Sheila Gunn Reid and Kian Bexte expose Canada’s $830,000 grant to China’s Wuhan lab—ignoring 2018 U.S. warnings about safety risks—while two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, languish in detention. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s pandemic defiance, from seizing federal border control to deploying food inspectors, reflects deep distrust of Ottawa, potentially stoking separatism. Meanwhile, an Oakville father’s $880 fine for skating with his kids in an empty parking lot—despite no harm and conflicting enforcement—risks turning Canadians against overreach as outdoor freedoms clash with arbitrary rules. [Automatically generated summary]
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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 favorite rebels.
I'm your host, David Menzies.
Well, your tax dollar's hard at work yet again, folks.
Trudeau's Pandemic Handouts00:15:07
And this is truly unbelievable.
It turns out that the Trudeau Liberals actually gave some $830,000 of your money to a laboratory in Wuhan suspected of kicking off the pandemic.
Yeah, yeah, that lab, the lab that caused this global mess that we're now in.
Sheila Gunreed has all the unbelievable details.
And have you noticed that a Western premier is acting far more prime ministerial than, well, the prime minister himself?
Kian Bexty will weigh in on how Jason Kenney is truly outshining Justin Trudeau when it comes to that commodity known as leadership.
And finally, letters, we get your letters, we get them every minute of every day.
And I'll share some of your responses regarding my story on an Ontario family of four who were fined $880 for the egregious crime of inline skating in a deserted parking lot.
Oh, it's true.
And you had plenty to say about this case of bylaw gone bad.
Those are your rebels now.
Let's round them up.
Okay, so this is a lab that collects deadly viruses that have already caused problems in the world like SARS.
And the Americans were so concerned about the shoddy conditions at this lab that deals with highly infectious and dangerous diseases in Wuhan, China, that they dispatched two science diplomats, which is something I've never even heard of before.
And then these science diplomats were sending warnings back to Washington about the potential for this lab to cause a plague.
So naturally, Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is now engaging in a research project with this dangerous Chinese laboratory and relying on scientists on the ground in Wuhan, China to do all the research.
But don't take my word for it.
Let me show you.
This is from the Canadian government website that lists a series of grants to study this new coronavirus.
To contribute to global efforts to address the 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak, on February 10th, 2020, the government of Canada launched a rapid research funding competition.
Canada's researchers were quick to respond, submitting hundreds of applications in just a week.
It looks like the Canadian government, in an effort to move fast instead of smart, seems to be giving Canadian tax money to, well, possibly the bad guys of the outbreak.
Wow, I guess Dr. Frankenstein was unable to receive a check for his research, courtesy of the Canadian taxpayer.
Actually, allow me to apologize to the estate of Mary Shelley here.
Her fictional monster maker was nothing compared to those responsible for the COVID-19 virus, something that is killing thousands and sending entire economies into deep, deep recession.
And yet, for some perverse reason, it looks like the Trudeau liberals had a compulsion to be, oh, I don't know, accessories to this carnage.
Where does it end, folks?
With more on this egregious story, is Sheila Gunread herself.
Welcome to Rebel Roundup, my friend.
Hey, David, thanks for having me on the show.
It's always a pleasure.
So, Sheila, please, what is going on here?
Is this yet another Justin Trudeau-approved handout to a nation that he says has all the hallmarks of a basic dictatorship that he actually admires?
Yeah, I mean, the American intelligence agencies have suggested that this is the birthplace of the current coronavirus plague.
In 2018, they sent science diplomats to investigate what was going on at this Wuhan facility.
It's basically a military installation.
It's the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
And in 2018, what those diplomats saw was so troubling to them that they sent back emergency cables to Washington to say that this facility was not up to snuff.
The researchers weren't trained to be handling the dangerous things they were handling already.
And they used the word pandemic in those cables, as in this would be the birthplace of the next pandemic, or if things got out of control there, that the world might have a pandemic on their hands.
And here we are, some two years later, and we do have a pandemic.
And it looks like it came from this virus lab.
And yet, for some reason, Justin Trudeau sees fit to give them nearly a million dollars to help research something that already exists, rapid testing of the virus.
And, you know, for me, I think, no, whatever comes of the research dollars here, we shouldn't be doing business with China at all.
We should be trusting the research that they're doing.
Maybe because the scientists are loyal to the communist state, but also because the scientists we know are generally muzzled by the communist state.
And we have no assurances, really, that they're going to be using this money for research on the things that they say they are.
We don't even know what they're doing in this lab, and they won't let the West in to verify.
So with all those things being known, why are we giving money to the birthplace or the potential birthplace, let me clarify, of the coronavirus that's shutting down world economies, forcing us to be distanced from our loved ones and allowing our governments here to strip us of our civil liberties?
First of all, I don't want to get away from the main focus of your piece, Sheila, but science diplomats.
That's the first time I've ever heard that description.
I mean, I can't think of anything more polar opposite than a scientist and a diplomat.
One is fact-based and one is whatever diplomats do in terms of their song and dance.
But here's the thing.
What is happening in this lab?
We talked about this yesterday.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist or anything like that.
And I like, as a scientist, likes to look at the facts on the ground and make decisions.
But with everything I'm reading about this, it looks more and more that this was the Chinese regime working on perhaps chemical or biological warfare agents.
Because, hey, the last, what, three pandemics have come out of China?
It's quite a coincidence, isn't it?
So, I mean, Sheila, what is your gut reaction?
And that's all it's got to be because of the lack of transparency and accountability from the Mandarins in Beijing.
It's obviously one of two things.
Either the Chinese were working, well, one of three things.
Either the Chinese were working on some sort of biological weapon at this facility and purposefully released it, because we know the Chinese government cares very little about the lives of its citizens, given that they killed millions of them in the pursuit of the communist state, and they killed millions of children in pursuit of their one-child policy.
Lives are expendable.
So did they use their own citizens as the means of delivery for a biological weapon that would overtake the West?
I don't know.
We may never know that.
Were they working on a biological weapon that accidentally got out because of the shoddy security and safety protocols that the Americans say they saw at this facility?
That's quite possible.
Or they were just doing research and it got out on them and then they started a cover-up.
So were they just doing research on something like SARS and found a new strain and it just got out on them?
That's very possible too.
And I don't think we're ever going to know because of the secrecy of the communist government.
But I, like you, am more inclined to believe something evil instead of just a oopsie daisy and then let's cover it up.
I'm inclined to err on the side of evil when it comes to the communist state.
But Sheila, let's give them the benefit of the doubt.
Say this was something beneficial they were working on for the advancement of mankind, for the advancement of agricultural science, you name it.
Why are we paying for this?
China is a world power.
They have aspirations of being the proverbial straw that stirs the drink.
How come we're forking over almost a million dollars of our money, taxpayer money, not Liberal Party of Canada money, especially since we have two Canadians that are now coming up to day 500 of being detained without charges?
This is staggering to me.
Yeah.
And that also presupposes that the two Michaels are even still alive.
You know, do we know if they were affected by the coronavirus?
Would they tell us if they died of the coronavirus?
Probably not right away.
But yeah, why are we giving money to quite possibly the richest nation in the world to research a virus that caused a pandemic that they let out, for all intents and purposes, all very likely on the world when the very research they're doing is already being done elsewhere?
And rapid testing already exists.
What they're researching there, what this grant was given to create is rapid testing in places where there are low medical resources.
So the developing world.
It's great.
It's a noble cause, but actually that already exists.
Rapid testing already exists.
So why is the Canadian government funding it?
And what guarantees do we even have that it is going to fund this stuff that already exists anyway?
We don't.
But really, we shouldn't be giving a penny to China while they hold two Canadians as political prisoners.
They are absolute political prisoners.
And we're giving their military virus lab money to do research into a virus we're not even sure that they didn't purposefully create.
You know, Sheila, just the way you framed your story in those last couple of sentences, I'm going to ask you a question now.
And forgive me in advance if this is going to come across as incredibly naive, but you broke the story.
This was a legitimate scoop for you.
Why isn't this on the front page of every paper since it originally got posted?
Because this is dynamite, I think.
Well, for the same reason that these mega networks with millions and in the CBC's case, billions of dollars to cover these stories and have people help do research, we found it on a completely public government of Canada website detailing the grants, some 25, I believe,
million dollars in research grants that the Canadian government rushed to give out without obvious proper vetting to research the coronavirus.
We were just browsing through these grants, seeing what kind of liberal cronies, quite frankly, got them.
And then we saw that they were giving a grant to collaborate with the Wuhan virus lab.
Somebody else could have found this a month ago.
This has been public information for a month.
We found it.
It was just hanging there for someone to find it.
But it's not going to be widely reported on, I don't think, in the mainstream media.
However, I would love them to report on it.
And that's one of the reasons I link to all my sources and my stories because I do want everybody to have this information.
But they don't want to hurt Justin Trudeau when they rely on Justin Trudeau to keep the lights on and to pay their bills.
Unlike us, we're completely crowdfunded by our viewers at home.
So we're not beholden to the government.
So we'll gladly tell these stories.
And, you know, if, God willing, someone in the mainstream media is brave enough to report on this story, I suspect Justin Trudeau will just do another round of handouts to the public to just buy complacency from the public who should be outraged that this is what Justin Trudeau is doing with our money.
And this is who he's giving it to, this evil empire that caused all these problems to start with.
You know, Sheila, it's nauseating.
Justin Trudeau should be bombarded with questions regarding this issue.
And yet, what do we see at these 11 a.m. cottage pressers, questions along the lines of, Mr. Prime Minister, what are you doing to ensure you're not going to burn yourself out?
It is, like I said, nauseating.
Sheila, that was an incredible piece.
I hope it has legs.
It deserves to become the proverbial media snowball, but it likely won't.
And Sheila, keep hammering away at this research.
You keep finding gold in so many of these documents that for whatever reason, other people in this field just either deliberately or ignorantly ignore.
So thank you again, my friend.
Thanks, David.
And if people want to support our journalism during the pandemic, they can do that at helprebelnews.com.
It's obvious we're doing the work the mainstream media, I think, just refuses to do.
100%.
Thank you so much, Sheila.
Folks, that was Sheila Gunn-Reed somewhere in the hinterland of northern Alberta.
Keep it here.
More of Rebel Roundup to come right after this.
Before this pandemic hit, the largest issue facing Albertans in the West was whether or not we would remain a part of this country, whether or not we would throw out our Canadian passports and create our own.
Jason Kenney is a federalist, and he said time and time again that he doesn't want to leave Canada.
Federalism on Trial00:10:36
Many people thought that was because he wanted to be prime minister one day.
And, well, it's kind of proving to be true, but not in the way many people expected.
Being premier isn't stopping Jason Kenney from acting like a prime minister.
The Albertan government is acting like a federal government in more ways than just one.
When Justin Trudeau's federal government was dropping the ball on border security, putting Canadian lives at risk, Jason Kenney went to the airport himself to see what was going on and soon after dispatched provincial authorities to the airports to start enforcing quarantine measures.
But it doesn't just stop there.
If Jason Kenney is the prime minister of Alberta, his deputy prime minister is Devon Dreeshin.
Devin Drieshen is the agriculture minister, one of the most important industries in Alberta and someone who is in charge of securing the supply chain of food to all Albertans.
It's a very important job.
And when the federal government wasn't providing enough food inspectors, something that is under the purview of the CFIA, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Devon Drieshen stepped up to the plate and told the federal government that they're really not needed.
He was going to deploy provincial inspectors to federal jobs to do the job that Justin Trudeau is not doing.
His entire government is failing right now, and the Alberta government is stepping up to the plate.
Now, this became the most apparent when Jason Kenney slammed the chief medical officer of Canada, Dr. Teresa Tam, someone who's in the pockets of the WHO and someone who negligently allowed people to continue coming into Canada, saying that borders didn't need to be closed to hotspots and human-to-human transmission didn't exist back in January when it obviously did.
Listen to Jason Kenney say this.
Is Dr. Tam suggesting that the European Union's regulator of medications or the Food and Drug Administration approve things that are dangerous for public use?
You know, this is the same Dr. Tam who is telling us that we shouldn't close our borders to countries with high levels of infection and who in January was repeating talking points out of the PRC about no evidence of human-to-human transmission.
Wow, wasn't that so refreshing to hear, folks?
A straight-talking premier who is as fed up as the rest of us and demonstrates no hesitation when it comes to justifiably slamming Justin Trudeau's top health official.
It was certainly music to my ears.
And now with more on Jason Kenney being far more of a leader in a time of crisis than Justin Trudeau could ever dream of being is our roving reporter Kian Bexte.
Welcome to Rebel Roundup, my friend.
Hey, David, thanks for having me.
Fantastic.
So, Kian, Jason Kenny is certainly putting on a clinic these days, I should think.
So, as they say in Hollyweird, let's cut to the chase here.
Is there any chance anyone can convince Kenny to run for the leader of the federal Conservative Party?
You know, that's a good question.
I don't know how he will be able to do that.
Lots of people, and these are rumors that have been coming out of the leadership election committee.
Lots of them seem to want the current leadership program scrapped.
And if that happens, and that hasn't really been reported yet, so I guess that's news here on Rebel Roundup.
But if that does happen, that could give Jason Kenny an opportunity to squeeze in later in the year because abandoning a province right now in the middle of this crisis, that would be political suicide.
And let's talk about your province, Kean.
What I found remarkable, and you know, it's something I've been champing at the bit to ask Premier Doug Ford here in Ontario to see if he could, you know, follow the Jason Kenny model here, is this idea of personally touring the airport and then bringing in provincial people to make sure the health and safety standards are properly adhered to.
As you know, I've been going to Pearson International Airport since January, virtually on a weekly basis.
And I'm not impressed with what I've been seeing.
I can tell you that.
Tell me, Kian, what prompted your premier to take these steps in the first place?
Well, he was seeing time and time again the federal government not fulfilling their duties to Canadians, which are, first and foremost, keeping Canadians safe.
You've seen the same thing that I've seen at the airports, David, is that they're not actually scanning people just like every other country in the world is doing, like every country learned they had to do during the SARS outbreak of the early 2000s.
So, and it's not just that.
They promised that they'd be handing out face masks to people on connecting flights.
That just didn't happen either.
We're seeing the federal government not do the very few jobs that we asked them to do.
And Jason Kenny is filling in that void.
He's saying, okay, well, we have the resources here in the province of Alberta.
Albertans are known to be able to manage ourselves.
We've done it for decades and decades.
And he's proving it now again that we really don't need the federal government here in this province.
You know, and you touch upon something here, Kian.
How would you respond to those who say, well, this kind of posturing, this is really low-hanging fruit for the premier?
After all, there are no liberals in power west of Manitoba.
This is very easy to prop up the federal Liberal Party as incompetent or negligent.
Do you think he's playing politics here or are these steps coming right from his heart?
That's a good question.
It's hard to know exactly what Jason Kenney is thinking inside.
But in terms of political posturing, this is just further cementing the distrust that Canadian that Albertans have in the Canadian government.
Albertans don't even like the feds when Stephen Harper was in power because they know that when Albertans know that they're always going to be treated unfairly in this Confederation, be it in terms of political representation or in terms of the cash that's flowing out of Alberta and going straight to Ottawa and then being shipped off to Montreal.
Albertans have never trusted the feds, and now that's certainly not changing.
It's being further cemented, I'd say.
And Ken, is there any other realm that is typically handled by the federal government, much like airports are, that you'd like to see the premier tackle as well, especially in this day and age of the coronavirus pandemic we're dealing with?
Well, food inspection is actually one, something that's typically handled by the CFIA.
And it's something that Jason Kenny has already moved on.
He's been sending provincial health inspectors, food inspectors to the federal facilities that have been understaffed by Trudeau.
It's just more failures from the Trudeau government.
And that's actually at the direction of Devin Drishan, the Minister of Agriculture.
He's new to elected office, to be frank.
He was just elected recently, and he's doing a pretty good job standing up for Albertans and keeping the feds on their toes because they've abandoned Albertans in more ways than just one, in more ways than just at the airports that they allowed foreign travelers to flood through in the early days of this pandemic.
And even in the later days of this pandemic, it took them a long time to move forward.
And then further to that, this food inspection problem, the supply chain and the maintenance of the supply chain, the food supply chain, is the primary concern for everybody.
Everybody needs to go to the grocery store.
Not everybody's going to be going to the hospital in this crisis.
Healthcare is important, certainly, but the most important thing is making sure that Albertans have a solid supply of food.
In fact, all Canadians need to have a solid supply of food.
And if the federal government is advocating their duty of making sure that that food is safe, well, it's going to fall on the province and the province is learning, like many Albertans already knew, that we just can't rely on the feds.
You know, Ken, you raise an interesting point.
We all know that there is a growing, or there was a growing movement for separation in Alberta from Confederation.
Do you think, given what we've had to deal with in terms of the Wuhan virus, that this fervor has just increased, especially since when you see the federal government failing on those fronts that the federal government is supposed to be responsible for, that this just makes the case for those Albertans who say, listen, why do we need Ottawa in the first place?
Yeah, that's exactly right, David.
This is sort of a trial by fire, if you will.
It's not just now that we're having problems with feds.
As I said before, this is a structural problem with Confederation.
Albertans have serious problems with Ottawa.
In fact, people from Saskatchewan do as well.
It's not just our health care.
It's not just our borders and our airports.
It extends to how our pension money is being handled and managed and where that money goes.
It goes down to who our provincial police force is, whether or not we trust the RCMP to be here, because the RCMP burn Albertans time and time again.
We remember back to the flood crisis of 2013 when the RCMP, their first move, rather than to protect Albertans in our time of crisis, was to seize our firearms so that law-abiding citizens in Ohio River wouldn't be able to prevent home invasions or looting during that time of crisis.
The RCMP are in the pockets of Justin Trudeau, and that's just another example of something, another bit of Ottawa that we need to sweep out of this province.
Right.
RCMP Failures During Crisis00:05:09
Well, Kian, thank you so much for weighing in.
Another great piece, and stay safe, my friend.
Thanks, YouTube, David.
You got it.
And that was Kian Bexti in Calgary.
Keep it here, folks.
More of Rebel Roundup to come right after this.
David Mentzy's for Rebel News here in Oakville, Ontario.
Well, folks, on Good Friday, Oakville resident Todd Nelson took his three young children inline skating here at the Glen Abbey Community Center.
And they were having a fun time.
And why not?
The parking lot is completely empty because the community center is not in operation during this day and age of the coronavirus.
However, within about an hour, someone came along who happened to be by law enforcement.
And well, we weren't privy to the conversation, but I don't think it went well.
Mr. Nelson, well, the bylaw officer demanded he show his identification.
And the next thing you know, he had a ticket for $750 plus surcharges, bringing the grand total to $880, or in other words, precisely $220 per skater.
Now, the thing is, he was fined for a lack of social distancing, but folks, does it make any sense to you?
After all, the Nelsons are, they all live together.
They're four people in total, and the limit for congregations is five.
And certainly when you're skating around, I can say by experience, you're typically at least two meters apart from the other skater.
So why the heavy-handed way the Nelsons were treated?
Yes, why indeed?
It makes no sense, folks.
In fact, health officials say we should be getting outdoors and getting in some exercise during this pandemic.
They don't want us to become a nation of couch potatoes.
That's not healthy after all, is it?
As well, given that the Nelsons all live under one roof, who were they harming in an empty parking lot?
What a story.
Equal parts, crazy and maddening.
And folks, you certainly made your opinions known regarding this egregious state of affairs thanks to a bylaw officer who was surely acting in an overzealous fashion.
Dave Dyler writes, let me guess, in Canada, like here in the USA, constitutional rights are being trampled in the name of fighting this virus.
Well, Dave, I think that is what kind of is occurring right now.
That bylaw officer was using the pandemic as an excuse to zap a law-abiding citizen with a ticket for almost a thousand bucks.
And what's more, he seemed to be trying to fix a problem that simply didn't exist in the first place.
Chris Walton writes, when this is over, I would take the ticket and fight it in court under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
This went too far.
Oh, me too, Chris.
In fact, forget about making a charter argument.
I read the nitty-gritty of the bylaw that was being enforced here, and there was absolutely nothing about empty parking lots being under the ban.
Yes, playgrounds, basketball courts, tennis courts, baseball diamonds, those are all roped off and off limits.
But empty acres of asphalt?
Nope.
Still learning rights.
Should have just gone to a cottage in Quebec.
That's okay.
Oh golly, still learning.
Who pray tell would be that irresponsible?
Water bottle writes, 50 people standing in line outside of a supermarket is okay, but four people skating in a park, not okay.
Something is wrong with this Indeed Water Bottle.
And don't forget, those 50 people standing outside the supermarket, they're not related, as opposed to the Nelsons who are indeed related.
It makes no sense.
And finally, OGR writes, wait until May, especially the May 24th weekend.
Things are really gonna get exciting.
You know, OGR, you've touched upon the bigger picture here that will indeed play out in the weeks ahead.
First, when the warmer weather finally arrives, folks suffering from cabin fever after being cooped up for so long will definitely be coming outdoors in force.
And if people are penalized and heavily fined for trivial stuff, there will surely be a backlash against law enforcement.
Cops and bylaw officers must use their discretion as this pandemic continues.
Otherwise, I really fear what might happen.
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.