Justin Trudeau’s cabinet—Catherine McKenna, Chrystia Freeland, and others—embrace "thinkfluencers" and "deliverology," a UK management theory, to mask shallow rhetoric like "tipping point" and "glocalized." His $1.5B foreign aid pledge, touted as feminist-focused in 2018 with Bono’s praise, stalled at just $120K spent. Meanwhile, Kian Bexty’s embeds in environmental blockades near Haida Gwaii expose ties to past disruptions, like the BC coastal pipeline protests. The episode reveals how performative governance and unfulfilled promises undermine credibility, exposing a gap between Trudeau’s polished image and real-world impact. [Automatically generated summary]
Today I want to go deep in two made-up words, thinkfluencer and deliverology.
Do you think I'm making these words up?
Do you really think I'm making them up?
Or do you think they're at the heart of Justin Trudeau's worldview?
I'm going to show you.
I'm going to show you.
That's what today's podcast is about.
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Okay, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, remember when Justin Trudeau said he was a believer in deliverology?
Yeah, about that?
It's October 8th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
There are some words out there that I just don't ever want to say.
I don't want to be the kind of guy who uses those words.
I don't want to say the word thinkfluencer.
That's a word people are using, thinkfluencer.
Justin Trudeau's cabinet is full of thinkfluencers.
Those are people who go to shallow, non-expert, buzzwordy TED Talks where they outdo each other with the jargon and you instantly forget everything that was said, but you know you were in the presence of a great thinker.
If only you could have understood what the thoughts were.
It's places like the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland.
I mean, look at this CBC, sorry, Bono, Spacey, and DiCaprio.
Trudeau chats with celebrities at Davos' reception.
Let me read a bit.
World Economic Forum attracts not only political and business leaders, but actors and rock stars.
That was from right after Trudeau was first elected.
The CBC loved it.
Lots of pop stars.
Trudeau got to show everyone his fancy socks.
He gave shallow speeches about being the great feminist.
The people listening to those speeches consider themselves thinkfluencers.
It's so hilarious, so ridiculous, but when everyone's talking that way and doing that, no one notices it's crazy, I guess.
It's like when Sheila Gunn Reed went to the United Nations Climate Convention in Marrakesh, Morocco a few years back, and when she leaned on one of those electric car chargers and it tipped over, it wasn't real.
It was just for the feeling of being real and relevant and think fluencing people into using electric cars.
I'll move on to the news in a second, Trudeau's foreign aid promises compared to the realities.
But give me another moment on this whole thinkfluencer thing because it's absolutely spot on what the government, Trudeau's liberal government is.
In his cabinet, there are no business success stories.
There are no people who achieved things in life, no real leaders.
You have lots of think fluencers, people who talk about talking about things, but none of them actually ever accomplished anything.
And what they do and say will change in a moment if it suits them.
I mean, Catherine McKenna, Stephen Gilbo, Seamus O'Regan, there's no there there.
It's just empty all the way down.
It's like if you drop a coin into a well and you just never hear the splash.
They are empty all the way down.
Give me a moment because it's hard to tell the difference between a Trudeau speech and a parody account about these sorts of things like this.
My predecessor wanted you to know Canada for its resources.
Well, I want you to know Canadians for our resourcefulness.
So he really said that.
That's a little couplet of words that sound like each other.
Resources, resourcefulness.
But in fact, Canada has the world's, I don't know, second or third largest oil reserves, huge natural gas reserves, huge mining resources, forestry, fresh water, agriculture.
Those are all resources, right?
The world wants them.
We need them too.
To say, stop thinking about resources and just call us resourceful.
That's not actually deep or smart.
That's actually very stupid.
Resourceful actually means to make the best out of what resources you have.
And we've got a lot.
But Trudeau was saying, we're done with oil and gas and mining and forestry and pipelines.
He really is that stupid.
He wants to talk about how feminist he is instead.
That's his message to the world.
Incredibly proud to have a partner in my wife, Sophie, who is extremely committed to women and girls' issues.
But she took me aside a few months ago and said, okay, it's great that you're engaged and modeling to your daughter, that you want her empowered and everything, but you need to take as much effort to talk to your sons, my eight-year-old boy and my two-year-old's still a little young still, about how he treats women and how he is going to grow up to be a feminist just like dad.
And by the way, we shouldn't be afraid of the word feminist.
Men and women should use it to describe themselves anytime they want.
Yeah, I'm not sure if Trudeau is teaching his boys the right lessons.
