Sheila Gunn Reid and Keean Bexte join David Menzies to expose Justin Trudeau’s secretive $1.5B+ Coastal GasLink deal with disputed hereditary chiefs in Northern BC, including Frank Alec—accused of title theft and flat-Earth tweets—while Carolyn Bennett’s vague "Wasoten protocols" claim fuels skepticism over unchecked authority. Meanwhile, Uber and Lyft break Vancouver’s taxi cartel after years of $75-fare barriers and ambulance-license mandates, yet NDP-backed resistance persists in smaller towns. Listeners question Canada’s handling of Pamir Hakimzada, a 2019 ISIS-linked terrorist released on probation despite risks, and mock "de-radicalization" as a euphemism for avoiding Islam’s role in extremism, while Menzies defends citing the Rizala Foundation’s own misconduct allegations. The episode underscores systemic secrecy, elite manipulation of Indigenous governance, and flawed counterterrorism policies, all while debunking tech’s overhyped "solutions." [Automatically generated summary]
The Best Commentaries by Your Favourite Rebels00:01:50
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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 favourite rebels.
I'm your host, David Menzies.
Well, Kian Bexti traveled back to Northern BC to get the goods on the deal between the federal liberals and the hereditary chiefs regarding the coastal gas link pipeline.
Just one hitch.
Hereditary Chiefs and Pipeline Secrets00:12:47
None of the relevant details about the deal are being made public.
Say what?
Ride-sharing services have finally come to British Columbia, yet why are municipal governments doing whatever they can to sabotage the likes of Uber and Lyft?
Sheila Gunread has all the details.
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 my coverage of a wannabe jihadi who is now on probation based on the condition that he receives de-radicalization training at a mosque, a mosque that has a somewhat checkered history.
Yeah, I know what could possibly go wrong.
Those are your rebels.
Now let's round them up.
Justin Trudeau's government has struck a top-secret deal with the illegitimate leadership of the Wet Sowet, and the blockades are still going strong, and perhaps predictably, Trudeau's ratings have tanked since the last election.
Breaking news today from Ipso, 60% of Canadians believe that Justin Trudeau has botched the handling of this pipeline blockade debacle.
Even more believe that more intervention is needed in the blockade situation.
Justin Trudeau's approval ratings have tanked 5% since the last election.
And this comes at a time when CPC leadership hopeful Peter McKay says he's going to be calling for an election in October.
If he does win, that's probably unlikely given the fact that the NDP are deeply in debt and the Block Québécois have no interest in losing seats in the next election.
This all comes at a time when it was announced by Minister Carolyn Bennett over the weekend that they have struck a deal with Frank Alec.
He is an individual who stole the chief title of Chief Woos from Darlene Glam here in Morristown.
Darlene Glam used to be the Chief Woos of the area and that was a title that was inherited from her mother and from her mother's mother and it was going to be passed down to her daughter.
It's a matrilineal title, but somehow Frank Alec managed to abduct that title from her because she didn't hold the correct opinion that the seven other men in the room held, which was that this pipeline better not happen at any cost.
Now, Frank Alec is a rather special guy.
He's someone who thinks that the earth is flat.
Now, that sounds crazy, and it is, but it's true.
He also thinks that there's aliens in Area 51, but Carolyn Bennett has decided out of all of the rather legitimate chiefs in this area, the elected ones, the historical hereditary chiefs, Chief Wu's like Darlene Glam, out of all the people that she could be negotiating this deal with, well, she's going to pick Frank Alec.
And to be fair to Frank Alec, I'm not sure which of these two have less of an idea of what's going on.
Listen to Carolyn Bennett.
I believe have come to a proposed arrangement that will also honor the protocols of the Wasoten people and clans.
And obviously, that what we've worked on this weekend needs to go back to those clans.
And then we have agreed that as ministers, we will come back to sign if it is agreed upon by the nation.
Yikes!
What's that line from the immortal bard again?
Ah, yes, physician, heal thyself.
But the incoherent blather is only part of the issue when it comes to the deal between hereditary chiefs and the federal government.
