Ezra Levant critiques Canada’s 2021 election, where Justin Trudeau’s polished ad contrasts with Erin O’Toole’s Delta-variant delay plea and Conservative polls stuck at 25%. Rebel News plans to grill candidates on lockdowns, censorship, and economic policies while avoiding Trudeau’s allies like the NDP and Greens—despite their radicalism. China’s execution of Canadians Schellenberg and Spavor amid Meng Wanzhou’s detention hints at retaliation risks if Trudeau secures a majority, straining Five Eyes ties. Meanwhile, Liberal hypocrisy on COVID rules, from unmasked G7 summits to elite exemptions, underscores class divide manipulation, ensuring their re-election despite scandals like blackface and SNC-Lavalin. [Automatically generated summary]
Today I talk about the looming federal election in Canada.
I saw my first election ad yesterday.
It was online.
I didn't have a chance to record it, but the liberals are looking good.
Charming twinkle in Trudeau's eye.
None of that vacation lazy man's beard that he had.
Always looking sharp.
On the other hand, Aaron O'Toole is talking about the deadly Delta variant.
I don't know who he's trying to appeal to, but I know which one I think an alien would vote for if they just saw this happy, positive Trudeau and this cringy, pouty O'Toole.
I'll give you some more of my thoughts, and more importantly, I tell you our plan for how we're going to cover this election that's ahead.
Let me encourage you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
That's the video version of this podcast.
Just go to rebelnews.com, click subscribe, eight bucks a month.
Most importantly, it's a source of revenue for us that is not from the government.
We don't take government money, unlike most of the media.
And I think in the months ahead, you'll see a real difference between how an independent news organization like ours covers the election versus how bought and paid for bailout journalists on the left cover it.
All right, here's today's show.
Tonight, an election is coming.
How will Rebel News cover it?
It's August 10th, and this is the Adva Vant 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 is government will want to publish it.
Just because it's my bloody right to do so.
I saw my first election ad yesterday.
It was on the internet, of course.
I think that's where most ads will be.
It was an ad for Trudeau's liberals.
I don't think I'll ever vote liberal.
And I think Justin Trudeau could well be the worst prime minister in our country's history, even worse than his father.
But the ad was good.
I can't find it online.
I think it ran accidentally too early.
But I can see the ad working.
Gone is the ugly, I'm on permanent vacation, lazy beard and hairstyle that Trudeau had for a year that he looked like he was always sleeping in, you know, when he was just phoning in his work.
Trudeau was never one for hard work, never in his whole life.
I don't know if you remember, but one of the excuses he tried out when he was convicted of corruption involving his free vacation on Billionaire Island with the Aga Khan, his argument, seriously made, that he never really knew what anyone in a meeting was talking about, certainly not who was lobbying for what.
So he was immune to corruption.
Because if the Aga Khan would have mentioned some grant he was applying for, some favor, Trudeau just wouldn't know what he meant.
He was there for relationship reasons only, to make people feel good.
And other people in the prime minister's office did the real work.
He really did argue that.
And frankly, who would disagree?
It's obviously what True is, a mascot.
He has no work ethic.
He doesn't know any details.
He can memorize a few lines about anything, very shallow, like a quick actor.
And good news for him, he'll never be asked anything more deeply or more repeatedly that can be handled by one or two cute phrases.
That's what his ad felt like that I saw online.
Just style and feeling.
Happy, positive, youthful, no worries.
He's got a twinkle in his eye.
Don't listen to those meanies.
I know you won't, because you can't even name Aaron O'Toole, let alone pick him out of a police lineup.
And if you do happen to know Aaron O'Toole's name, and if you do happen to give him a moment of your time, you won't hear anything inspiring, any competing vision.
You'll hear someone whining about how unfair it is to have an election and how the main issue in Canada right now is that we should all be terrified of the Delta variant of the virus.
I'm serious.
I didn't know Teresa Tam was the new Tory leader.
Canadians are worried about a fourth wave of COVID-19.
The dangerous Delta variant is here, and we have to be ready.
Now is not the time for an election.
We can all wait and go to the polls when it's safe.
We need to focus on health and well-being, securing our economic future, and fighting COVID-19 together.
My wife and I had COVID.
Like many families, we want to get past this pandemic.
But let's pull together for one more fight.
Let's beat COVID-19 and have an election when it's safe.
Yeah, so people aren't paying attention to you at the best of times.
Now you have their attention, perhaps for the first time ever.
And you're talking about being afraid of the Delta variant?
Really, that's your number one issue.
So I think it's fair to say, I know your views about lockdowns and travel quarantines and even vaccine passports because you're so terrified of the delta variant.
It's the most important topic you think we should know about.
You know, I've shown you this all the time.
This is the daily stats.