Again, I feel I am confident that I did not act inappropriately.
But part of this awakening that we're having as a society, a long-awaited realization, is that it's not just one side of the story that matters, that the same interactions can be experienced very differently.
The worst of his cabinets, actually Christia Freeland, who really did do the shallow talk show circuit for a living as a think fluencer for years.
She just went from TED Talk to TED Talk.
She went on late-night comedy shows in the U.S. as the deep thinker, but she never really said anything other than buzzwords.
I once saw her in a short interview use the phrase tipping point four times in about five minutes in a single interview.
I guess she had just read that pop bestseller, Tipping Point.
The one company she ever ran as a businesswoman called Reuters Next, she destroyed it.
It literally never recovered from her disastrous leadership.
They didn't even try to save it.
They shut it down after she wrecked it.
Let me show you some fake think fluencers online.
These are sort of comedy accounts, but you tell me if Trudeau or Freeland or McKennell could have said any of these.
So this is a parody account, I think.
40 self-promoters under 40.
Yeah, that's actually where the Liberal Party recruits its candidates from, right?
Here's a comment about the recent debates.
This is from Professor Jeff Jarvis.
It's a parody account.
Mr. Vice President, Senator Harris, we are introducing a new format.
You each now have 60 seconds to record a TikTok about COVID, including the choice of soundtrack.
You see what I mean about using jargon and buzzwords and just seeming cool but being sort of stupid?
That's very Trudeau-ish.
Here's another parody account called Davos Man.
I think Justin Trudeau may actually be the model for this parody account.
Trudeau loves going to Davos.
Thread.
Small ideas feel big when I'm in my Gulf Stream.
So here it goes.
We have to innovate on innovation.
The seventh industrial revolution disrupts and displaces artificial intelligence and blockchain can only solve resurgent populism with compassion.
Hashtag.
Is this real or is this Trudeau or is this a parody?
We elites are critical to making this debate glocalized.
That's another one of those words.
Thought leadership also involves thought stewardship.
Communities from the core of our economies form the core.
Blue-collar workers must be reconceived as new collar workers.
Code is key.
Is that Trudeau?
Is that Freeland?
Is that McKenna?
Is that Gilbo?
Glocalized.
I bet you a dollar Trudeau has used that fake word.
I'm sure he has.
I think this actually might just be plagiarized from Trudeau's actual statements.
I've made hashtag women a top priority for three years.
As an advocate, I'm proud to say that since then, hashtag women have made great strides.
Today there are more women at Davos than ever.
To celebrate, snowmobiles will bring all Davos women to my chalet for an intimate talk on climate change.
I think that's Trudeau.
Am I right?
Okay, last one.
Let me just read you one more.
Our current crises aren't data problems, but people problems.
Data must become a great equalizer.
If we give corporate stakeholders the opportunity and trust to mine the intimate details of our lives, data will become more human.
That's Trudeau.
That's Gilbo.
Thinkfluencers glocalized.
Code is key.
Just all that BS.
You know what's another word like that?
Deliverology.
Deliverology.
Do you think I'm kidding?
Now this one, I'm not going to show you any parody accounts.
I wish.
I wish.
Look at this news story from the same CBC reporter, Aaron Warry, who wrote about Trudeau's socks at Davos, about Bono, about that accused sex predator, Kevin Spacey, at Davos.
How Justin Trudeau plans to deliver on deliverology.
I swear to God, this is not a parody.
This is a real story in the CBC.
P.M., a devotee of Michael Barber's result-oriented management theories.
Oh, is Justin Trudeau a devotee of certain management theories?
He can engage in discussions about management theories.
Really?
From early on, Trudeau's government, laden with myriad promises, has been taking guidance from the teachings of Michael Barber, a British political advisor whose theories of result-oriented management have come to be known as deliverology.
Okay, so some foreign guru is fleecing Canadian taxpayers by using buzzwords with Trudeau.
And Trudeau's fallen in love.
Why not just read him fake Twitter tweets from Davos Guy or Jeff Jarvis?
Like I just did.
Save some money.
How come we're hiring foreigners at what, six, seven, eight figures for deliverology?
Why not just read the parody stuff I was doing?
They really went big with this cult.
Take a look at this.
How deliverology can help Canada's public sector pragmatists.
For some time now, it's been acknowledged that more data in the right hands means more insights.
But the unprecedented opportunity for our governments to use those insights to improve the lives of citizens has yet to materialize in any significant way.
Didn't I just read that to you from Davos, man?
I'm going to skip to the last sentence in this article.