The real issue is transparency, or rather the lack thereof.
Nobody really has any idea what the deal states or whether or not it's fair and square.
And with more on his adventure into northern British Columbia as our roving reporter Kian Bexti, welcome the Rebel Roundup, my friend.
Thanks for having me.
Always a pleasure.
So Kian, simply put, why the secrecy?
That's a very good question, David, and it's one that many people are asking both here in the Houston area and Canadians are asking across the country.
They want to know why Carolyn Bennett has decided that it's more important for the people she's negotiating with to sign and seal the deal before the other side of the table, the other negotiating partners, aka Canadians, are even aware what's in the deal.
Yeah, so it's like going into a car dealership and signing the contract without actually seeing the car and the options and the features and the salesman saying, trust me, it's good for you.
I'm sorry.
I don't trust this group.
Do you, Kian?
I don't trust them in the least little bit.
I don't trust Carolyn Bennett, someone who can't seem to get more than a few words out of her mouth before spilling all of her marbles, just worse than Justin Trudeau actually does sometimes.
I don't trust Frank Alec at all.
Frank Alec is Chief Wuz.
He was the one that came out to speak to media after the agreement was reached.
He is just as untrustworthy, and he's on the other side.
Not only is he untrustworthy after he stole his office name and position from the woman that held it after she held the wrong opinion.
Sounds like Justin Trudeau to me kicking women out of decision-making positions, but he's also a flat earther.
He's someone who believes that the earth is flat.
And somehow, Carolyn Bennett has decided that of all people, he is the one that should be managing the negotiations for the wet sweat.
You know, it's just incredible.
I can tell you, Kian, I have never thought highly of Dr. Bennett from an ethical perspective back when she was with the Cretchen regime.
She, even as a physician, ruled against a compensation package to hepatitis C victims, which was an absolute disgrace.
And I would argue went against the Hippocratic oath.
As for Chief Wuz, are you pulling my leg here?
There's somebody in the year 2020 in a position of authority, no less, that thinks the earth is flat?
Yeah, no, David, I'm not joking there.
Frank Alec literally thinks that the earth is flat.
He said so on Twitter after he ventured out to the North Pole on apparently a fact-finding mission.
I'm impressed that he has that much time to burn to figure something out like that.
But it goes along with what I think of what it goes along with the story of these people.
They're fighting against these pipelines on stories and fairy tales that they're going to destroy the environment and they're going to spill bitumen into the rivers when they couldn't be more factually inaccurate.
This pipeline, of course, is a natural gas pipeline.
It can't spill bitumen into the rivers.
It's the environmental protections and regulations that have been put in place to protect the environment as it's being built and to restore the environment after it has been built are second to none.
And these people believe that these people, they're low information actors is what's going on here.
Oh, and Kian, you can prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt.
We all must remember that viral clip from last month where a female protester thought that the pipeline was transporting dead animals.
I mean, I'm not making that up either.
I don't know what's more outrageous, a pipeline transporting dead animals or that somebody thinks the earth is still flat.
But Kian, at the crux of the matter, can we drill down, can you give us a sense what or a hereditary chief is in the first place?
So hereditary chiefs are a governing structure that the Indigenous people in this area and in other areas in Canada have used to govern themselves for time immemorial.
And the difference between that and what most contemporary people believe in a government structure is that that was inherited either matrilineally or patrilineally.
Now, on top of that, there's also elected chiefs, which is more in line with what people would expect these days.
The band members all vote and they decide, okay, we want this person to be our chief for this long.
And if they don't like them, they can scrap them.
Now, with the hereditary chiefs, it's a bit of a problem because they can't scrap them without sort of backroom politics with backroom politics with the guys kind of thing.
If you've stayed up to date with this story, five men have actually stripped the hereditary titles from three women who disagreed with those men.
These women have inherited their titles through their family for generations.
And the five men who don't want this pipeline built stripped their titles from them after they created small coalition supporting the pipeline.
So the problem with this hereditary system is it's open to manipulation from the local elites rather than from the, and there's no way to hold them accountable by the people.
The people have no way to hold these hereditary chiefs accountable.
If they want them gone, if they want them out of positions of power, if they think they've done a bad job, well, they're kind of SOL.
You know, I find it actually, Kian, downright farcical.
Our friend Lauren Gunter in the Sun newspapers wrote a fantastic column the other day, and it was about how one of the elected band counselors, Frida Hewson, who was anti-pipeline, lost her position because there was very much, there was a lot of support rather, for a pro-pipeline stance.
So Frida Heusen went from an elected band council member and declared herself a hereditary chief.
And Gunter makes the point: it'd be kind of like Justin Trudeau or Doug Ford losing the next election, and Trudeau calls himself the hereditary prime minister, and Ford calls himself the hereditary premier, even though they didn't have the will of the people.
Would you concur with that bizarre example?
That's exactly what I would agree with that precisely, except for I would change that.
I don't think Trudeau would be the hereditary prime minister.
He'd probably just be the queen of Canada.
Boy, there's a punchline just dangling there, Kian, but I dare not say it.
The other thing, Kian, it should be noted, and again, our friend Mr. Gunter points this out: we kept referring to this as a deal between the federal government and the hereditary chiefs, but I've been told the correct word is arrangement.
Now, that has my needle on my internal BS detector swinging firmly into the red zone.
It appears that there might not be any kind of deal at all.
So, this is how bad the secrecy is, Kian.
What was indeed signed on the table, if indeed there was anything signed at all?
So, it's something to do with rights and title, which means that it's in the subject matter is how they're allowed to govern themselves and who's allowed to make decisions.
Now, if Carolyn Bennett has done what many people expect she's done, she's sort of given these hereditary chiefs, these male hereditary chiefs, everything that they wanted, which will seal the deal for them to be able to negotiate on a legal basis, which they haven't had that legal basis in the past.
They will now have a legal basis to everything that they're doing, and it will be hard to fight back against what they're doing and the positions they take.
So, you know, kicking those women out of those leadership positions, that's fine.
Everything that they're doing behind in the back room of the teepee, there's no way to hold them accountable anymore.
But again, we're going to have to wait until we see exactly what the deal says.
But it seems right now like Carolyn Bennett has just given them everything that they've asked for with nothing in return.
Absolutely incredible.
Vancouver's Taxi Battle00:13:51
And we're left in the dark.
And remember, this was a prime minister that came to power with the promise of being the most transparent government in Canadian history.
Clearly, that's not the case.
Kian, we're running out of time here, so I'm going to say adios to you, but I want you to make me a promise, my friend.
I know you're pretty far north right now.
Can you tread very carefully, just in case Chief Wooz is right that we are living on a flat Earth?
I wouldn't want you to fall off the surface of the planet.
We need more Kian Bexty in these dark days, my friend, okay?
We'll tread very carefully.
Okay, thank you, Kian.
And that was Kian Bexty somewhere in the north.
And hopefully, like I said, he won't take a wrong turn and go into orbit.
Ah, Chief Woos.
Keep it here, folks.
There's more Abrable Roundup to come right after this.
Urbane hipster Vancouver is just getting Uber now.
I know it's shocking to me too.
While other parts of North America have had access to Uber and Lyft for upwards of 11 years, only now is ride-sharing becoming a thing in Vancouver after a years-long battle to bring the services to the lower mainland.
And when I say years-long battle, I'm not even remotely kidding.
The city and the government has done everything they can to keep Uber out.
The Liberals and the NDP both promised to bring ride-sharing to British Columbia in 2017.
And three years later, finally, just finally now, some regions are getting access.
But the roadblocks thrown up by politicians to protect the taxi lobby have been absolutely transparent and outrageous.
For example, when Uber first tried to enter the Vancouver market, the Passenger Transportation Board enforced the rule that required the company to charge at least $75 per ride, just like a limousine.
And now that Uber and Lyft have been operating for a few weeks in Metro Vancouver, drivers are being kept out of the market because of onerous licensing requirements that almost nowhere else has that require them to have a class four license, the same one ambulance drivers have.
Yeah, because schlepping someone a few blocks down the road requires the skill set of a paramedic.
Wow.
And with more on those bumbling bureaucrats and pathetic politicians who are so ready to fight the free market economy is our very own Sheila Gunread.
Welcome to Rebel Roundup, my friend.
Hey, David, thanks for having me on the show.
Well, it's always a pleasure.
So, Sheila, when people ask me who created Uber, I always say the taxicab oligopoly created Uber.
Crap service, expensive rates, filthy cabs, endless delays, on and on it goes.
So it's kind of perversely amusing to see that when a better alternative comes into the market, i.e., ride-sharing services, the powers that be at City Hall do everything at their disposal to make ride-sharing more like the taxicab industry by inundating it with red tape and nonsensical regulation.
What gives, Sheila?
I don't know why municipalities are so beholden to the taxicab lobby.
It seems so strange.
And like, I'll be perfectly upfront with you.
I don't often take cabs or Uber just because of where I live and the job I do.
I always usually have my vehicle with me.
But when I do, when I'm traveling, when I'm at the airport, I like the choice.
I like the competition.
I don't like the government telling me which car I have to get into.
And as a free market person and someone who supports entrepreneurs, I'd rather jump in the Uber because every single one of those guys is an entrepreneur who's trying to earn a little income for his family, who just wants to use what he has, use his skill set, and turn it into an income.
So I'm always happy to support the likes of Uber and Lyft.
And I just don't like how much power the taxi industry has in major municipalities.
I was shocked, David, shocked to find out that Uber and Lyft had not been in Vancouver.
Uber and Lyft are sort of a young hipster sort of company, I guess, or at least that's the impression I have of them.
And to find out that they weren't in the like hipstery-ish city in Canada, that blew my mind.
But when you dig a little deeper and you find out sort of how the NDP are sort of intertangled in all of this, it makes perfect sense.
No, no, you're 100% right.
And probably the American mirror image of Vancouver is Seattle.
And I know for a fact that Uber is huge in Seattle.
So there's no reason to believe it would be otherwise in Vancouver, Sheila.
But you know, the whole business of taxi cab models the world over, it was built on such a fallacy, something taken from almost Soviet-style economic theory, Sheila.
And it was basically this.
We're going to give you a license and we're going to have a finite number of licenses.
So your license will appreciate because literally you can't get into the competitive sphere.
But what that means is while that's good for the taxicab drivers and or more importantly, the taxicab plate owners, it's not good for the consumers.
So on high demand times like the Super Bowl or New Year's Eve or Halloween, typically in the past, you'd phone the taxicab number, you'd get a busy signal even before you finish dialing.
So it's almost like if the cities were running the fast food business, Sheila, I could guarantee you you would have a multi-million dollar hamburger joint, but the deal would be Sheila's hamburgers would have a five-kilometer radius territory where there's no other hamburger job.
So yes, you're making tons of money, but for the customers, they'd have to line up two hours to buy a burger.
This was insane, and it's amazing, like you said, that it was tolerated for all these decades.
Sheila, what's so special about that sector of the economy, the taxis, versus anything else like hotels or restaurants or retail?
You know, there are these special industries, I guess, in Canada that we tolerate this sort of Soviet-style centralized planning.
The taxi industry, dairy, eggs, where there's these quotas that prevent newer, smaller, more innovative farmers and drivers from getting into the industry and driving prices down or at least making things more competitive for the consumer.
And it stifles innovation.
I mean, I was shocked to find out that they are making in BC because Uber and Lyft have been trying to come to BC for years.
And every time they tried, the government in BC would just out of nowhere throw up these crazy roadblocks that don't exist really anywhere else in the country.
For example, making them have a class four driver's license.
That's an ambulance driver's license.
That's crazy.
It's basically driving around a passenger in your car.
But what it was designed to do was just throw up a bureaucratic hurdle and discourage people from becoming an Uber or Lyft driver.
When Uber and Lyft first tried to come into BC a few years ago, the government said, oh, okay, fine, you can come.
Welcome.
Come to BC.
