Sheila Gunn Reid and Keean Bexte expose Canada’s shifting protest narratives: United We Roll’s legal trucker protests, once demonized as "white nationalist," now face economic chaos from illegal blockades backed by politicians like Trudeau, who ignores 20 BC Indigenous band councils supporting Coastal GasLink. Wet’ Sweat’ and Society—a foreign-funded nonprofit—drives misinformation (e.g., "dead animals" in pipelines) while 85% of local Indigenous groups back the project. Media bias, like CBC’s false framing, fuels protests, yet legal protesters face arrests (e.g., Thornhill mosque) while illegal ones evade consequences, revealing a double standard. Bexte’s divestment and Via Rail’s mass layoffs underscore broader economic instability as Canada’s protest culture clashes with governance. [Automatically generated summary]
Welcome to Rebel Roundup, ladies and gentlemen, and the rest of you, in which we look back at some of the very best commentaries of the week by your favorite rebels.
I'm your host, David Menzies.
Well, a year later, United We Roll is ready to roll again.
Wonder if they'll receive the same level of respect the illegal rail protesters are getting these days.
Sheila Gunread will have all the nitty-gritty details.
Now, is it too much to ask protesters to be informed about the issues they are protesting?
Yeah, just wait till you see Kiam Bexi's interaction with some of these cats in Victoria.
And finally, letters, we get your letters, we get your letters every minute of every day.
And I'll share some of your responses regarding a protest at a mosque in Thornhill, Ontario.
Well, the Reader's Digest version is this.
There seems to be a two-tier level when it comes to law enforcement in Canada these days.
Those are your rebels.
Now let's round them up.
So today on this anniversary convoy day, I'm going to talk to some of the truckers, follow the convoy throughout the day, and see what they have to say about these anti-fossil fuel blockades plaguing Canada.
It looks like everybody's just starting to get here, so let's go check it out.
What do you think of the protesters that are blocking the rail lines?
I don't agree.
What should happen to them?
They should all be thrown in jail.
Every last one of them.
They're feeding into the narrative that's going around the country right now, and they're all out there.
They don't even have a purpose.
So what's going on?
I think it's absolutely ridiculous.
I think it proves nothing and it's an infringement on Canadian economy.
The thing that bothers me the most is they're blocking people, like hardworking people trying to get to work.
And it's really uncalled for.
I myself haven't been blocked yet, but you see it all over social media and stuff that they're blocking roads and people are getting mad and they're taking down the blockades and then they get arrested, which to me is not right.
I would like anybody that's protesting right now illegally to have a look with your hearts and your minds connected together at how United We Roll Canada has protested legally, respectfully, peacefully across Canada over the last year.
That's it.
You know, there's a right way to get your message across and then there's the wrong way.
And doing things illegally in this country doesn't fly well with the majority of Canadians.
My how time flies.
After all, it's been a year since the United We Roll legal and civil protest kicked off.
So what's changed in 2020?
Well, just look at the recent headlines, folks.
The country is paralyzed by these rail blockades, which I should add are illegal.
And yet, it's so odd, isn't it?
In so many quarters of the media party, these protesters are being cheered on, whereas going back a year ago to the legal protests of United We Roll, these people were being likened to, I don't know, white nationalists.
Unbelievable.
And with more on this issue is our very own Sheila Gunri.
Sheila, first of all, welcome to the Rebel Roundup.
And secondly, this is just staggering to see the media coverage of this tale of two protests.
We had a very legal, a very respectful protest happen about a legitimate issue, i.e., Albertans and other Westerners being thrown out of their jobs, losing their livelihoods because of paralysis by analysis, federal politics.
And yet, here we have a bunch of thugs, many of whom aren't even native.
They have no connection at all to either the project or the province of British Columbia.
And if you read some of the media, these are like social justice warrior champions that should be applauded.
What gives, my friend?
Well, it's just more of how the federal government treats Alberta.
United We Roll are not a bunch of white nationalists.
In fact, they have Indigenous people regularly participating on their convoys locally and the one to Ottawa.
And they warned the RCMP and every town that they were going through: hey, we're on our way.
Hey, we're coming through.
This is our route.
Just so you know, we might slow down traffic, but we promise we're never going to block it.
They did everything right.
They called ahead when they went to Ottawa.
They made sure that the security on site down there knew they were coming, what time they would be there, exactly where their trucks were going to be parked, how many trucks there were.
They did everything right.
They had a united voice about this is what's happening in the West.
This is what's causing it.
And if you're not going to listen to us, we're going to come to you.
And hopefully you'll listen to us then.
They drove thousands of kilometers.
