Spencer Fernando argues the "Great Reset" has evolved from fringe conspiracy to observable reality, with Canada’s government exploiting COVID-19 to push undemocratic policies like "build back better" under pandemic fear. He critiques Aaron O’Toole’s climate plan as a "social credit green scheme," mirroring liberal/NDP proposals and risking corruption by politicizing spending. The Conservatives lost credibility over lockdowns, COVID hotels, and censorship, while the OPP enforced Ford’s controversial measures despite public backlash—like suspending officers for handshakes. Early pandemic leaders dismissed border risks only to later justify extreme restrictions, proving shifting priorities. Public resistance remains essential to counter censorship, as truth ultimately prevails despite delays. [Automatically generated summary]
Spencer Fernando is a writer, a campaign fellow with the National Citizens Coalition, and you can find him on Twitter at Spencer Fernando and SpencerFernando.com.
How are you doing today, Spencer?
Thanks for joining me.
Not too bad, yourself?
I'm doing well, thank you.
Now, the first thing I wanted to get right into and talk to you about was, I think it's the only video you have on your YouTube channel.
I know that you're a writer, so you probably don't have time to do these videos, but the loan video you have is a really good one, and it's about the great reset, and you're talking a bit about how it was considered a conspiracy theory, but now we're watching it in real time pretty much across the world.
So let's go ahead and play that clip for anyone who hasn't seen it, and we'll talk about it.
Justin Trudeau has now openly admitted what was once considered by many to be a conspiracy theory.
Governments are seeking to exploit the pandemic crisis to impose policies they previously could not achieve through democratic means.
Trudeau stated the pandemic has been an opportunity to reset things and implement plans the government had been unable to force on us before the crisis.
Of course, you weren't asked if you wanted a great reset.
You weren't asked if you wanted everything reshaped.
I want to ask you, where do you think that this whole great reset thing comes from?
Clearly, governments are implementing it in different ways.
Do you think there's a group of people directing this or is this politicians mimicking each other to gain more power?
Yeah, I think it's a bit of both.
I think, I mean, you know, they always go and they meet with each other every year at a lot of these conferences.
So, you know, Davos, for example.
So that's not a big surprise.
But I think the problem is that this kind of fits into the mindset that a lot of people in politics just naturally have, right?
Like, if you go into politics in the first place, unless you're really a libertarian type person, you're probably more someone who thinks, okay, I'm going to use the government to reshape society and make people act in the way that I think they should, as opposed to just protecting the right to make their own choices.
So I think when a crisis hits, you know, a lot of politicians, they kind of think the same way.
They say, oh, wow, look, you know, people are really scared right now.
And I think we can probably force through some stuff that we wouldn't get away with otherwise.
So I think you're right.
It's a mix of, you know, people actually talking to each other and trying to make plans.
But I think a lot of it is they just mimic each other.
And they say, I mean, look at, they're all using the exact same terminology, right?
They're all saying build back better.
You see almost every leader of every country saying the exact same thing.
We're all supposed to be independent countries with their own politics or our own decisions, right?
But they're all saying the same thing and talking the same way.
So yeah, I think that's, it would have been called a conspiracy before, but it's pretty obvious now.
Is that why you think the goalposts keep shifting?
Because as long as the people are willing to go along with it, then we can just, you know, change our goal and change what we're moving towards so long as, you know, we keep gaining momentum and power.
Do you think that's fair to say?
Yeah, I mean, you look at what happened in Ontario, right?
And again, this is, I don't think it's really coordinated between all governments, but it's just the mindset they have.
I mean, and again, you know, supposedly a conservative government in Ontario, right?
Not too much conservative going on there.
But they pushed and pushed and pushed and got away with everything until people finally had a limit.
It literally took them, Doug Ford, basically saying, all the police are going to be able to be, you know, show me your papers, police, demand to stop anyone walking at any time, driving at any time.
And people finally said, you know, this looks like it's going a little bit too far, but that's what it took for people to react.
And if people hadn't have reacted, then Ford would have kept pushing and other premiers and other leaders in other parts of the world would have looked and said, okay, well, they got away with that on Ontario.
Conservative Calculus Shift00:13:20
Let's try it out here.
So they're definitely mimicking each other and they're definitely trying to push us as far as they think we'll go.
I definitely agree.