I swear this is real.
This is from The Hill Times, which is an Ottawa newspaper.
This is not a parody account, I swear.
Thankfully, more pragmatic public sector minds could live by a more data-driven definition of the concept.
The feedback loop enabled by the internet and big data has created an opportunity for a data-fed, virtuous cycle between government and citizens.
Tapped into, we could create a system based on facts and solid measurements that lets the promises keep themselves.
Promises keep themselves.
It's like budgets balancing themselves.
If deliverology gets us that far, perhaps Sir Michael Barber's knighthood was well earned after all.
I swear to God, that's real.
Do you know what any of that means?
No, you don't.
It doesn't mean anything.
George Orwell called that duck speaking.
Oh, he's a good duck speaker.
It's like that art installation taxpayers bought years ago.
Remember that voice of fire?
Those three lines?
I'm sorry, it's like someone talking for 10 minutes about the deep meaning of voice of fire and why it's worth millions.
And you're nodding along.
They're just making it all up.
They're just seeing how far they can go.
And you continue nodding.
They'll just see how far they can go.
Here's an article in 2016 in a very smart think tank propped up by Canadian taxpayers.
It's called, Will Deliverology Work for the Canadian Government?
Here's the same think tank three years later.
Whatever happened to deliverology?
Yeah, a lot of people made a lot of money off gullible Canadian taxpayers.
That's what happened.
Here's the Globe and Mail more recently.
Trudeau government's deliverology experiment ends with a whimper.
You don't say, you don't say.
Here's another from the National Post.
Public servant tasked with monitoring how liberal government was keeping promises leaves role.
Michael Mandelson is returning to academia after four years in the Privy Council office, the bureaucratic operation that supports the prime minister.
How much money did he make off this whole scam?
We will probably never know.
Which brings me finally to the news today.
Look at this.
Story in the Globe and Mail.
Ottawa's $1.5 billion Foreign Aid Initiative has spent only $120,000 so far.
Oh, foreign aid, that's the kind of thing that think fluencers normally like.
And look there, there's Bono.
He's really a top-dog think fluencer.
And look at the caption.
Irish pop star Bono, founder of the anti-poverty advocacy group known as the One Campaign, seen here with Justin Trudeau in Montreal, had praised the 2018 Trudeau budget as smart, women-centered policy and leadership in action.
Oh my God.
Here, let me read.
Nearly three years after announcing $1.5 billion in new financing programs for foreign aid, Ottawa has dispersed only a tiny fraction of the promised money, just $120,000 so far.
The Trudeau government won praise from aid agencies in February 2018 when it announced $1.5 billion for two new financing tools, an international assistance innovation program, IAIP, and a sovereign loan program.
China's Impact on Global Elections00:09:54
I love that last part.
International Assistance Innovation Program, IAIP.
Because really, who knows more about innovation in international assistance than the government, especially Justin Trudeau's government.
Let me read more buzzwords.
This is really in the newspaper.
Ottawa touted the new programs as groundbreaking approaches to development assistance, allowing the use of private sector methods such as equity investments, guarantees, and conditionally repayable contributions to bring new funding to developing groundbreaking.
You've got to use the word groundbreaking innovation when you have an international development assistance program.
You've just got to.
That's what the parody Twitter accounts would say.
You just got to add the word women-centric and coding and you're set.
You know, I wanted to tell you that because in these bleak times, in these dark days, this is a little glimmer of hope, a little bit of good news.
The buffoon-in-chief, the blackface boss, the groping guy, the serial lawbreaker under the Conflict of Interest Act, he tried to spend $1.5 billion, and he just couldn't do it.
He only managed to spend $120,000 only.
That, my friends, is a little miracle.
May all of Trudeau's projects fail so spectacularly.
stay with us for more on twelve Well, I'd love to respond.
Look, lost the trade war with China.
Joe Biden never fought it.
Joe Biden has been a cheerleader for communist China through over the last several decades.
And again, Senator Harris, you're entitled to your opinion.
You're not entitled to your own facts.
When Joe Biden was vice president, we lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs, and President Obama said they were never coming back.
He said we needed a magic wand to bring them back.
In our first three years after we cut taxes, rollback regulation unleashed American energy, this administration saw 500,000 manufacturing jobs created.
And that's exactly the kind of growth we're going to continue to see as we bring our nation through this pandemic.
The Green New Deal, your massive new mandates, your Paris Climate Accord.
It's going to kill jobs this time, just like it killed jobs.