They fundraised their own money.
They didn't ask for any help from the government.
They didn't actually have any demands from the government except get out of the way.
And they were demonized repeatedly in the media as white nationalists, racists, backwards killbillies, rednecks, uneducated.
They didn't understand the issues.
And yet these protests now that are blockading rail lines, that are shutting down government buildings, showing up at BC Premier John Horgan's house and scaring the daylights out of his wife, they're being legitimized by the politicians, especially liberal politicians.
And they are getting meetings, like bilateral meetings, as though they are just normal and speak for people they actually don't speak for.
And not a single liberal politician bothered to even meet with United We Roll when they drove thousands of kilometers to get there.
That's what you get for bringing the message of what's happening in Alberta and doing everything right when you do it.
You know, you've touched upon two issues here, Sheila.
One, the politicization of this protest, and the other, how this protest, members of these protests are getting emboldened and going further in their law breaking and their uncivil behavior.
And, you know, I think of the sign you see in national parks, Sheila, don't feed the animals.
The reason it's there is not to be mean to the animals.
It's just that the animals become dependent on you and they get ever more emboldened when they encounter humans.
And I think that's what's happened here.
They're going against the rule of law.
They are going against court injunctions.
They are not being touched by any level of policing.
So I think if I'm a member of this group, Sheila, I'm saying, hey, look what we're getting away with.
How much further can we push this illegal behavior?
Well, they're getting meetings with politicians.
Like they are being legitimized as though they are speaking for the democratically elected Wet Sweaten band.
That's how they're being treated.
When the Wet Suetan and the Indigenous groups in the area, every single one of them support Coastal Gas Link.
But it's not them that Trudeau is meeting with.
It's not all the Indigenous bands that want tech approved that Trudeau is meeting with.
It's these protesters, many of whom aren't Indigenous.
They're white professional protesters for the most part, and they're breaking the law.
It is costing farmers millions of dollars a day.
As we're shooting this, Via Rail has just laid off 1,000 people.
That's in one day.
There are 2,500 jobs at stake with Coastal Gaslink.
The forestry industry, who moves much of their product by rail, they are facing layoffs and backlogs.
But Trudeau's not meeting with any of them.
None of them.
He's meeting and legitimizing these protesters.
They are getting basically what the Indigenous protesters love to call nation-to-nation consultations, while everybody else who's done everything the right way, they're just supposed to wait around for the next batch of layoffs while Trudeau figures out what exactly these people want.
And what they want is a complete shutdown of anything related to fossil fuels in Canada.
And I'm worried that Trudeau is going to capitulate to them, at least on some very serious matters like Coastal Gas Link and like Tech's Frontier Oil Sands Mine.
Oh my goodness.
You know, I never even thought about that, Sheila, and I hope you are wrong.
But I mean, I think right now, if I'm a farmer, oh, I must be losing my mind right now.
It wasn't a great harvest year, as I understand it.
Then they had the rail strike to deal with, and now they have this utter nonsense.
I can just imagine the fury in farm country.
And also, let's talk about this whole politicization of this protest where you have Justin Trudeau saying all the party leaders are going to meet except Andrew Scheer because he said something a little too nasty.
So think of that, Sheila.
Think of these optics.
The leader of the official opposition is excluded from this powwow, yet a leader with a party whose mission statement is to break up Canada, is to have Quebec separate.
He is welcome.
I mean, are we living in the twilight zone here, Sheila?
Think about it this way, from an Alberta standpoint.
We don't have any liberal MPs in the West, specifically Alberta, but there are none in the West.
It's a wipeout.
We don't want them.
We don't have a voice in Ottawa except for the Conservative Party.
That's the group speaking for the farmers who, like you point out, have this rail stoppage, a rail strike, bad harvest, and a carbon tax stuffed in there in the middle of it.
Nobody else is speaking for the West.
Nobody can speak for the West because they aren't elected to speak for the West.
So this is just another slap in the face alienating Albertans even more, Saskatchewanians, however you say what they are, and the Interior of British Columbia.
They're completely alienated from this mix.
Our voices were shut out of that conversation.
And yet it is us who is probably most greatly affected by all of this.
That's how the liberals treat us in Ottawa, though, like a colony that doesn't get a fair say when, like you rightly point out, they've got the bloc in there.
They've got the Green Party, which is just a statistical rounding error of Canadians.
Yet they had a voice at the table, but all of the West shut completely out.
Oh, it is absolutely staggering to me, Sheila.
Now, can you give us an idea with this, I guess it's a scaled-down version of United Reroll, where are they going to be going and what do they hope to accomplish ultimately, Sheila?