And we'll get more to that specific thing later.
But I wanted to pivot to Aaron O'Toole and the Federal Conservatives.
I want to play what I think is a hilarious video of Aaron O'Toole talking about his climate plan.
I think it's on CTV and it's just ridiculous from the get-go.
So let's play that and I'll ask you some questions about that for you.
You've called this plan daring, yet it is comparable to the emissions reduction seen under the current federal system.
So if it truly is daring, why not go further and try to reduce emissions even more than what we currently have?
It's daring because we're going further in protecting jobs, in growing the economy, in making sure we have a prosperous Canada after COVID-19.
We meet, we match Mr. Trudeau's emission reductions by 2030.
It's a smart plan to reduce emissions, but it's vastly superior on securing and creating jobs, getting our economy back to work in all sectors and in all regions of the country.
That's what makes it daring.
It actually grows the economy.
So forget about him looking left and right to his lines, which are on both sides of him.
Whoever decided that that was the background, the climate moving in the mountain behind should be fired from the get-go.
I want to ask you, Spencer, how do you think that they're protecting jobs by taxing businesses?
What's the logic there?
Well, they're not, obviously.
He knows that.
I mean, if you look at what he said about Trudeau's plan up until a few days ago, he was saying carbon taxes are job killers, right?
So now it's shifted, of course.
But yeah, I mean, to be honest, he really looks like a clown when he tries to pull that kind of stuff because that's exactly what Rachel Notley said.
That's exactly what Justin Trudeau said when they brought in carbon taxes.
Oh, it's not a tax, it's a levy, and it's good for the economy, blah, blah, blah.
So it's just kind of embarrassing for him.
He's really backed himself into a corner at this point.
I mean, you know, all the reports show that he apparently didn't tell most of his caucus about any of this stuff.
So a lot of them were caught off guard.
And yeah, he just has to somehow try to justify a terrible plan.
And the plan is in many ways worse than the liberal plan.
I mean, he talks about creating jobs, I guess, maybe for the banking industry or whoever's going to be managing that fund.
And so, and what's even worse about it is there's not really a shred of conservative thinking in it.
I mean, you could totally see the NDP coming up with basically the exact same plan or the Greens, really.
You know, we take your money from you and then we put it into a fund or an account, and you don't get to choose whatever you want to spend it on.
No, you get to pick from what the government tells you.
And that's supposedly a conservative plan.
So, yeah, I don't know how he thinks he's going to sell this to people.
Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that.
I mean, he's doing this thing that almost is comparable to the Green New Deal.
If he was to expand it into a manifesto like AOC does, it's basically that.
And he says, on one hand, Trudeau sucks and everything, and he's saying that for years, but all of a sudden, Trudeau's plan is good.
He's saying this plan is good, and we're just not making it worse after saying that they're so bad for all this, for all of time, I want to say.
Now, he's trying to force industries to change.
I don't see how that will create jobs at all.
And I think there's a tweet from yours that actually points out, if we could put that up, Efron.
Here it is.
Studying the potential for introducing new taxes on frequent flyers and luxury cars.
How, I mean, can you explain this new point reward system that they've got going?
Not really.
I don't think they can explain it either.
I mean, the best I can come up with is, I mean, they've tried to say it's kind of like an interact system.
It'll be managed by the people who manage Interact, and then it's going to be like a kind of cost co-rewards.
It's really you're converting, you know, tax dollars into points that the government then gives you, and then you can convert that back into tax dollars, but I guess that's only for products that they say are acceptable.
So it's almost like a social credit type environmental green scheme.
Again, the problem that it's so tough to explain is really the big issue they have, just beyond the lying, obviously, but just the plan itself is terrible.
I've said this on a lot of videos I've done recently where I'm talking to interviews and talking to people.
But if you're explaining in politics, you're losing, right?
That's kind of the saying you hear all the time.
And so the liberal plan, I don't like it, but it's very easy to explain.
The liberals say we tax you and then we give you the money back in a rebate.
Now, whether they actually give it all back, they don't really, but it's easier for them to say they do.
So it's easy to explain.
We tax you and we give it all back.
The conservative plan is we tax you, we put it into a fund, it's managed by the banks or some consortium on Bay Street.
And then here's the list of stuff that the state says you can spend it on.