Well, that's a clip from last night's vice presidential debate, the only one of its kind scheduled for this election season.
Vice President Mike Pence grilling Kamala Harris on Joe Biden's record of rolling over for communist China on economics.
It wasn't an argument about morality or freedom or cyber security.
It was all about jobs, but I think it made a strong point.
That's my view.
Joining us now is one of North America's top experts on U.S.-China relations, our friend Gordon G. Chang.
You can follow him at Gordon G. Chang on Twitter.
Gordon, what did you make of how the vice president and Kamala Harris sparred over China yesterday?
Was there any movement?
Was there anything clarified by it?
I don't know if anything was clarified by it, but I think this was one of the vice president's strongest moments of the night.
And I think it was actually Kamala Harris's weakest point of the evening.
Because the Obama administration, they had a view that climate change was absolutely critical and they were going to ignore all sorts of things in order to get Beijing to sign on to the Paris Accord.
So clearly, the vice president was right.
Now, people can say that's a good thing, but the point is, it's a fact.
Do you think that the Trump-Pence campaign has focused enough on China?
And do you think they focused on it in the right way?
Some of the arguments about China seem a little bit abstract.
I mean, I deeply believe in human rights, and I know you do, too.
I also worry about the region that China's trying to dominate, you know, whether it's Japan or India.
I don't know if that resonates in places like Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, but I know the job stuff does.
Do you think the Republican campaign has been strong enough?
Do you think they've had the right focus on China?
I'm worried it hasn't been talked about enough.
Yeah, I think the administration could make a much stronger case on its China policy.
So for instance, last night, I would have liked to have heard the vice president say, look, those tariffs that Kamala Harris complained about, those are imposed as a remedy for the theft of U.S. intellectual property.
And he should have asked her, well, what are you going to do about it?
Because when Biden was vice president for eight years, the administration just ignored it.
Or when they actually did something which was rare, they took actions that they knew were ineffective.
So for instance, they indicted Chinese military officers in the Western District of Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh.
But that was symbolic.
And so I think that essentially the administration has a much stronger argument, but it has not been making it during this campaign.
If I recall from the presidential debate, Trump talked about Hunter Biden and China.
That felt more like a corruption issue or a scandal issue than a national interest issue.
I mean, I think it irritated Joe Biden, but I'm not sure if it moved votes.
I think it really is the largest piece of the puzzle that'll be the largest thing that'll be different if Trump or Biden, if one of them wins and the other doesn't.
I mean, there'll be climate issues that are different.
There's tax issues.
There might be some racial justice issues that are different.
But I think the number one difference between a Trump reelection or a Biden election will be on China's role in the world.
I think it's that critical an issue.
What do you think?
I mean, I know this is your area of expertise.
Let me throw one more thing at you before you answer.
Nathan Vanderclipp, who is a Canadian journalist in China, was watching the debate on Chinese TV.
And when Mike Pence referred to China, take a look at this, the screen was blacked out.
And on Chinese TV, it said no signal.
So they literally were censoring Mike Pence in real time.
That tells me China thinks this is a critical election and they've made their choice.
Well, they certainly have, because the trend of Communist Party and state propaganda has been to unseat President Trump.
Also, when we start to look at their troll and bot operations, those have been directed against the president as well.
And when state media or party media has talked about the candidates, it said nice things about Biden and horrible things about President Trump.
So clearly, Beijing has picked its choice in this election.
And it's doing a lot to try to unseat President Trump.
You know, President Trump was headed cruising to re-election victory before the coronavirus hit.
And since that time, he's now far behind in the polls.
It's really disrupted the campaign.
I'm not saying that Beijing released the coronavirus to unseat Trump, but we do know that Xi Jinping, the Chinese ruler, took steps that he knew or had to know would spread the disease beyond China's borders.
So there is a direct causal relationship in all of this.
Yeah, if I recall, he shut down flights from Wuhan to Beijing, from Wuhan to Shanghai, but not from Wuhan to the Western countries.
Yeah, there's two things.
First of all, Xi Jinping knew the coronavirus was highly contagious, but he told the world that it was not.
And at the same time, he was pressuring countries not to impose those travel restrictions and quarantines on arrivals from China when he was imposing similar measures inside China itself.
So he knew those measures were effective, and he knew that by leaning on other countries, he was taking a step to spread the disease.
So, you know, Ezra, this, you know, the fact that we have all these infections around the world, all these deaths, a million deaths, seven million infections, that's because China took steps to make sure that happened.