It's close to zero the number of people dying from the virus in Canada these days.
55 deaths in the entire country in the entire last week.
So on any given day, it's single digits.
It's zero in half the country.
How ironic.
For 18 months, Trudeau has been the fearmonger.
He's been the one locking us down, making travel horrendous with the COVID quarantine jails at airports.
He's the one terrifying people, abiding civil liberties abrogations by mayors and provinces, allowing inter-provincial check stops.
He's gone full big pharma.
He's been that guy, the Malays guy, the doomsday guy.
Now he flips the switch and he's Mr. Hopeful and happy.
And I promise you, take this to the bank.
He's timed an announcement with Joe Biden where he'll open up travel with the U.S. He'll make that announcement during the campaign as part of his platform.
He was waiting for the election to do it.
He's probably delayed it just for the election.
He's going to be the guy to give you freedom back.
And the conservative candidate is the one telling you to be afraid.
How did that happen?
Oh, I think he's going to win, Trudeau.
Here's a poll from Abacus.
I think they tilt liberal, but show me a poll that's fundamentally different from this.
When was the last time the conservatives were at 25% in the polls?
What's their excuse?
Erin O'Toole's been leader for a year.
The party did better without a leader than with him as a leader.
But why would he have support?
How is he different from Trudeau?
Carbon taxes?
Czech.
Mass migration?
Czech.
Pandering to Quebec?
Check.
The lockdowns?
Czech.
Cancel culture.
Like I say, he hasn't said a word against the new censorship proposals from Trudeau and Stephen Gilbo.
In fact, the last word on the subject was from his critic, Alain Reyes, supporting censorship.
But we don't see it in the bill.
There's nothing in this bill that allows for the regulation of social media or platforms like YouTube.
And it's clear we would have liked to have seen this in the bill.
The minister even says we have to find a way of preventing hate speech, conspiracy theories, and fake news that's shared.
But right now in the bill, unfortunately, we won't even be able to amend it in that aspect and because it's simply absent from the bill.
Yeah, woo!
Can hardly wait to put up a lawn sign for that guy.
But what should we do?
I mean, we can't vote for Trudeau.
continue to destroy so much of Canada, not just statues and symbols, but Canada's entrepreneurial spirit.
He'll continue to punish the oil and gas sector and Alberta and Saskatchewan workers.
He'll continue open borders mass migration.
He'll continue to align with China, continue to obey the UN.
This isn't a conspiracy theory, it's a conspiracy fact.
This pandemic has provided an opportunity for a reset.
This is our chance to accelerate our pre-pandemic efforts to reimagine economic systems that actually address global challenges like extreme poverty, inequality, and climate change.
Well, look, I'm not going to make predictions about the outcome, but would you agree with me that not only are the polls looking pretty bad for O'Toole, the worst ever worse than Andrew Scheer had, but that the political battlefield is more tilted than at least it was two years ago.
The media is two years more colonized by Trudeau and his endless media party bailouts.
We've already seen the journalists union, UNIFOR, roll out their attack ad against O'Toole.
The CBC is not only in full Trudeau mode, as always, they're in full pandemic lockdown propaganda mode.
Really, it's worse than ever.
And my point is, if Trudeau could be re-elected last time, even with the blackface scandal and Jody Wilson-Raybold's fiasco and SNC Lavalan, Trudeau firing Wilson-Raybold because she wanted to stop him from interfering in a corruption trial.
Even if Trudeau, if he could win then, why wouldn't he win now?
Look across Canada, provincial governments are being re-elected during the pandemic.
Why wouldn't Trudeau himself?
So what are we going to do?
Well, I think we do what we always do.
We're going to ask tough questions of every politician, and by that I mean questions that talk about subjects that politicians don't always want to be asked about, and that the rest of the media usually don't ask about.
For me, that means freedom-oriented questions about lockdowns and vaccine passports, about censorship laws and control of the internet, about Trudeau's war on oil and gas and pipelines, but is favoring OPEC oil imports, about the war on working families in the form of taxes and borrowing and inflation, about driving up housing prices through unlimited immigration to Canada, driving down wages despite our recession-level unemployment, our bizarre foreign policy.
Loving China, loving Iran, preferring OPEC oil imports to Alberta oil production.
We're going to ask about all those things, but we're not going to just talk to Trudeau and O'Toole and their candidates if they even allow us to.
I mean, they don't like those questions.
We'll talk to the fringe parties too.
Jack Meet Singh's NDP and the Green Party, whoever it is that controls it at any given moment, because don't think those parties aren't important when it comes to giving Trudeau a de facto majority.
They've propped up Trudeau these past two years supporting his minority parliament.