And the more you use, I guess the more points you have and then the more you can buy.
But if you don't like anything on the list, then you're screwed because that's all you have to choose from and it's not really your money because the government's taking it and telling.
I mean, it's just, it's a terrible plan.
And it's almost as if they felt like, okay, we have to do something.
And it can't be the liberal plan.
So let's come up with this much, much worse plan and somehow sell it as something different.
So, yeah, it's, yeah, it's they look like fools trying to sell it.
Maybe you can get a bike, I believe, is the thing going around.
Yeah, and it's ripe for corruption because now you've got a list of things that politicians can appoint to where this is okay to buy, this is not okay to buy.
Oh, I wonder if people are going to get their items put on the list for government point spending or whatever it's going to be called.
Now, in a broader point, the Conservative Party of Canada, is there any hope left in there?
Should Derek Sloan just leave?
I mean, I asked myself this question when I see him with the CPC still in his Twitter bio there.
Should we be trying to shift to somewhere else or should we be trying to save anything that's left of the CBC?
Or are they just booting too many people out for that to be possible?
Well, I wrote an article about that recently.
And, you know, people always ask, oh, what's the alternative, right?
And that's all, you know, in some ways, O'Toole is kind of holding people hostage, psychologically, of course.
Where it's like, look, you hate Justin Trudeau, and, you know, you may think that me, Erin O'Toole, I'm terrible, but hey, I'm not as bad as Trudeau, so you better vote conservative anyway.
So I think, you know, what I said in the article was, you know, certain MPs who I think have a future in conservatism and in Canada, someone like Michelle Rampel-Garner, Pierre Polyev, you know, if you live in their riding or you support them, then I'd say keep doing that.
You know, you'll want to keep some strong conservative voices in the country.
If you live in a liberal-dominated riding where the liberals win easily every time, certainly feel free to vote for, you know, the PPC or the Maverick Party.
Even just once to send a message to the conservatives that you can't betray your base and you can't lie and get away with it.
And then if you live in a swing riding, you know, realize that you have leverage, right?
You know, the conservative candidate or MP in a very close riding, they need your vote and they need your support and they probably want you to volunteer for them.
And so, you know, contact them respectfully, of course, and just say, look, you know, you guys have been betraying us.
You know, you haven't spoken out against O'Toole.
Obviously lying to everybody and trying to pull a fast one on everybody.
So unless I see you pushing back on some of this stuff, I'm not going to vote for you and I'm not going to volunteer for you.
So it's not really a binary thing where people just have to say, I'm just automatically going to vote somewhere else or stay home.
But realize that you have some leverage and you can use that and put some pressure on politicians.
You know, a lot of them may be pretty cowardly, but at the end of the day, it's all about self-interest, right?
They want to get re-elected.
So right now, they're thinking, if I oppose O'Toole, then it'll weaken the party and we'll lose.
And the calculus in their mind needs to shift to saying if you don't push back on what O'Toole is doing, you personally are going to lose because your core supporters aren't going to turn out for you.
So I think people need to study your riding, look at the vote margin, look at what your MP or conservative candidate is saying, and use your leverage.
Yeah, and I think you made great points there about it's not being a binary choice.
Now, a lot of people were mad in the last election at Bernier for trying to split the vote.
Now, obviously, that didn't even actually happen.
But I'm sure there's going to be a lot less complaining about people not voting for Aaron O'Toole this time around because it's pretty evident to me that he is not, like Doug Ford, not doing what he was elected on.
Yes, it was an election within the party, but they are not doing what everybody thought they were going to do.
In fact, they're probably doing the exact opposite.
And to your point, there are a couple of them that I think you can throw your hat into sometimes, maybe not all the time.
But when it comes to all the things that are happening right now, from lockdowns to police oversight to COVID hotels to online censorship, no one seems to be doing anything about that in the Conservative Party, especially not in the leadership office, whether they disagree with him or not.
I want to talk to you about the OPP.
Let's show this video if we can.
I'm not sure if you've seen it.
A lot of people have by now.
So just in case, the OPP pushing over, allegedly, we'll say for the cameras, a 12-year-old and IDing them.
Can we play that one please?
Touch me!
Come here! Come here! Please!
Dude, what are you guys talking about?
I'm trying to leave now.
So I'm doing adult like this.
That comes off.
What am I doing here?
I'm leaving.
Let's keep filming now.
The OPP are the only ones after this order was put down from the provincial government to say that they will be enforcing it.
And I have a piece of paper right now from Andrew Lawton, which is his list.
We can probably just throw that up after.
His list of all the jurisdictions in Ontario, the police jurisdictions or stations, if you want to call that, that said no.
And it's 44 said no.
I think two abstained from saying no.
Even the First Nations police said no.
And the OPP actually said yes, we will be enforcing them.
My question to you is: do you think that they have a choice or do you think they should have thrown their hat in with everybody else?
Well, that's the tough question, right?
The OPP is technically.
I mean, it's controlled by the Ontario government, right?
And Doug Ford leads the government.
So you could argue that they have no choice.
But, you know, I think when every other police jurisdiction has basically said no, they could have really finished Ford off completely and said, yeah, we're not going to do it either.
What's he going to do?
He's going to force them.
You could have people resign, threaten to resign, threaten to quit.
So there's a lot of things they could have done just to put pressure on him when everyone else had done the same thing.
So I think it's, and you know, it's funny.
You know, for a long time, we've been hearing people, you know, a conservative politician goes out and says, I'm going to reduce the rate of spending growth by 0.1% this year to get closer to a balanced budget.
People are like, oh, fascism.
This is unacceptable.
This is crazy, right?
And then you've got the police, you know, pushing around allegedly, and 12-year-old, right?
Let's be careful.
And you have everything else, show me your papers, all this kind of stuff.
Where are all the people warning about fascism?
You know, where, oh, fascism is just around the corner.
You know, oh, they're quiet all of a sudden.
That's not a big deal.
So it's interesting how situational a lot of people's ethics and political beliefs seem to be.
But yeah, I mean, the OPP, I think they should have totally said, look, we're not going to do this either.
And what, Ford's going to make them do it?
I mean, he had to back down the next day anyway, right?
So I think, yeah, I think they should have done something.
Now, let me get a bit more meta on you about this.
All these police jurisdictions say we're not going to enforce this.
Is it at all possible that this was planned ahead of time to try to get people to cooperate a bit more?
Oh, we're not doing that, you guys.
We're not going to randomly stop you.
But then we saw a day later people in Barry being arrested, people in Mississauga being arrested for protesting.
Do you think I should even get into such a conspiracy?
You know, at this point, I think nothing would surprise me.
The question is, that would imply a large degree of coordination and competence in the Ford government to pull something like that, which seems like it's probably beyond them at this point.
That's fair.
That's fair.
It's probably more likely a disorganization.
But look, I mean, you know, a lot of things that people would have called conspiracies.
I mean, just look at the border right now, right?
So you've got inter-provincial borders, you know, people pushing again for even more lockdowns, you know, trying to shut people down from going outside.
Despite, of course, going outside being the best thing and being active the best way you can make yourself more resilient in the first place, even if you do get the virus and the risk of getting it outside is almost non-existent.
But then you have flights coming in from, you know, heavily infected countries constantly over and over.
And the government says, well, we've got the strongest border controls.
Media's Role in Lockdowns00:06:07
No, you don't.
I mean, it's still coming in and it's spreading in the country from people from outside the country coming here.
So how can you justify locking people down within our own borders, but not stopping people from getting in at the same time, right?
So that totally sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it's exactly what's happening.
Yeah, and I want to get to another police incident that happened.
I'll call it.
There was a Peel region, which is just west of here, police officer that was, I don't know, quote unquote, caught by global news.
He was hugging people.
He was shaking their hands.
He refused to shut them down.
So let's go ahead and play the clip of that officer before we comment on it for those who haven't seen it.
UBI, geez, it's just terrible, eh, Sean?
What are we going to do with guys like this that want people to feed their kids for the next 20 years, right?
We don't want to go along with the close Schwab agenda.
We're not here to hide our faces.
Make videos, make pictures.
Come on, like, why are you trying to get this?
Like, that's even what you're trying to do.
You're not shaming anybody, dude.
I'm a basement.
I'm a basement, bro.
You're going hospital, baby.
I'm going to destroy someone.
That's fashion.
This guy's about to feel bad.
We're not here to hide our faces.
They're not here to hide our faces.
They're here.
I'm a basement.