I thought it was interesting when Trump himself caught the virus and had to go to the hospital.
I follow a number of Chinese propaganda accounts.
One of them is called Global Times, and their editor, Hu Shi Jin, if I'm going from memory is his name, he made a shocking tweet, basically mocking Trump and saying, ha ha, it serves you right.
I think he later deleted it, but there was a jubilation there.
And normally I wouldn't care.
I mean, a pundit, what do I care?
There's a gazillion pundits in America who say rude things all the time.
But the thing is, a pundit in communist China isn't a Lone Ranger.
He is expressing the views of the Communist Party.
I think he had to delete that tweet later, but it certainly showed the thinking in the Communist Party.
Do you think?
I mean, why do you think they would have pulled him back?
Because it was just too far?
Or what do you think was going on there?
I think they pulled him back because people around the world were condemning WHO and the Global Times for this.
Got to remember, Hu Xi Jun is the editor of Global Times.
Global Times is controlled by People's Daily.
People's Daily is the most authoritative source in China.
Now, Global Times is not technically official, but we know that Beijing uses the Global Times to sort of propagate themes, sort of sometimes on a trial basis, sometimes because they want deniability.
So this is, yes, you say it's not just some jerk in China.
This is pretty close to official.
And I think Beijing understood that it was losing friends because of that tweet.
People may not like President Trump, but they certainly didn't like that tweet.
Official Developments00:03:36
Incredible.
Well, listen, I think this is going to be a momentous month.
And I think so much turns on this.
I think it's going to be incredible to watch.
And I hope for all the world's sake that the election goes the way it ought to.
I think that whether or not Biden or Trump wins the American election will actually have a greater impact on Canada, on the United Kingdom, on Taiwan, certainly, on Japan, than most domestic decisions in the countries I've just listed.
It's so important.
And we're going to be watching every step of the way.
And we're going to be following your Twitter account.
Gordon, I encourage everyone of my followers who's not following yet, do so at Gordon G. Chang.
It's educational, it's patriotic, great arguments, great facts.
I can't believe how many things you stay abreast of all the time.
You're like your own research bureau.
So thank you for sharing the wisdom with us.
I know you're busy, so we'll say goodbye now.
But Gordon, thanks for joining us as you always do.
No, thank you so much, Ezra.
All right, there you have it.
Gordon G. Chang, got to follow him on Twitter.
Stay with us.
Go ahead.
Hey folks, you know we got some exciting things cooking.
We've got so many reporters doing so many things.
And I just want to give you a little update about what Kian Bexty is up to.
He's been on the West Coast for a few days.
He's gone.
I don't know if you saw this, but he went to an environmental blockade, an illegal encampment.
But it was so far in the woods, they didn't have Wi-Fi.
So when he showed up, they couldn't Google who he was.
So they didn't know he was a rebel.
So they actually let him in.
And he filmed all sorts of stuff.
And he's been doing all sorts of stories about illegal blockades there.
We're going to have an amazing little documentary for you next week about that.
Here, here's a sneak preview from Kian himself.
Right now, we are in the Fraser River on a tugboat.
This happened virtually overnight after my cameraman and I were embedded in an eco-radical blockade on the west end of Vancouver Island.
They welcomed us in after we said we were good buddies with Brendan Tutberg.
It's not really a lie.
We're on a first-name basis.
But after that, we wanted to hear the other side of the story because they were actually quite compelling people.
They made some arguments.
And I wanted to hear from folks in industry and someone on a tugboat carrying logs from Haida Guai all the way down to Vancouver to the Fraser River is the perfect place to do that, the perfect people to talk to.
So we're on the boat right now.
They invited us on and we're hearing the other side of the story.
And it's all thanks to folks who contributed at bcblockade.com.
You can still go there if you want to contribute to this documentary that we're creating.
This documentary is going to cover everything from how the industry operates to who is hurting it.
Found some very interesting things out about some of the eco-radicals behind these blockades.
And a spoiler, they're closely connected to the very same people blockading the coastal gasoline pipeline in northern BC that I was at earlier this year.
It's a crazy story, and I'm excited to tell it to you.
You can check it out at bcblockade.com.
Well, I can hardly wait to get that whole thing put together.
Kean's still working on that.
I just talked to him a couple hours ago.
So, hopefully, we'll have that next week.
If you want to see more about it, if you want to help us cover the cost, we spent a few bucks on this, flying folks to BC, hotels, flights, meals, even.
Go to bcblockade.com and we need to put together a few thousand bucks if you're interested.