When they did this last year, as you said earlier, not a single member of the Trudeau Liberal government had the decency to come out and meet them on the steps of Parliament Hill.
Yeah, you know what?
I don't think they are looking for Justin Trudeau's approval, to be quite honest with you.
We saw them turn up at the Carsland blockade when Unifor blockaded the bulk fuel station there because of a labor dispute they had going on in Saskatchewan.
They showed up there.
It seems to me that United We Roll is going to be the voice of the people when the politicians and our police forces fail to act, fail to defend the rule of law.
At least United We Roll is going to show up and make their voices heard because they do speak for a lot of Albertans.
So, you know, they're watching these rail blockades quite closely.
And so we'll see how it goes.
But they really are the people who are out there advocating for farmers, for oil patch workers, when even our conservative politicians seem just a little bit too cowardly to do any of that.
Well, Sheila, we got to wrap it here.
I really, really hope you are incorrect for a change, that this prime minister would actually go so far as to cancel the coastal gas link pipeline, especially since this was about a decade in the making to get all the necessary permits and logistics right.
But secondly, it's not just a pipeline project being canceled.
Think of the message this sends to the international community in terms of Canada being open for business when basically a bunch of Yahoos who aren't even native can paralyze an entire nation illegally and against a court order.
I think this is really thin ice the prime minister would be walking on if he even thought about canceling this project, Sheila.
David, this prime minister has canceled bigger projects for less.
For example, he canceled the Northern Gateway pipeline project that would have ended Canada's landlocking of our resources.
We would have had five years already of getting fair international market value for our oil and gas.
He ended that because of similar protests and similar political pressure.
So for him to cancel Coastal Gas Link, you know what?
It would not surprise me at all.
I want to be wrong.
I really don't want to be right.
But if anything, we know Trudeau is an ineffectual leader and he's weak.
Indeed, and we'll have to leave it there.
And if he does cancel this project, ultimately, you know what that means, Sheila?
He is anti-native because, as we've said over and over, 20 out of 20 band councils have signed off on this project.
This is a disgrace.
Sheila, thanks again for weighing in on this story.
Thanks, David.
Dead Animals Protest Myth00:03:35
You got it.
And that was Sheila Gunread, somewhere in northern Alberta.
Keep it here, folks.
So my security has arrived and we are going to go through downtown Victoria and ask these folks just some very simple questions and see what answers we can get.
We're doing a segment on RNN, and we're just like quizzing people on what is actually in the pipeline and where the pipeline goes through.
Would you be able to tell me what is actually being transported to Kitamat?
Oil.
Oil?
I believe so.
What do you think is being transported to Kitamat?
Oil.
Oil.
From where?
I'm not entirely sure, but I know it has to do something with the Albertan government.
The coastal gasoline pipeline is going through 20 different Indigenous nations.
And I'm from Alberta.
And what has a lot of Albertans scoffing is that all 20 of them have signed on to the agreement.
Why is it important to override that democratic decision of theirs?
I think for that question, you really want to speak to someone who has, like, who can fully, someone over there who can like fully explain it in its proper in a correct, very exact way.
Yeah.
Could you tell me what is in the pipeline?
It is crude oil.
It's actually natural gas.
Well, folks, I think it goes without saying that if you're going to be part of a protest, you might want to know what the protest is all about.
I mean, if you're all about saving the whales, you might want to know something about the whales.
If you're anti-nuke, maybe you'd be read up on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
But are we in a day and age where protesters don't know anything about what they're protesting?
They're maybe just hopping aboard a bandwagon because maybe it's cool or that their friends are doing it.
Well, you just saw the footage, folks, and I think it speaks for itself.
And of course, the man asking the questions of these pathetic protesters, well, he joins me right now in studio, Kian Bexty, all the way in from Calgary.
Kian, that is just remarkable footage.
And I urge our viewers to watch the whole segment.
it wasn't your question it was somebody in the mainstream media i think that had the ultimate dumb answer uh in which the protesters thought that dead animals were be first of all why would anyone construct a pipeline to transport dead animals maybe dead dogs to korea for uh for for a cup of soup in the north but But I mean, that was staggering, and she wasn't saying that as a joke, was she?
I think it was like this weird crutch, like her unintelligence was so, her lack of intelligence was so clear that she was like relying on this weird facetious attitude with that reporter trying to mask how uninformed she actually was about it because she didn't know after the follow-up when that reporter said, well, you know it's not dead animals, right?
Like you've got to be serious.
And then they said, oh, well, I think it's bitumen, which is the farthest thing.