I'm havin' a basement.
I'm an in-person flash.
I'm a basement.
You're going the hospital right now.
I haven't kissed anybody and I gave a hug.
I'll give you a hug if you want.
Pandemic.
I'm okay with a mask on.
I'm okay with abiding by all the protocols, as you should be as well, as you know.
So a lot of crimes being committed by this cop here who has been suspended.
Whether that's ceremonial or not, I don't know.
Maybe they're just saying, let's wait until the heat dies off.
But I want to get to your comment on the global news reporter.
I think it's Sean O'Shea, if I'm not mistaken.
He's out there.
He's wearing his mask.
He feels really safe.
And in his tweets, you can see he's condemning what's going on, the cop touching and hugging people.
What does this say to the state of the media in terms of being in favor of the lockdowns?
Do you want to comment on that?
Yeah, it's pretty terrible.
I mean, the media is supposed to be speaking truth to power, right?
So they should be going to the politicians and saying, why do you guys keep getting paid, you know, every month, your nice big salaries while you're destroying other people's livelihoods, right?
Why are you ignoring a lot of the advice on fitness?
You know, why haven't you once said that obesity is the second biggest risk factor for the virus?
And instead, you encourage behaviors where people stay home and get even fatter, right?
So why don't you say any of that stuff?
So I think that's a big problem.
The media, instead of holding the powerful accountable, is trying to hold the rest of us accountable on behalf of the powerful and the government, which is the total opposite of what they should be doing.
And it's always, I don't know how far I want to go with this, but you always see when things are, whether it's, you know, like totalitarian regimes, I'm not saying we're in one, but there's some movement for sure in that direction with what the police and the politicians are trying to make the police do.
It's just this kind of attitude where acts of compassion start to get demonized.
And that's very concerning, right?
When someone's punished for hugging people and showing just basic human decency, right?
I mean, these are people trying to save their livelihoods.
And the police officer is just being a decent human being towards them.
And so then the media calls him out and then he gets punished by the state.
That's very concerning when you see things moving in that direction because it speaks to a kind of attitude behind the scenes that's not good at all.
So I think that's a big concern.
And yeah, it's just the worst thing is we're expected to listen to the politicians and the media who've basically gotten every single thing wrong this entire pandemic, right?
I remember at the beginning, I was saying, you know, this looks pretty serious.
Maybe we should be shutting the borders down, right, and stopping flights from coming in from China.
And people, you know, Patty Haidu, Justin Trudeau, Teresa Tam, saying, no, no, it's low risk.
We've got it contained.
We have it managed.
It's not a problem.
Stigma and racism are the real virus.
That's the real threat.
And we're going to, you know, go down and, you know, you know, hug people, you know, go down to Chinatown.
I mean, they were saying things like, go down to Chinatown and don't let stigma interfere with things.
And then these same people are like, we have to completely destroy all our businesses and run the biggest deficits of all time to stop the virus.
And you're going to have to give up most of your charter rights.
It's that serious.
So the flip that they've made is just stunning.
And, you know, a credible media would have held them accountable, but the media has been there the whole time with them.
Yeah, it's a big circle of hypocrisy.
One government is oppressing us and, you know, they're being fascist.
But then the government, that's actually the same government is, as it turns out, in Canada specifically, maybe not the United States, but the same government here has now moved towards that, as you were mentioning earlier, moved towards a more totalitarian state.
And all of a sudden, we should be promoting this for our safety and everything else is okay.
But at the same time, enforcing it also shouldn't happen.
I mean, we never stopped flights from China.
I believe flights from India are still happening.
I don't think we stopped flights from a lot of countries that had a high COVID case rate.
But here we are, 13, 14 months later, and it's still going on.
I think we've got to leave it there, Spencer.
SpencerFernando.com and at Spencer Fernando on Twitter.
I think you should make more videos, start a Rumble account.
I'll certainly watch it.
Last words to you, Spencer.
Well, it's good to talk to you.
And I think it's, you know, this is what the country needs, right?
I mean, the government, we see what they're trying to bring with censorship.
They're trying to, you know, shut people like us down.
And I think we all need to push back against that and keep getting the truth out.
The truth does win over time.
Sometimes it just takes a while.
I appreciate you.
All right.
Have a good night, and we'll talk to you next time, okay?