But we won't just talk to the small parties on the left because they need scrutiny, particularly their increasing radicalism, their support for socialism, and especially the Green Party's anti-Semitism, which I think is the real reason they're trying to get rid of their black Jewish leader.
She's Jewish, you know.
But we'll also talk to the small parties on the right, Maxime Bernier's People's Party.
He's been one of the few politicians who opposes lockdowns.
I like a lot of things about Maxime Bernier.
His belief in freedom, free speech, opposing lockdowns.
I think his arrest by Brian Pallister's political police just for going to a meeting.
I think that shows where this country is headed and that it's not just the liberals, it's the so-called conservatives who are acting like bullies too.
And we'll talk to Derek Sloan, the leader of a new party he's founding.
I don't think Bernier or Sloan will win seats.
I just don't think they will.
At least not this time, not in any one district.
Perhaps like the UKIP party in the UK or even the NDP here in Canada, they can become an important outlet for dissent that causes the mainstream parties to fix a problem they choose to ignore.
Perhaps if Maxime Bernier's party and Derek Sloan's party get three, four, five percent of the vote each and take it away from the Conservatives, maybe that'll make the next Conservative Party leader pay attention to those issues that they're sloughing off.
I'm sure they'll be marginalized and shut out of the leaders' debates that are run by the government.
They shut us out last time, too.
We had to go to court, remember, to get a judge to let us in.
I'm sure we'll have more litigation ahead because the censorship instinct in Canada has never been this strong, not in my lifetime, probably not ever.
So that's what I think.
I think we'll be in an election mere days from now, but really it's already begun.
Trudeau's running happy ads.
I saw one yesterday.
O'Toole is muttering about Delta variants and the reporters, their own union from their own pockets, are running attack ads on conservatives with their own union dues.
The powers that be will likely try to ban us and they'll probably try and ban a couple of those smaller parties on the right, maybe even arrest Maxime Bernier or Derek Sloan again.
But we will be out there, our rebel reporters, like always.
We're going to put our reporters on planes and trains and automobiles to cover the election across this country.
We're not just going to sit here in our offices.
We're going to be out there.
Trudeau's bodyguards have shown us their approach.
Aaron O'Toole's staff called the police on David Menzies just a couple of weeks ago for asking questions they didn't like.
So I'm sure we'll get the brunt of it, but we have to do it.
Imagine for a moment an election where the only point of view was from CBC state broadcasters or the bailout newspapers.
I can't imagine what a fake news campaign like that would be like.
That's what I think the next two months are going to be like.
China's Taiwan Gambit00:13:11
And I won't lie.
I think Trudeau's going to win.
And I think Canada's descent into authoritarianism will continue.
Trudeau has always told us he admires communist regimes like China and Cuba.
He wants to be leader for life, like they have in those countries too.
I'm here to tell you we're going to do our best to document what the rest of the media party wants and where we can to help fight for freedom.
Well, it's coming up on 1,000 days since China, I think the phrase that would fit is kidnapped two Canadian nationals, Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig.
It was a clear tit-for-tat of Canada arresting the CFO and daughter of the founder of Huawei, Meng Wanzou, and holding her in Vancouver for extradition to the United States.
There's another Canadian in jail in China.
His name is Robert Schellenberg.
He's charged with drug trafficking.
He denies it, says he's neither a drug user nor a drug trafficker.
He was convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
And then the Chinese state decided to change his sentence to a death penalty.
He lost the appeal in the last 24 hours in China.
There is an ultimate appeal to the Supreme People's Court, but unlike Canada or other countries with the rule of law, the courts in China are really expressions of the will of the Chinese Communist Party.
There is no independent judiciary.
So why is China making these moves right now?
It's not just Robert Schellenberg whose death penalty was upheld, but Michael Spavor's case is expected to be dealt with in the next few days.
Is this China trying to influence the Canadian election, which is set to be called any day?
Joining us now to talk about this is our friend Gordon G. Cheng, a China expert who is actually in Canada today.
What a pleasure to have you north of the border, Gordon.
Welcome back.
And before I ask you a question, I want to make sure everyone's following.
You got to follow Gordon on Twitter at Gordon G. Chang.
Great to see you, my friend.
What do you make of the latest moves out of China?
Well, first of all, it's great to be in Canada.
So thank you, Ezra.
This really is perplexing because, as you point out, it comes on the eve of a call for election.
And you would think that China would realize that this could only help the Conservatives.
But nonetheless, you know, Chinese diplomats, Chinese strategists, they're not stupid.
So they must have some reason.
I just can't figure it out.
Because, of course, yes, they're trying to intimidate the Canadian political establishment, but they've already accomplished that.
So the question is, what more can they gain by announcing the confirmation of the death sentence?
Yeah, it's very unusual.
I noticed that this time, Dominique Barton, