Ezra Levant debunks the Edmonton Journal’s false ICU-overcrowding headline using seven charts, exposing Alberta’s 12 COVID-19 patients in ~100 ICUs—six in Edmonton—while linking political fearmongering to rising drug use and suicides. David Menzies reports on Caledonia’s decade-long Haldeman Track protests, fueled by Six Nations’ Hereditary Chiefs and outside "anarchists," with arson, court-ordered roadblocks ignored, and MP Diane Finley (who quit in 2021) criticizing lawlessness. Levant contrasts Canada’s chaotic pandemic response with Australia/NZ’s expert-led approach but highlights Rebel News’ fight against emergency overreach, urging support for the Journalist Defense Fund amid legal battles like Scotland’s failed censorship bill. [Automatically generated summary]
Today I go deep on a crazy headline in the Edmonton Journal that said ICU's intensive care units are full to the brim because of the virus.
Is that really true?
And if it wasn't true, how could they possibly tell such a lie?
I'll show you the numbers on how they managed to lie.
But before I do, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
And you know, on some videos, it really makes a difference like today.
Today I'm going to show you about seven charts.
And you've got to see it with your eyes.
Yeah, you can understand it well enough as an audio podcast, but I would love it if you got the video version of it.
Go to RebelNews.com.
It's $8 a month or $80 for the whole years.
And just subscribe by clicking the subscribe button.
You get the video version of this podcast plus Sheila Gunread's and David Menzies' shows too.
All right, here's today's episode.
Tonight, pandemic disinformation from Edmonton's biggest newspaper.
It's August 21 and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a 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 go on is because it's my bloody right to do so.
The Edmonton Journal is lying about the pandemic.
I don't know what game they're playing.
I don't know why they're doing it, but they're deeply misleading people about this critical issue.
It's bizarre.
Now, my book of political commentary on the pandemic called China Virus, that was banned by Amazon because I allegedly contradicted official sources about the pandemic.
But that's a crock.
My book isn't a medical book.
It was a political commentary.
But the Edmonton Journal flat out misled readers today.
Here's their story.
They posted it online last night.
Edmonton ICU, that's intensive care unit, doctor says his unit is, quote, full to the brim.
Spike partly due to COVID-19.
That's a lie.
I'll prove it.
But let me take a minute to show you some relevant background first on the statistics.
I follow the stats of the pandemic pretty closely, as you know.
Some jurisdictions are better than others, but they're all pretty good at giving you the numbers.
Even the federal government of Canada.
Look at figure four here, toggled to deceased.
It's pretty clear this is a disease that targets people in their 80s and 90s and 100s.
A single death under age 20 in the entire country of Canada throughout the entire pandemic.
So stats are useful when making decisions about things like should we let kids go back to school, obviously.
Here's Ontario's statistics page.
Look at the first two graphs on the left.
The first is called Daily New Cases, and you can see it peaked in mid-April, but now it's much lower.
But the next graph right under that is even more encouraging.
It's called Daily Deaths.
It's almost down to zero.
That is very encouraging.
And if you look at these two charts together, you can see that something must be happening.
Cases are being detected, but people aren't getting as sick, and they're certainly not dying as much.
Just go to the next chart under that called Comparing Active and Hospitalized Cases.
So the blue curve is the number of cases, but the dark line there is the number of cases in the hospital.
So it's almost zero.
So the cases are by no means at almost zero, but the hospitalization is.
How is that possible?
I'll let the experts give you their theories, but I think there's a few common sense possibilities.
One is there's just so much more testing going on.
I'm not quite sure why really, that you're going to detect more because you're testing.
Let me scroll down all the way to the chart called Daily Tests.
You can see they're testing three times as many people per day now as they tested at the height of the pandemic.
So of course they're going to find more people who technically have the virus in them perhaps, but they don't feel sick or certainly not enough to go to the hospital or ICU or God forbid to die.
So they just have it, but they're not sick.
Maybe they're immune to it.
I don't know.
Maybe the community is getting immune as a whole.
They call that herd immunity.
I don't like that phrase because it sounds like we're a herd of animals or something.
But if we're getting that immunity as a community, great.
There's also this wrinkle that Ontario public health politicians said.
And in fact, if you're testing in a population that doesn't have very much COVID, you'll get false positives almost half the time.
That is the person actually doesn't have COVID.
They have something else.
They may have nothing.
Yikes.
Half the tests could be false positives.
Can you imagine?
Imagine making laws that destroy businesses and civil liberties based on science with a 100% margin of error.
So there's two of you, either one or two of you has the virus.
Sorry, that's not science anymore.
It's so inaccurate.
But one thing I notice when I study these charts, which almost every jurisdiction has, countries, provinces, states, even lots of cities have them.
One thing I noticed that a lot of jurisdictions are doing is they're making graphs that are deceiving.
They're not lying, but they're deceptive.
Here's what I mean.
Because the numbers are getting so much better.
The pandemic peaked in Canada in mid-April, and people can see that just by walking around.
The stats show that.
Well, politicians want the state of fear.
They want to justify their new bans and laws, their mask laws, their lockdowns, their emergency spending, their emergency powers.
So I start to see this.
And I'm just picking Toronto at random here, but a lot of jurisdictions do this.
Now, look at this chart called Cumulative Cases by Episode Date and Outcome.
That's the very first chart you'll see on the Toronto stats page.
Look at that graph.
That graph is terrifying.
It looks like a huge tidal wave or something.
I'm panicking just looking at it.
It makes me stressed.
But hang on, hang on, hang on.
Those gray lines there, those are not sick people.
Those are recovered people.
They were sick, maybe just a little bit sick.
Some of them may be a lot sick, but they're all better now.
But they're still stuck on the same graph.
The orange is the number of people who have died.
But again, it's misleading because it's cumulative.
So you have dates along the bottom of the graph here, and you're probably thinking, oh my God, people are still dying every single day.
No, no, they only died once.
But they stay on this graph forever and they accumulate.
That's why it only gets bigger.
This graph only gets bigger because it is cumulative.
It will never shrink.
It'll only grow.
That tiny turquoise sliver there is called active cases.
Can you even see it?
Those are the only cases still around.
It doesn't even make sense to have the active cases on this graph because it's not even what this graph measures.
It's not accurate.
Every other person on the graph would cumulatively have been active at one time.
They either got better or they died, I guess.
That tiniest turquoise sliver is not cumulative.
It's the tiny number of people who are sick right now, most of whom will get better.
It's a tiny attempt, I think, by someone in the Toronto Statistics Department to rebut the monstrous misdirection of this bizarre graph that makes it look the worst ever.
You have to go to the graph underneath it to get a real idea of what's happening.
Cases by episode date.
You can see it went up and it's come down.
The curve was flattened back in April.
The last number there, August 18th, is so small, you can't even see it with the naked eye.
A single new case.
One.
One case in the greater Toronto area.
Population, six and a half million people, one new case.
I bet there's one case of leprosy in Toronto too.
You don't see the problems shutting down every school and business for that, do you?
But back to that Edmonton Journal article.
Edmonton ICU doctor says his unit is full to the brim.
Spike partly due to COVID-19.
Wow.
So you know it's true because an Edmonton intensive care doctor said so.
This isn't just some journalists saying that.
Let me read.
An Edmonton intensive care doctor says his unit is, quote, full to the brim because of patients with COVID-19, in addition to an increase in trauma patients and more surgeries.
Is that what the doctor said?
I'll keep reading.
As Edmonton continues to be a COVID-19 hotspot with 561 cases or approximately 54.9 active cases per 100,000 people, Dr. Darren Markland, who works at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, took to social media this week to caution people to continue following public health guidelines and stay safe as the pandemic stretches on.
Well, I guess it's settled then.
561 cases, you heard the Edmonton Journal, it's a hotspot.
This is terrible news.
We better shut things down again.
I mean, 561 cases.
Are there even that many hospital beds free in Edmonton?
I'm scared.
Actually, I'm not scared, but the Edmonton Journal wants its readers to be scared, apparently.
Let me read some more.
You may be tired of COVID-19, but it's not tired of you.
Our ICU is full to the brim, and we can't stop running, he said in a series of tweets on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Well, that settles it then, right?
I mean, they just quoted the doctor.
He is literally there in the hospital ICU, so they quoted him.
They said he had a series of tweets.
Actually, they didn't show you that series of tweets, did they?
They took a few words out of one of them.
I wonder what they left out.
Probably nothing.
They're probably telling the whole story at the Edmonton Journal, right?
I'll read some more.
Dr. David Zygon, the Edmonton Zone Medical Director for Alberta Health Services, confirmed Thursday that the occupancy rate for the zone's approximately 100 ICU beds has been in the mid-90s throughout the pandemic, sometimes spiking over 100%.
Whoa, that is terrifying.
Occupancy was sometimes over 100%.
I don't even know how that's possible.
It's like when someone says I'm going to give her 110%.
I think that might be something like this.
This is a top to what we use on stage, but it's very, very special because if you can see, the numbers all go to 11.
Look, right across the board.
11.
11.
Mostly.
11 in the 10.
AMPs go up to 10.
Exactly.
Does that mean it's louder?
Is it any louder?
Well, it's one louder, isn't it?
It's not 10.
You see, most blogs, you're going to be playing at 10.
You're on 10 here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up.
You're on 10 on your guitar.
Where can you go from there?
I mean, you thought the ICU could only be 100% full.
Well, it's 110% full.
So you know it's super full.
I'll read some more.
Occupancy rates prior to the pandemic were typically in the high 80s to mid-90s, he said.
Oh, so we're not really in an unusual crisis.
Now, we're five paragraphs deep into the story by now.
It's starting to get sort of boring, isn't it?
Most people will only read the headline.
Most people who read the story don't read the whole thing.
But if you were one of the very few people who are still reading, in the sixth paragraph, you'll finally read this.
While the most recent data shows that only 12 COVID-19 patients are in Alberta ICUs, both Markland and Zygon say ICUs have seen an increase in trauma patients.
There's also been an increase in opioid and mental health-related admissions.
Hospitals are also doing more surgeries than normal as they attempt to catch up on a backlog caused by the cancellation of elective surgeries early in the pandemic.
Oh, so it's not the virus patients at all.
There are only 12 virus patients in intensive care in the entire province.
It's other stuff.
Politician-caused stuff.
Panic and fear and depression-caused stuff.
Drug use, mental health stuff.
If you're in intensive care for mental health stuff, I think that means you tried to commit suicide.
And then there's the backlog from surgeries delayed.
Wow, we all panicked and cleared out the hospitals for the 350,000 deaths that were expected from the virus.
That's what Justin Trudeau and Teresa Tam said their models predicted.
From 50,000 best case to up to 350,000 deaths, worst case from the virus nationwide.
It's been 9,000, almost all of them in seniors' homes, especially in do not resuscitate provinces like pro-euthanasia, Quebec.
In fact, in all of Edmonton, a mighty city of more than a million, there are only six people in ICUs from the virus.
Six in the whole city.
That's fewer than one per hospital.
By the way, there are only 12 people in the entire province of Alberta in ICUs.
There are special, there are 70 special ICU rooms set aside for this virus.
They have special things, they have negative air pressures, stuff like that.
Out of those 70 set aside, only 12 are in use across the whole province.
And by the way, at the worst of it, there was never more than 22 people in ICUs in the whole province of Alberta.
This thing isn't just over.
It never began.
But they quoted a doctor, didn't they?
As proof of their claim, didn't they?
And indeed, he said the hospitals were full to the brim.
At least his was.
Yes, he did say that, but not from the virus.
He did not lie.
The Edmonton Journal lied.
They love the fear.
I guess it sells newspapers.
They love the pandemic.
People are stuck at home.
What are they going to do but read a newspaper?
Here's one of the many tweets from the doctor they cited.
We have seen a significant increase in trauma.
Some of this is just a return to previous lifestyles and poor decision-making, but much of it is amplified by huge increases in substance abuse.
Whether this is driven by COVID-related mental health issues is not for me to say.
Got it.
So in fact, only six people in Edmonton in intensive care from the virus.
The rest can be blamed on politicians who whipped up stress and fear and poverty and mental illness and driving people to drugs.
Stronger action may be necessary to get Edmonton COVID-19 numbers under control, Iverson.
The numbers are under control, mate.
It's you who's out of control.
And because of that, drug use is up.
Suicides are up.
You can blame politicians for that.
blame the liars of the Amity Journal too.
Hey, welcome back.
As you know, we generally interview a guest as the second segment in the show.
Native Land Ownership Disputes00:10:02
But there was a little documentary.
I think it's more than just a little video that we put out today that I just wanted you to see.
We put some effort into it and some expense.
We had to hire three bodyguards to accompany our David Menzies and his reporter on this one, his cameraman rather.
It's a story that's been going on literally for decades that the mainstream media ignores or is too afraid to even report on.
Our motto is telling the other side of the story, and so we did.
Here, let me invite you to watch a new mini documentary by our friend David Menzies out in Caledonia.
Take a look.
A small percentage of them are native and actually know the history and the debate that's going on right now in this area and genuinely want what's good for the native people.
And then you have a large percentage who are basically anarchists.
They're coming from Kitchener, Toronto, Brantford, and they're only coming here to cause trouble.
It's unfortunate.
David Menzies for Rebel News here in Caledonia.
And folks, before I get to our story today, if you can, please go to journalistdefensefund.com.
If you're able to, make a donation.
We sometimes have, like tonight, security costs to pay.
Sometimes we have lawyer fees to pay.
And we need your donations so that we can continue to bring you the other side of the story.
Well, I'm with James Bradbury.
He lives in the Caledonia area.
You might recall James.
We met him, I think, back in May, and it was about the PPE issue with one of the long-term care facilities in this neighborhood.
But of course, if you're talking Caledonia, you are talking problems with certain elements of the native community.
For years, decades, perhaps, there have been all kinds of land dispute claims going on here.
I think it was about 10 years ago, Chrissy Blatchford, the late Chrissy Blatchford, wrote a bestseller called Helpless about what it was like to live in Caledonia.
And James, I can't help but notice Argyll Street, which we're standing on right now, just a little adjacent to the Canadian tire here, it is closed off.
I see several OPP officers and OPP cruisers.
About 150 meters further, I see, it looks like some derelict cars and a motorhome and several tires, which is making an additional blockade.
I assume that's the NATO blockade.
What exactly right now in August of 2020, what is the issue here in Caledonia?
The main issue is the government's lack of resolving the situation.
In my personal opinion, the natives actually, because I'm not an anti-native in any way, I actually believe that they do have a legitimate claim to some of this land.
The problem is, is that the government hasn't resolved it.
And so every time the OPP comes in, they kick them out.
They come back with a vengeance for the next protest.
And this has been ongoing since 2006, these protests, and they've only been getting worse and worse and worse.
And now we're starting to see armored cars.
It's just, it's not getting better.
We need resolution from our government and not just local government, like provincial and federal.
It's technically supposed to be federal.
It's supposed to be handling this.
I know it can get very complicated when we deal with native land issues, James, but at the root of the matter here is that some in the native community are saying that they have ownership of land.
Land that I understand is about to be developed.
Yeah.
So the Six Nations, in particular, the Hereditary Chiefs in that, they do claim the ownership.
And there is paperwork with the Haldeman Track that shows that this was theirs.
Unfortunately, due to mishandling and whatnot, it did wind up in the hands of private citizens away from the reserve.
the thing is is that the government was supposed to pay them for that now like i say the government we're talking about the interior government right now or federal government actually back when we're talking about this this is the crown right You know, we're going back far enough, right?
The thing is, is that we understand that that's how that needs to be resolved.
They need to get paid for this land.
Okay.
Now, the developer did try to pay them, to be fair, but he tried to pay the band council, not the hereditary chiefs.
And he did try to reach out to hereditary chiefs, but nothing happened, unfortunately.
At the end of the day, the government needs to step in and resolve the entire Haldeman track.
That needs to be finished.
And then to make it all worse, I mean, this is already a complicated situation.
Then you get extremists from outside.
Then you get extremists from like Toronto and that coming in here and saying, yeah, all white people need to leave.
By extremists, I think you told me off camera.
You have seen busloads of Antifa from the greater Toronto area coming here to, I guess, really stir the pot.
And it seems to me from what you were telling me, they're not really interested in any kind of negotiated settlement.
They just want anarchy and violence.
A small percentage of them are native and actually know the history and the debate that's going on right now in this area and genuinely want what's good for the native people.
And then you have a large percentage who are basically anarchists.
They're coming from Kitchener, Toronto, Brantford, and they're only coming here to cause trouble.
It's unfortunate.
Now, speaking of violence, James, there has been some acts of arson of late, hasn't there?
Yes.
Now, officially, it is not linked to this, but Mark Hill did condemn.
And Mark Hill is who?
Mark Hill is the elected ban council chief.
So he, the hereditary chiefs don't acknowledge the ban council because it was imposed by the white man, right?
So he denounced these protests as a native person, denounced it.
And his house was burned the next day.
I mean, there is the there were people in the house at the time, wasn't there?
From what I understand, his parents were in the house.
It's very unfortunate.
And from eyewitnesses that I've talked to, they've saw this happening.
They saw it was arson.
It was intentional.
But we've also heard stories where other locals who have spoken out on camera.
And this is one of the things that even I'm concerned about that I want to make sure I'm representing in a balanced fashion is that other locals who have spoken out have been attacked in the past and who have had vandalism and have been targeted.
James, let's talk about the rule of law here.
I mean, what they're doing on this road has to be illegal, I'm sure.
And yet it's kind of like new day, same story here in Caledonia.
You have law enforcement out here en masse, but they're not enforcing the law.
And I'm trying to understand why that is.
We actually have a court order right now to clear that.
And I don't want violence.
That's the last thing anyone wants on both sides.
I've been talking to both sides.
Violence is not the answer.
But these blockades, especially with COVID, this is like strangleholding our community.
It's killing us.
And I mean, there are so many communities that now have to do this huge detour to get around.
And there are so many businesses and homes over there that are struggling.
I don't know if you can see it, but there's some houses.
And those houses are actually behind the barricade and are basically behind in uncontrolled area.
And how are they treated?
These are non-natives that live basically in disputed areas.
I don't want to speak for them because I honestly don't live over there.
But as long as, you know, obviously nothing's happening, they're left for the most part alone.
They're allowed to travel back and forth.
But when you have tense situations with police moving in and fire and emergency not being able to respond to you.
So like for example, when this whole thing started out this year, fire trucks responded to a fire down there and just booked it down there.
They've started pelting them with rocks now That's the natives edge.
Yeah Yes.
Now, again, I can't stress this enough.
The natives are not, not all natives are violent, okay?
This is obviously a few radicals that decided to take their anger out on the truck.
And that's not appropriate.
These people responding to an emergency.
But when you're a resident back there and you know fire trucks can't get to you, like, how does that make you feel?
One of the complicating factors, perhaps, folks, is that the Conservative MP for this riding, Diane Finley, she announced she is not going to stand for re-election, something that might happen as soon as spring 2021.
And in stepping down, the veteran MP had this to say about the situation: It comes down to law enforcement.
Everybody has the right to protest, but not to disrupt the lives of others.
Our laws in Canada are set by Parliament according to the values of the society.
People who choose to live within that society are obliged to follow the law.
So I think that is a common sense take.
But it stands to, I guess, only time is going to tell whether law enforcement will indeed enact the law of the land because as it stands now, that is certainly not the case here in Caledonia.
Caledonia's Occupied Development00:03:57
Well, folks, we're now on McKenzie Road in Caledonia, and this is a development called McKenzie Meadows, or it's supposed to be a development.
You can see that the land has been surveyed for the roads, and this is where houses would be going up.
But alas, it is occupied by natives.
You can see tents everywhere.
And actually, just as we came here, there were a couple of people tearing down the billboard here announcing the Mackenzie Meadows development, which is owned by the developer Foxworthy.
And that's the thing.
This is indeed private property.
It has the green light for development, but no development is going to happen anytime soon by the likes of it.
It looks like the natives are here to assert their claims that this is disputed land.
And we are indeed trying to negotiate to have someone come on camera for an interview, but it doesn't seem to be going that well so far.
We'll give it the old college try
Well unfortunately folks I was very hopeful of speaking to some of the squatters here at Mackenzie Meadows Initially they said someone was going to come on camera but we have a little bit of a crowd here that has very firmly said that they're not interested and they want us to leave even though this area of land that we're on is not the disputed territory at all.
What about you ladies?
Would any of you like to come on camera?
And I don't see any point in staying here, so we shall be on our way.
Well, darkness is starting to take lease here in Caledonia.
And, you know, for several years, since 2006, there has been a lot of darkness here.
It seems these land disputes, the turmoil, the violence, the arson, it just it's a never-ending cycle in Caledonia and it's funny folks.
I referred to Christy Blatchford's book Helpless and here's a passage from that book.
Caledonia's Darkness Lease00:03:00
Caledonia is the story of innocent victims who have been abandoned, left helpless.
It is the story of a government that has not governed and police who have not policed.
It is the story of a community whose freedom and peace of mind have been sacrificed in order to maintain a toxic status quo and keep officials in the jobs they are refusing to do.
And you know folks, those words were published in 2010.
It is now a decade later.
And really, when it comes to Caledonia, has anything really changed?
For Rebel News, I'm David the Menzoid Menzies.
Welcome back to my monologue last night.
John writes, a few more months of slave obedience training and they won't even need to keep us muzzled.
We'll just fall into line like good little tax sheep.
Yeah, it's not good.
It's not good to teach people to wear muzzles and to wear masks and to not look each other in the eye and not have facial expressions and to live in fear.
You heard what that emergency doctor in the monologue said.
He said things are worse than ever, not for the virus, but for drug use and suicides.
Tom writes, what a bunch of BS lies.
Victoria Australia is not on martial law.
New Zealand is not under martial law.
The pandemic is real and unprecedented.
And in Canada, we choose to listen to health experts, so we aren't a shit show like the United States.
It's morons like you that will keep us fighting this virus for a long time.
Well, I'm glad you feel free to speak your mind.
It is under martial law.
It is under the Emergency Powers Acts of each of those countries, just like every jurisdiction in Canada is under our emergency powers law.
We used to have something called the War Measures Act.
Now I think it's called the Emergency Management or Emergency Measures Act.
We had a whole half-hour show with our civil liberties lawyer, Sam Goldskin, about it.
So you're actually wrong.
We are in a state of emergency.
Now, there is still civil governance, but when you have, as you do in Australia and New Zealand, military soldiers enforcing masks, knocking on doors to see if you're home, that is martial law.
I mean, I suppose you could say, well, it is a civilian oversight of the Army, but the Army is conducting civic duties.
That's martial law, mate.
That's just martial law.
And the insanity is there's only six people in the hospital in all of New Zealand, but they shut it down.
So yeah, I don't think I'm the crazy one here.
I think Jacinda Ardern's the crazy one.
Sherry writes, interesting how this we scandal was being carried out in April during the peak of the China virus scare.
What better time to push a scam than during a health emergency lockdown?
Scandal During the Lockdown00:01:24
Almost like it was planned that way.
I'm not going to say it was planned that way, but I think two things happened.
I think, first of all, it put the we charity in a pickle because they love doing those big mass stadium style rallies.
That's their source of so much dough.
And so I think they were under some financial pressure, like so many other Canadians were.
And so they had the push and then they had the pull while everyone was distracted.
While money was flowing like Niagara Falls, they thought they'd make their move.
And of course, Parliament has reduced scrutiny now.
It was just a perfect storm for bad decision making.
Funny enough, that's what I think is going on in Scotland.
I think I showed you the other day, their justice minister took the pandemic as the moment to introduce a censorship law.
By the way, that video, I put my monologue about Hamza Yousaf and his Scottish censorship law.
I put that whole thing online.
It's a 30-minute monologue.
It got more than 160,000 views.
And the Justice Minister himself has clearly wobbled by it.
It's gone viral in Scotland.
And now he's shooting back at us at Rebel News.
It's very exciting to have made a difference for freedom on the other side of the pond.
I'm very proud of that.
And hopefully the bill will be reformed or even abandoned.
I'll keep you posted on that.
Well, that's the show for today.
Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters to you at home, good night.