the big stick as Theodore Roosevelt might have said and you also need to show the forbearance and have that diplomatic channel open as Trump does.
He has I think recently even in the last couple of weeks said that he would be open to talks with Iran.
He'd like to be friends with Iran.
That's very helpful because it shows the Iranian people that he's not the problem.
And I think that you've got to have both.
You've got to, as Theodore Roosevelt said, speak softly and carry a big stick.
Or as Trump might say, tweet, but carry a big stick or something like that.
He's got his Twitter, but he's also got the U.S. military.
Let me ask you about one more thing, because the U.S. government recently declassified a trove of documents called the Afghanistan Papers.
I think that's how they're being referred to.
And these weren't leaked by WikiLeaks or anything.
These were government papers.
And you correct me if I'm wrong on that.
And I read about 100 of them.
And I was so demoralized, Joel, because the story I read was a massive presence in Afghanistan that didn't even know its official purpose.
That there were, you know, and I'm talking about almost 20 years ago now that Donald Rumsfeld, months into his tenure, years into it, was saying, what's our goal here again?
What's our mission again?
That there was such a desire to pour resources in, that local profiteers were marking things up by 100 times, that things were, like, it just, it seemed like a combination of waste and corruption and purposelessness and like pushing a string or pushing a rope, as someone might say.
I read as much as I could stomach, and I left so demoralized.
Can you give me your thoughts on the Afghanistan papers?
Look, Afghanistan was never going to be Switzerland in Central Asia.
And Americans have known for quite some time that the society there is not going to build itself into anything like what we would consider stable or even modern.
The economy there is dependent on opium, and that's not going to go away anytime soon with big markets in the United States and Europe.
So Afghanistan has structural problems.
It's never been a friendly place for conquerors.
We've done better than most, certainly better than the Soviets did.
But the region just doesn't respond to the kinds of interventions politically, not even just militarily, but politically.
Militarily, it's bad enough.
You're fighting uphill most of the places there.
But diplomatically and politically, it's been very difficult.
And even the best of the leadership that has been available has often proven to be corrupt.
So that's not going to improve itself.
Those problems are endemic.
And sending Americans over there to try to protect something that doesn't want to be protected is something that most Americans tired of a long time ago.
The issue really remains Iran.
And Afghanistan, of course, is on Iran's eastern frontier with Iraq on the west.
And the situation Barack Obama inherited in 2009, the situation that almost led to the toppling of the Iranian regime, was one in which there were hundreds of thousands of troops east and west of Iran.
You had 100,000 plus in Afghanistan, 100,000 plus in Iraq.
And the Iranian people looked at this and thought, well, look, you know, the Americans are on either side of us.
We can just get rid of our regime right now and they'll support us.
Well, we didn't.
And that was a lost opportunity.
It was probably the strategic pinnacle of American power in the region.
Now we don't have that true presence anymore.
You know, you can't keep them around if you're not committed to winning.
But Trump is using sanctions to restore some of that leverage.
And the reason to maintain troops in that area, again, is also to keep the pressure on Iran.
Iran is a society that could become part of the solution, actually, because unlike Afghanistan, unlike Pakistan, unlike Saudi Arabia even, Iran is a civilization.
Iran is a highly educated country for the most part.
I've got people here in LA, for example, from Iran, Jewish, Muslim, and otherwise, who are among the most successful people in Southern California, who build businesses, who are in high tech.
I mean, the professions here, if you go to a dentist, chances are they're from Iran.
If you go to a geologist or anybody in the engineering field, it's really astonishing how skilled and how well-educated the population there is.
Iran could be really the foundation of a new and better Middle East if it just changed its government.
Now, that's the reason I think to remain engaged in the Middle East in the hope that Iran will change.
Now, Obama saw the same potential in Iran, but he didn't want to do it through regime change.
He basically said, well, Iran can be a leader, but we'll just leave the mullahs in charge.
And we'll allow them to build nuclear weapons because why not?
And that's the problem.
Obama just never really grappled with the essential evil of the regime and how dependent it was on terrorism.
And I think the reason he didn't grapple was he saw America's role in the world as being as bad or worse.
And of course, Israel is the extension of the United States.
Well, we didn't really care what they had to say about it, right?
We didn't even give Netanyahu a seat at the table to negotiate with Iran, even though they're the one country Iran wants to wipe off the map.
So, you know, Obama just didn't care about the nature of the regime.
I think we have to care, but also look beyond that to the nature of the civilization that's being governed by or suppressed by that regime.
And I think once you can achieve some kind of change in Iran, the rest of the region looks a lot rosier.
You know, it's not going to be, again, it's not going to be Switzerland.
It's a bad neighborhood.
But once you've got a good neighbor on the block, at least, someone who can at least produce positive things for the world rather than currently exporting terrorism, I think things begin to improve.
So Afghanistan is a very sad story, but like anything in the Middle East, whether it's Syria or Saudi Arabia, everything has to be viewed in strategic context.
And right now, the biggest strategic challenge is Iran.
Of course, once we solve that problem, there'll be another one to solve.
But that is the biggest and has been the biggest for the last 40 plus years.
Well, it's terrifying, but a little bit hopeful also.
I'm sure that both Russia and China have their counter strategies and may be more bloody-minded about achieving them than the West is.
Joel, I'm sure.
Russia and China, I mean, let's just say a brief word about that.
Russia's foreign policy is essentially to make sure that Russian oligarchs can continue to make money.
And China's foreign policy is essentially to ensure that China can get raw materials and make money.
These are countries that are mercantilist in their approach to the world.
In that sense, they're playing by 17th century rules.
John Kerry complained once that Vladimir Putin was playing by 19th century rules when he invaded Crimea.
In fact, he was about two or three hundred years too late.
These are mercantilist systems and very successful because they're the bullies in the room when everyone else agrees to play nice.
You've got a post-war free trade regime, open economies, and here come the bullies to take advantage of it.
Now, that doesn't mean we need to be at war with them.
It doesn't mean we need to push back against some of what they do.
But understand also that their interest in the Middle East is primarily about raw materials and access to oil.
And for Russia, especially access to Mediterranean naval ports and so forth.
So I think that these are not economies that have a lot of cash to burn.
All the Chinese have a lot of money, but they're not interested in getting mired in the Middle East.
And the Russians certainly don't want to spend all their scarce resources.
I mean, they have a very small economy compared to ours.
They don't want to waste all their time trying to move chess pieces across the board.
I mean, they're basically looking to protect their economic interests as well as their security interests around the periphery of Russia.
But we can still do those things without the Iranian regime as it currently exists.
If there's a better Iran, they will still sell oil to China.
I mean, you know, that commercial relationship doesn't have to be disrupted.
The Chinese and the Russians can live with a world that's better for us as long as it satisfies their needs.
And there's no reason it shouldn't.
So like you, I'm optimistic about 2020.
And I will say this as well.
I think we've got the right person in charge to get it done.
Yeah.
Well, very interesting indeed.
Joel, it's great to catch up with you again.
And I know that you will help guide us through 2020, which will be a momentous year for your country.
And of course, as America goes, so goes Canada and the free world.
So good luck to us all.
Thanks, Joel.
All right.
Thank you.
Great to have you again.
Thank you.
Well, there you have it.
Joel Pollock, Senior Editor-at-Large at our friendsbreitbart.com.
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Hello, my friends.
Pleasant Court Ruling00:00:38
What do you think about the story out of BC?
I'm pleased that the court finally ordered the RCMP to uphold the law.
Now, that doesn't mean the RCMP are going to uphold the law at all.
They're extremely political.
That's why I think that Alberta and frankly every province should get rid of the RCMP.
Why would you allow your provincial police force, at least in the rural parts, to be operated by Justin Trudeau out of Ottawa?
Why?
Because it saves a few bucks.
Get rid of the RCMP.
It's crazy that anyone who's trying to uphold the rule of law for a resource project would rely on Justin Trudeau's personal police force.