Like bitumen is a near-solid petroleum product that they get out of the ground in northern Alberta.
And what's actually being transported is actual gas, fluid gas, not liquid, it's gas in this pipeline, the exact opposite of bitumen.
Greta's Bitumen Blunder00:04:52
So it's a safe pipeline in that regard because it doesn't leak.
You know, if there's a leak, it literally leaks into the air and just like it would anywhere else naturally occurring even.
So this protest that we saw where everyone thought it was either oil or bitumen crude, some people said, it's just, it's stunning that they have no interest in even looking into slightly what it is they're protesting.
And also, Kian, I wonder if any of them have skin in the game.
You asked a woman, pardon me, who looked like she could have been native if she was native, and she said, no, she wasn't.
And I had a similar experience last week when I went out to Belleville to the rail protest there.
The title of that work of literature comes to mind, The Last of the Mohicans, because as my friend at the Sun, Joe Warmington, said, the people on the protest line look more Scottish than they do native.
And that's the thing, isn't it?
At the end of the day, we have 20 out of 20 band councils signed on to this project to have it go through.
So I guess, who are these people that are doing these protests and doing these rail blockades in the first place?
Well, it all stems from the hereditary chief tree that they use to operate their company.
The hereditary chiefs are a phrase that the mainstream media likes to use instead of using board members.
Basically, they're board members of a company called the Office of the Wet, Sweat, and Society.
And this board is funded by Tides Pemina Institute, Forest Ethics.
I broke that story a year ago, before there's blockades happening, before there was much interest in this at all.
We established that these people are not a First Nation at all.
They are a company, a nonprofit society that's funded by foreigners and mobilizes through grants, travel grants, bursaries, brings protesters from across Canada and even the United States up to the Wet Sweaten traditional territory, they call it, to blockade up there and also to blockade across the country.
And you know, here's my theory, Kian.
I think that we have a generation right now of young people that have protest envy.
We have it pretty good in Canada, right?
And I think back to the 1960s when there were civil rights issues, you know, there was discriminatory laws still against black people in the U.S. There was an unjust war perhaps being fought over in Vietnam.
And you could understand, you know, young people getting involved in protesting, those kind of things.
But what they're protesting now is a society built on the fruits of the oil and gas industry.
They clearly display it, everything from what they wear to the cell phones they use.
And that's the first thing.
It's so hypocritical that they're out there campaigning something that has made their lives so much better.
The hypocritical is the best way to put it.
And isn't it so fitting that the grand marshal of this whole joke of a national protest is Greta Tunberg herself?
She just announced on Twitter that she is avidly supporting the Wet Sweaten people, which she obviously is not.
She's obviously uninformed on it, like she is on a lot of issues.
She's saying she stands with the Wet Sweaten people.
But if she did stand with the Wet Sweaten people, she would be supporting the 85% of them who voted in favor of the pipeline.
But Indigenous rights, you know, when it comes to supporting them, they'll only support it so far as it supports their own radical climate agenda.
And, you know, and the thing is, there is a bit of a cheering section echo chamber when it comes to the mainstream media.
You would think that, you know, the precise opposite is true, that zero out of 20 band councils are in support of this.
And you mentioned, Greta, and it should be worth noting that astonishingly, Time magazine proclaimed Greta as the person of the year.
So yet again, I think, Kian, that we're in a milieu where Canadians that want to know more about the issue, they're getting a very biased picture through the mainstream media lens these days, aren't they?
Absolutely biased.
And it all started with, who do you think?
The CBC.
A year ago, the CBC published a blatantly and purposefully misleading article that labeled the Office of the Wet, Sweat, and Society, the nonprofit company, labeled them as a legitimate First Nations, capital F, capital N, referring to First Nations bans in the Indian Act, which is a very specific thing, almost like a municipality for the people in the band.
CBC's Misleading Labeling00:02:38
They claimed, they conflated that this office, this nonprofit company, was a registered Indigenous band.
And that's how it all got started.
It fomented protests across the country that lasted about a day or two.
But everyone thought that the coastal gasoline pipeline, TC Energy, used to be TransCanada back then, was trampling over an Indigenous band.
That's not the case.
It's board members of a company who just happen to be Indigenous, and the CBC is to blame for that.
Amazing.
So, in other words, our tax dollars are going to funding this propaganda, which runs contrary to bettering the lives of so many natives.
I mean, there's so many angles of this Key and A. Players.
It's staggering.
One last question.
Where do you see this going?
I mean, we're into the second week of this.
There seems to be paralysis by analysis happening right now.
Our own prime minister says that it's time for dialogue.
I say, no, once there's a court order, dialogue has ended.
