Ontario’s Digital ID Plan, launching late 2021, will store vaccination records, bank accounts, and government benefits on a mandatory-like digital card, despite $3K–$6K pay raises for MPs—including Trudeau—amid 700,000 lost private-sector jobs. Franco Terrazano of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation slams politicians’ silence on wasteful spending while comparing it to New Zealand’s leadership pay cuts. Privacy risks escalate with Amazon’s palm-scanning tech, Ring doorbells sharing footage, and IBM’s ties to China’s Xinjiang surveillance, raising fears of data misuse. The episode frames digital IDs as a slippery slope toward government overreach, mirroring historical expansions like WWI-era income tax and unchecked airport security. [Automatically generated summary]
Have you seen that thing called the Amazon Palm, P-A-L-M?
You know, when I was a young man, there was something called a Palm Pilot.
It was like a precursor to a BlackBerry, which was the precursor to the iPhone.
It was like a day timer and it was digital.
It was pretty cool.
Yeah, that's not what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about an Amazon system that lets you pay by waving your hand in front of a scanner.
It scans your body and you pay that way.
Hey, anyone think that's going to be wired to our vaccine passports?
I'll take you through it.
I'll show you the Amazon Palm, talk about other violations of our privacy and our liberty.
That's ahead.
But before I get there, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
Just go to RebelNews.com, click subscribe.
It's eight bucks a month.
I'd really appreciate it.
You know, in today's podcast, I'm going to play a video about Amazon Palm.
I just really want you to see it.
It's actually an ad from Amazon itself.
This isn't some speculative conspiracy theory.
It is an Amazon ad for the Amazon Palm payment system.
You don't have to have your phone on you.
You pay with a scan of your hands.
That is straight out of Minority Report with Tom Cruise.
here's today's show.
Tonight, Ontario gets ready to roll out a new digital ID card that will hold your vaccine status on it.
Here comes the Chinese-style social credit system.
It's March 31st, and this is the Astro Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carmen 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 governments go buy a house is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Do you want to see something creepy?
Look at this.
This is Zoe.
Just like you, she uses lots of different cards and IDs to get through her day.
What if all Zoe needed was herself?
Introducing Amazon One, a free service that lets you use your palm to quickly pay for things, gain access, earn rewards, and more.
Let's say you're grabbing your favorite coffee beverage or heading into the office or checking out.
Just hover your palm and you're on your way.
It's as easy as that.
Sign up is free and takes less than a minute.
All you need is a credit card, your phone number, and your palm.
That's it.
Since your palm is unique and can't be lost or misplaced, you can get things done quickly and securely.
And with more experiences on the way, Amazon One will help you get even more done simply by being you.
Now, Zoe has more time to do what she loves, indoor skydiving.
Enter, identify, and pay with Amazon One.
That's an official video by Amazon.
That's the massive company that knows more about you than you know about you because you forget some things that you've said or done and Amazon doesn't forget.
We sell things through Amazon here at Rebel News, books mainly.
Amazon pays us money for it, but they never tell us who bought the books.
They know every single person who ever bought a book from us and they know everything else those people have ever bought and even looked at but didn't buy.
That's how Amazon works.
That's how they make their money.
Sure, they sell things and they make money from each sale.
They get money from every book they sell for us, but they get something much more valuable.
They know all of our customers.
And even we don't know them.
I don't know who buys our book on Amazon.
Who do they share that information with?
Mainly themselves, I think, so they can market similar products to their own customers.
I don't know, do they also share it with governments?
I bet Justin Trudeau would like to know the name of every single person who bought my book, The Lobranos.
I bet he'd like to know the name of everyone who even looked at it online but didn't actually purchase it.
Who else has that info?
Does China?
Where does Amazon store their data?
They're all like that, by the way.
I'm actually more worried about Google and Facebook because Amazon is just shopping and that's a big deal financially, but Facebook, it's everything personal.
It's all your family photos, all your private conversations with people.
It's your list of friends.
And even more, it's everyone and everything you've even just looked at.
Google's probably the biggest everything you've ever searched for.
If you have Gmail, everything you ever written or read.
And again, unlike you, they never forget.
They never forget what you wrote 10 years ago.
I think we all know now when some app is free, it's not free.
It's just that you are being bought and sold.
Here's just an example.
It's the terms of service for Instagram, the popular photo and video sharing app that Facebook just bought.
It has over a billion users, mainly young people, but look at this.
When you upload a photo to Instagram, you are granting Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, a license to do whatever they want with it.
Let me read.
When you share, post, or upload content that is covered by intellectual property rights like photos or videos, on or in connection with our service, you hereby grant to us a non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable,
worldwide license to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform, or display, translate, and create derivative works of your content consistent with your privacy and application settings.
They give you some examples of this.
You give us permission to show your username, profile picture, and information about your actions, such as likes, or relationships, such as follows, next to or in connection with accounts, ads, offers, and other sponsored content that you follow or engage with that are displayed on Facebook products without any compensation to you.
They have billions of photos, and they have the rights to use them without paying you.
Ibm's Privacy Terms00:09:30
Imagine what they're doing with those photos.
Imagine the facial recognition technology.
Imagine what they know about you, and you just gave it to them for free.
There are apps that appear every now and then that look pretty fun to play with.
You upload a photo and it shows you what it thinks you'd look like as a painting or as an old person.
And now there are apps that graft your face onto a historical figure, like a deep fake.
There's video faces.
Those are fun.
But why are they free?
Well, because you are building their huge database for them.
That's why.
Is that really free?
Governments love this, obviously, and they've been doing it in other ways historically.
The other day, we saw a strange thing at a church in Calgary that gets harassed every weekend by the police and the thugs at Alberta Health Services.
You probably know that it's a crime to disturb a religious service in Canada.
It's literally in the criminal code, Section 176.2.
And yet every weekend, government thugs go into that church in the middle of a service and interrupt and disturb and take photos of everyone in there.
Cops with guns walk in.
It's a disgrace.
But the other day when we were at that church, we saw some guy from Alberta Health Services come into the church with a huge backpack on.
What was he going camping?
It was really conspicuous, really weird.
What was in the backpack?
Well, an ex-cop friend of mine said he thought it was this, an electronic spying device that can get the information from every cell phone in the building.
So if you were a churchgoer and had a phone on you in your pocket, in your purse, and most people do, the ringer would probably be off because they're in church, but they'd have their phone on.
Well, this device in the backpack would be able to hack your info, find out who you are.
I don't know if that's exactly what was in the backpack.
They won't tell us, but it's an awfully strange thing to take into a church, a huge backpack.
And if you're already willing to break the criminal code laws against disturbing a church service, you're probably fine with spying on everyone in a church without a search warrant.
That's really creepy, isn't it?
In the olden days, by which I mean until about 15 years ago, you would hear of security services sweeping a room for bugs, right?
By which they mean listening devices.
But really, you don't need to plant a bug on anything these days, do you?
We each carry a bug around with us.
We hold it within arm's reach of ourselves.
We sleep with it next to us.
And of course, it's always listening.
It's not just your phone.
It's everything these days.
People actually put listening devices in their own homes, always listening to you to give it orders.
What is it?
You'll see.
Is it for me?
It's for everyone.
It's called Amazon Echo.
How's it going?
I'm just finishing up right now.
Is it on?
Oh, it's always on.
Can it hear me right now?
Nope.
It only hears you when you use the wake word we chose.
Alexa.
Well, what does it do?
Alexa, what do you do?
I can play music, answer questions, get the news on weather, create to-do lists, and much more.
Yeah, no, it is always listening.
Otherwise, how would it hear the wake-up word?
Ring brand doorbells.
You have one of those, those little cameras you put on your house so you can see people ringing the doorbell or even just people driving by.
Amazon bought that company.
So yeah, sweeping for bugs in your life, we positively install cameras in our own homes connected to Amazon.
And here's an excerpt from Ring's terms of service.
By electing to publicly share your content via our services to other users or the general public, in addition to the license granted above, you give Ring the right, without any compensation or obligation to you, to access and use your content and related location information for the purposes of publicly sharing such recordings and information with current and future users and allowing those users to comment on the content.
So they can use your content, by which they mean what's in your camera.
And by that they mean your house, your home, the way you use it publicly, but also privately, they can share your private videos with the government.
Let me read from their terms of service.
In addition to the rights granted above, you also acknowledge and agree that Ring may access, use, preserve, and or disclose your content to law enforcement authorities, government officials, and or third parties.
So yeah, is there anywhere that's private anymore?
I have a friend who uses a Faraday bag to carry his cell phone around.
That's a bag that blocks the kind of signals that Alberta health cops use to spy on churchgoers.
It covers not just phones, but anything electronic, like a watch these days.
If you have a Nexus card, that's something that in the before times lets you travel back and forth to the States with quicker security checks.
They gave that card to you in a foil package for the same reason to block snoopers.
I mean, no one's crazier than people who wear tin foil hats on their head, right?
But isn't that what a Faraday bag is?
But what happens when you have the phone on your person?
What happens when you now register your face with a tech company, either through Instagram or a lot of phones, you just look at it.
They scan your face before giving you permission to access them.
Banks do that on their banking apps now.
Your face is your ID.
Who's the kook now?
The guys with the tin foil hats or the guys who give their face to the bank?
We're all spied on all the time, and it's mostly by us signing up to be spied on by Amazon or Google or Facebook or Apple or Ring or any website we agree to.
Welcome to 2021.
But nothing is creepier than that Amazon Palm project, is there?
It's like the worst conspiracy theories come true.
People have talked about microchips being implanted in people.
It's an old fear, but it's really outdated, isn't it?
Why plant a chip on you if you are the chip?
Why plant an identifiable unique marker on you if you are the unique marker, your fingerprint, your face, and now your palm?
It's like my point before, there's no need to plant bugs in an embassy because everyone you want to spy on is carrying their own bug with them.
But here comes the government.
Look at this.
New York has introduced a vaccine passport that is like a digital ID card, and they're working with IBM on it, so IBM is running it.
Where will the information pass through?
A lot of servers, a lot of the computing cloud is in China.
So is New York's health vaccine info going to be stored in China?
Do we have to trust IBM?
I mean, really.
In the lead up to the Second World War, I don't know if you know this, but IBM bid for contracts in Nazi Germany using its information systems at the time.
Obviously, this was before our modern computers, but IBM, International Business Machines, was an expert in counting and systems.
They did the census for Hitler.
They were on Hitler's side.
They even got a medal from him.
Now, that was 80 years ago, but look at this.
IBM is at it again in Xinjiang, China.
That province's name rings a bell.
That's the home of the Uyghur Muslim ethnic minority that China's trying to wipe out.
Here's a story from a few years back from a Chinese propaganda newspaper about IBM working with the Chinese government to make Xinjiang, China totally wired.
Let me quote.
In August, Karame launched a joint program with IBM to become a smart city.
The concept proposed by IBM, thanks IBM, is based on technologies such as the Internet of Things and cloud computing and embraces transportation, healthcare, and public security.
So Andrew Cuomo chose IBM to be in charge of healthcare and public security in New York, too.
They're running the New York vaccine passport now because they learned a lot by working with the Chinese dictatorship and their security services in Xinjiang.
Great.
Again, where is IBM even storing the data?
Who are they sharing it with?
How does it get to and from the app?
Does that pass through China?
You seriously hired IBM.
You trust IBM.
Why don't you just hire Huawei to have your vaccine passport?
But here's my real news today.
It's not Amazon Palm, which I find creepy and terrifying.
It's Doug Ford, Ontario's authoritarian ruler.
What a dope.
If he even is the ruler, I'm not even sure that.
I'm going to be very frank.
There's no politician in this country who's going to disagree with their chief medical officer.
They just aren't going to do it.
They might as well throw a rope around their neck and jump off a bridge.
They're done.
I'm telling you the facts.
It's very simple.
I don't know why I bring all these papers.
I never look at them.
Pay Raise Controversy00:12:27
When you're giving numbers, I do.
I go, oh, oh, oh.
Did you want to say that?
I just say whatever they write down for me.
So Doug Ford does what the public health bureaucrats say, and they do what they're told by someone else who says things.
Who?
Who?
I'm sure whoever is behind the curtain is our friend and only wants the best for us.
Say, check this out.
Ontario's Digital ID Plan.
In late 2021, we'll be introducing Digital Identity, a new electronic government-issued ID that lets people and businesses prove who they are online.
Oh, really?
Yes, really.
I'll read some more.
Digital ID for individuals.
As an individual, your digital ID could be used to prove your identity when you check in for virtual medical appointments, get a birth, marriage, or a death certificate.
Apply for government assistance such as disability support or benefits such as CERB or EI.
Update and show vaccination records.
Open a bank account.
So it's connecting everything.
Connecting everything about you.
Your name, who you're married to, your bank account, your vaccine status.
But don't worry, guys.
Don't worry.
You don't have to use digital ID will be optional.
Having a digital ID will be optional.
You will still be able to use ID cards and certificates such as a driver's license or birth certificate if you want.
Sure.
You don't have to use this Protean vaccine passport.
No, no, no.
There's no requirement at all.
I mean, you don't really need a bank account.
You don't really need credit cards.
Just use cash, right?
You don't really need to fly on that plane.
Just drive or walk, right?
You don't really need to go into stores, right?
Just shop online.
You don't really need a job, right?
I mean, no one's forcing you to do any of this, right?
Stay with us for more.
You know, the unemployment rate in Canada is almost 10%.
Business is just ordered, shut down.
It's no one's fault that their job has been banned.
Politicians have banned those jobs.
That's one of the reasons it's so demoralizing.
People want to work.
People want to go out to restaurants and shops, but they're just not allowed to by politicians.
Those politicians, though, they don't seem to want to work very much.
Every parliament, every court, every teachers' union seems to be in some sort of a half capacity.
Justin Trudeau declined to go to parliament, declined to hold parliaments for months at all.
And yet here's the incredible thing.
They are set to give themselves a pay raise tomorrow, April Fool's Day.
What a symbolic day.
Every MP, every cabinet minister, every senator, and the prime minister himself are getting a pay raise just because they can.
And here to join us to talk about it is our friend Franco Tarazzo, the director for Alberta of the Taxpayers Federation.
You can find out more about them at taxpayer.com.
Franco, I can almost not believe it.
They're actually giving themselves a pay raise.
A year of disasters, a year of job losses, unemployment, a deep recession, absolute failure on policies.
If you believe in the vaccines, good luck to you.
You can't even get one.
And they're giving themselves a pay raise?
Well, doesn't that just boil your blood?
I mean, our members of parliament, you would think that they would know that this severe economic downturn would be the worst possible time for them to be padding their pockets with a pay raise, but a pay raise is exactly what they're going to be getting.
And the CTF estimates that for your basic member of parliament, it'll be about an extra $3,000.
For the prime minister, it'll be about an extra $6,000.
And I think what really makes this a tough pill to swallow for taxpayers is that our politicians in Ottawa are already extremely well paid.
Your backbench MP is making over $180,000.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is raking in well north of $300,000.
And you know what?
For those struggling taxpayers who have taken a big pay cut, who may have lost their job, who may have seen their savings evaporate before their very eyes or may have lost their business, it's really going to feel like a slap in the face.
Yeah.
You know, I'm looking at your press release on this subject at taxpayer.com, and I didn't know this, that these automatic pay raises, the MPs actually, and this was, I guess, when Stephen Harper was the prime minister, they stopped the automatic pay raises after the 2008, 2009 recession.
So things were bad, and the MPs and senators at the time thought this is just unseemly.
Well, the disaster in the economy that we're facing now, I think by many measures, is worse than the 2008 Great Recession.
And have you seen any MP or senator of any party say, I'm opposed to this?
I mean, we know the Liberals like the DOE.
We know the NDP likes the DOE.
But how about even on the Conservative side?
Has anyone said, I think we should maybe reconsider this?
Have you heard any of that?
You know, we have.
We've received some correspondence from about, last time I checked, it was about 90 members of parliament either saying that they oppose this or saying that they're going to donate that money to charity.
And, you know, well, that's all fine and dandy to donate its charity, but this is still going to be increasing the burden on taxpayers, right?
We want them to stop these automatic pay raises.
And to your point, I mean, there's precedent for this.
Under the Harper government, in response to the 0809 recession, they stopped the automatic pay raises.
And you know what?
We've seen politicians around the world step up to the plate for taxpayers.
Almost immediately when COVID-19 touched down, we saw New Zealand, the prime minister, the minister, and even top bureaucrats take a 20% pay cut.
Why?
To show solidarity with the struggling taxpayers who are signing their paychecks.
So that's what we should be seeing here in Canada.
And there's really no excuse for it.
And I just need to bring up one other point here.
And that's the fact that this is going to be the second pay raise during the COVID-19 downturn for our members of parliament in Ottawa.
Yeah, that's right.
They did it right in the onset of the lockdown.
You know, when you mentioned that about a quarter of MPs have said, oh, I swear I'm going to give mine to charity.
I really am.
Well, first of all, how do we know if they do?
Prove it.
They can say, that's pretty easy to say.
As you point out, even if they do, we're still paying taxes for that.
But they would get the tax credit.
You donate money to charity, you get a credit for that for donating to a charity.
So I'm not impressed with it.
And we know that they can stop it.
They're not helpless.
They don't want to stop it.
I just think it's gross.
And frankly, for the 2% or 3% raise they're giving themselves this year, why not take a moral stand?
Surely that's worth more than a few thousand bucks to them.
I don't know.
I'm just disappointed.
And the Senate.
I understand that senators, their pay is pegged to what the MPs make less 25 grand.
That's still a huge pay.
You know, I think Preston Manning used to joke that being a senator, we've all heard the phrase a thankless task, but being a senator is a taskless thanks.
So it's a patronage giveaway anyways.
And they're getting a pay raise.
It is infuriating.
It shows that there's the lockdown class that's loving it.
And then there's severely normal people who are paying for it.
What do you think?
Well, what I think is that this should be rocket science to stop these automatic pay raises, right?
It shouldn't be that difficult for our members of parliament to do if they have the political will.
And even if you're an opposition member of parliament, I mean, you should be making an absolute stink about this, right?
Raising as much attention.
And look, we've been in this COVID-19 downturn for more than a year now.
So it's absolutely, there's no excuses why this hasn't been fixed.
And quite frankly, it's embarrassing.
And, you know, to your point, we have seen massive devastation in the private sector.
You look at Stats Canada's most recent job numbers.
More than 700,000 private sector jobs have vanished over the last year.
But we've even seen the number of government jobs increase.
And, you know, I'm in Alberta and we have found thousands of bureaucrats, government bureaucrats across our province in Alberta who have received pay raises during lockdowns in 2020.
All of that means a greater tax burden on the families and the businesses who are just struggling during this downturn.
It's incredible.
Well, listen, Franco, I'm so glad to talk with you about this.
Thank you for your work.
Taxpayer.com, you guys are one of the few NGOs out there, non-governmental organizations, that don't take dough from the government.
I never understand how someone can call themselves an NGO, non-government organization, when they're taking dough from the government.
That's a trick.
You stay honest, you guys at taxpayers.com, because you don't take the government dough.
And I think it's the reason why you're one of the few credible voices on issues like that.
Thank you.
And I'd like to encourage all our viewers, if they're not already a supporter of the Taxpayers Federation, go to taxpayer.com.
You can read the press release that Franco put out today on this subject.
And I hope you'll join them and help keep them strong.
Great to see you.
Thanks for taking the time with us.
Well, thank you so much for having me on.
All right.
Our pleasure.
Hope to have you on more often.
There you have it.
Franco Terrazano.
He's the Alberta Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
Stay with us.
More ahead.
Hey, welcome back on my monologue yesterday.
Mark writes, vaccine passport just another way of strangling our freedom to decide for ourselves.
Yeah, I mean, just think of any other illness that you would have to disclose, have to show anyone who asked any clerk, any waiter, any bouncer.
It's absurd.
Chair writes, there never was any intention of going back to normal.
Governments are not our prison wardens.
They work for us.
We must stand up and take back our rights or we lose them forever.
Yeah, I mean, the two obvious examples, number one, the income tax, which is just till we got through this great war against the Kaiser.
You know, it's been over a century.
And the other one, which we, you know, I think we're numb to it now, is airport security theater.
I don't think they've ever caught a single terrorist, but they grope you and make you take off your shoes and delay you and abuse you.
That's been going for 20 years now.
It's the new normal.
It's not a temporary measure.
Bruce writes, I'd like to see more exclusive content on the paywall shows.
It would add value to the monthly fee we paywall supporters give each month.
It's not a bad idea.
We do have a weekly show from Sheila Gunread, a weekly show from David Menzies, and just a few months ago, we started one from Andrew Chapatos.
I am open to more content.
You know, we used to have shows we put behind the paywall from our live events.
For example, when we would have a Rebel Live, a conference in Calgary or Toronto.
Obviously, a lot of those events have been shut down because of pandemic rules.
We, for example, were going to have a big event in Saskatchewan with Patrick Moore.
The government has shut us down.
That's a perfect example of something we would have behind the paywall.
But let me put my thinking cap on and think of other things we can put behind the paywall too, because I do want to give you value for your money.
I appreciate the eight bucks a month you guys spend.
Well, that's our show for today.
Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, TU Home, good night.