However, you have to charge a $75 minimum fee for someone to jump into your car because we're going to treat you like a limo.
I mean, it was just, it was so crazy.
And then when you drill down and find out who's on this ride-sharing panel that the government convened to make the rules for Uber and Lyft to come in, instead of just saying, yeah, you know, we'll just replicate what they're doing in Edmonton or Calgary or Toronto or wherever.
Come on in.
It seems to be working there and nobody's any more harmed in car accidents or whatever.
You drill down and you find out that one of the NDP MLAs sitting on this commission, his dad's a taxi driver and he never had to recuse himself from working on the panel.
I mean, it's so crooked and so corrupt from the top to the bottom, but I'm very glad that at least in BC, this is a small victory for the free market that rarely happens there.
You know, and Sheila, you bring up the words crooked and corruption, and there's always been so many allegations.
I'm not sure if any have ever been proven, but it's out there.
And that is the fact that in certain municipalities, certain counselors who are making these laws and bylaws are in the pocket of the taxicab industry.
So have you ever made any connection of any kind of actual confirmation that maybe a counselor is getting gifts, is getting payments in order to preserve the status quo as is?
Well, if you go to the Stranded BC website, these guys are great.
They're documenting all the sort of ties between the government and the taxi industry, because really, I love the name of their little organization, Stranded BC, because that's what was happening to consumers.
They were being stranded, like you say, for hours on hours at peak taxi cab times.
I'm old enough to remember like going to a concert or going to the bar and when the bar lets out at 2 a.m.
You're not getting home till 5 because the taxi cabs just weren't there.
There was a two-hour wait and they said it with a like without flinching.
It's just a two-hour wait.
But in BC, they actually had someone who was quite affiliated with the NDP.
He sort of became the point man of this, they called it Cater.
And it was this company when the NDP said, oh, we're going to bring ride sharing to BC, but it can't be Uber and it can't be Lyft.
It's going to be called Cater.
And it was basically run by the taxicab companies.
It was just like, we're going to call it ride sharing.
And we're going to put this NDP affiliated guy in charge of it all.
But it was completely run by the taxi cab companies.
And a share of the profits went back to the taxi cabs.
So I mean, it's just been a gong show since the whole movement to bring Uber and Lyft to BC started.
A real comedy of errors.
They tried to stop this everywhere along the way.
But you just can't stop eventually what the consumer demands.
And the consumer demanded choice and they demanded freedom and they demanded convenience, having a car there within four minutes.
And you know, Sheila, when you have the people making the rules, I'm sorry, but politicians, I mean, you know, some of them have zero business acumen.
I mean, they couldn't run a successful pay toilet operation at an all-you-can-eat chili competition in Tijuana, for goodness sakes.
So the thing is, it's kind of funny to see them making the rules because it's completely contrary to how the free market works.
But tell me, my friend, if I were to go or any of our viewers were to go to Vancouver today, can I, I know the last time I was there, it wasn't in operation.
Can I get a Lyft or Uber ride without any hassle, without any problem?
Or what's the lay of the land right now?
You can get an Uber and a Lyft now in BC.
You can jump into one at the airport as far as I know.
However, other municipalities are slow to get on board.
And so there's still this push in BC to say, okay, it's come to the greater Vancouver area, but we need to bring this further out to the other municipalities.
This is also a job creation thing.
When people are getting laid off, we're seeing CN layoffs, forestry layoffs because of the rail blockades.
This is the difference between feeding your family and not for some people if they have the opportunity to make a little money on the side driving for Uber and Lyft.
And that's truly where this push is coming from.
It's not just people who want consumer choice and free markets, but it's also people who see the value in having this readily available part-time job where people can access you, your business, your little entrepreneurial business from their phone.
And it's just a shame that it's still seeing this opposition in some of the smaller BC communities.
Ride-Sharing Red Flags00:05:27
Wow.
Okay, well, Sheila, we're going to have to wrap it here.
And I will say one other element to this.
I have seen left-wing media reporting of Uber and Lyft and other ride-sharing services, and they tend to slam it because A, this is all about cars on the road.
And B, people like you and I and our viewers, we should be going in public transit to reduce our carbon footprint, but I don't want to.
I want to be in a car, especially now with coronavirus as a concern.
So please, will you just back off and let the free market economy take care of everything?
Sheila, great report.
Thank you so much for weighing in.
Thanks, David.
Have a great weekend.
And remember, cars are freedom.
I love cars.
I know that's so politically incorrect to say, right, folks?
But I so, so love them.
It is the ultimate freedom machine.
And this is one of the reasons, too, why I abhor the very idea of a self-driving car.
I don't want a kinder, gentler version of HAL in the dashboard.
Thank you very much.
Thanks again, Sheila.
And keep it here, folks.
More of Rebel Roundup to come right after this.
David Menzies for Rebel News here in Toronto.
Well, folks, I'm in the middle of a stakeout for a radicalized individual who was tried and convicted of terrorism charges.
Yet, even though the parole board said he was a risk, he was given probation after spending just a few months in prison after being convicted.
I speak of Pamir Hakimzada.
He is just one of several individuals who are in the news, individuals who are radicalized, individuals who are would-be jihadis.
They've been tried and convicted and released, even though there is strong evidence to suggest that they are still radicalized and still pose as a threat to public safety.
In the case of Pamir, he traveled to Turkey in 2014.
His ultimate goal was to join ISIS in Syria.
Never made it to Syria.
He was arrested in Turkey.
And eventually he was deported back here to Canada.
Oh, what a prize.
He was arrested for assaulting a witness, if you can believe it, in 2016.
And he was charged with terrorism in 2017.
Now, in February of 2019, just a year ago, he was convicted for, quote, leaving Canada to participate in the activity of a terrorist group, end quote.
That sounds kind of serious, doesn't it?
But get a load of this.
He was released in June of 2019.
Yes, just after his conviction, only a few months in the slammer, and Pamir got to walk free.
But it gets worse, folks.
He was released even though the Ontario Parole Board ruled that Pamir, quote, would constitute an undue risk to society, end quote.
Yeah, but what does the parole board know, eh?
Better to roll the dice and hope that everything comes out nice.
After all, wouldn't want to come across as being culturally insensitive now, would we?
In any event, here's what some of you had to say about wannabe jihadis getting early release and probation despite a number of red flags.
The Gatekeeper writes, de-radicalization techniques really worked well recently in the UK, didn't they?
A success story jihadi was attending a conference about de-radicalization and left to stab people.
What could possibly go wrong in Canada?
What proof is there that these programs actually work?
That's an excellent question, Gatekeeper.
It would be most curious to see if valid statistics exist on the success rate of de-radicalizing jihadis.
I have a gut feeling the numbers aren't all that great, otherwise the media party would surely be trumpeting such stats on a daily basis.
Loki writes, you should seriously think about de-radicalizing Trudeau.
Ah, you Norse god of mischief, you.
You know very well that there's not enough imams in Canada to de-radicalize Justin Trudeau.
Neil Thomas writes, de-radicalization?
Was he some sort of fundamentalist Quaker or something?
Point taken, Mr. Thomas.
The mainstream media has been conditioned to tiptoe around any words that make mention of Islam or Muslims or Arabs when it comes to terrorism.
So yeah, what the heck?
Let's just pretend it's all those hot to trot Quakers that are causing all the problems in the world today.
And hey, keep an eye out for those dastardly Amish too, will you?
Let's discuss writes, LOL, Sy, Menzies, you're such a clown.
I was literally preparing a comment to compliment you on finally engaging in some journalism and then you had to share the information about the allegations at the end of your report.
What a newbie move.
Rather than hang on to that information after doing more digging and perhaps landing an interview with the Imam, you've essentially now ensured that the mosque will never contact you back by raising that issue now.
Sorry, let's discuss.
Allegations Revealed00:00:28
I didn't dig up those allegations about financial malfaisance and abuse taking place at the Rizala Foundation.
All of that information was obtained from Drumroll Please, the Rizala Foundation's own website.
Check it out yourself.
I promise you, I'm not clowning around.
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.