Now law enforcement has to do their role.
Clearly, that's not happening.
So, whether it's these people doing the blockades, Kian, or the group you met out in Victoria, are we anywhere near an end game, or is this just going to really paralyze the economy in the days and weeks ahead?
I can tell you one thing: I've pulled the money that I've saved in mutual funds that are invested in Canadian companies out, and I'm buying gold.
It's just there's no way that I would risk personally, not as a reporter or anything, there's no way that any random person who has their life savings in Canada, there's no way they're going to keep it there when they know that the prime minister is not going to stand up for things as basic as rail transport.
We can't, this company thrives, is held together through a web of rail, from farmers to steel workers to loggers.
It all comes down to rail.
And if that can't operate, and if it's as easy to break down as two idiots standing on a railway, well, the country's going to fall apart and there's no way investment is going to stay here.
Well, a great report.
And you know, folks, I think what Kian just said there was very profound.
It's the outside economic element to this story.
If you were a foreigner wanting to invest in Canada and you saw what was going on, and even though the government has the rule of law on its side, even though the government has court injunctions and is deciding not to do anything, would you invest a dime in this?
Well, we're not a banana republic, I guess we're a maple syrup republic.
Would you invest a dime in this maple syrup republic?
I sure as heck went.
Outside Economic Element00:03:38
Keep it here.
more of rebel roundup to come right after this.
You know, Nasser, I think you speak about an even bigger question.
What are we doing in Canada?
As you know, we have rail blockades that are bringing the economy to a grinding halt.
These are illegal rail blockades.
There has been court injunctions ordered, and the police at every level is not enforcing the law.
Does this sadden you in terms of you getting any kind of support on law enforcement on the political side to further your cause?
I, to be honest with you, I don't want the support.
Never mind the support.
But they have arrested me right in here.
My first time I was arrested in here because of speaking out.
I was arrested.
What was the charge?
Charge was criminal harassment.
And then it went to court.
Judge got up.
Judge Justin from York Regional Police got up front of the crown.
He said, I take off my head for this young man.
I wish we had more people like this in Canada.
Well, folks, you can see there's a couple of police cruisers, a police pickup truck, too.
I don't see many of those on the street.
Maybe they're going to whack and sack these protesters.
Who knows?
But, you know, I advance on to this property with a little trepidation.
I do want to hear what the people at the mosque have to say about these allegations.
And of course, the last time I had an interaction with the York Regional Police, it was last month at Rogers Hometown Hockey.
Evidently, it's against the law to ask Ron McClain impolite questions.
I wonder if that kind of mindset applies to the people at this mosque.
Well, we'll find out.
Oh, hi there, sir.
Hey, Dunn.
Very good.
You guys are more than welcome to be here.
You just can't be on the property.
Oh, we were actually going to go and speak to somebody with the mosque to find out if they'll come down to interview, but I can't ask them that myself, officer.
He doesn't want you guys on the property.
Oh, who's that?
That guy there in the black coat.
Okay, because the allegations are that this mosque supports.
This is the problem.
We just, you guys are more than welcome to be here.
You just can't be on the property, okay?
Oh, okay, but I'm.
I'm just trying to get their side of the story.
They don't want to give the story, so.
They don't want to.
No, okay.
This is odd that the police is doing the talking for the people at the mosque.
I don't understand.
Well, there you have it, folks.
Apparently, legal protesters in Canada get more harassment from law enforcement than illegal ones.
I guess it all depends on who you're offending these days, doesn't it?
In any event, here's what some of you had to say regarding this protest over an allegedly Iranian-funded mosque.
Cameron Gervais writes, A man not from Canada seems to have the brainpower to see what's happening to our country.
Why can't the Liberals?
Well, my guess, maybe because Mr. Pooley knows firsthand what happened to Iran in the years after the 1979 revolution.
Harold Rankin writes: So ironic how quickly David and the anti-terrorism protesters were shuffled off minutes after they started, but Aboriginal protesters can block border crossings and railway crossings with no consequences at all.
So much for equality from the left.
You know, I'm glad you put quotation marks around Aboriginal protesters, Harold, given that there seems to be so few of those.
Church Mouse Musings00:00:31
But if you're implying that there is indeed a two-tier law enforcement standard in Canada these days, I'm not going to argue that point with you.
And one church mouse writes, someone once said, elect a clown, expect a circus.
You know, church mouse, I love that saying, even though I'm kind of hating life under the big top these days.
Well, that wraps up another edition of Rebel Roundup.
Thanks so much for joining us.
See you next week.
And hey, folks, never forget, without risk, there can be no glory.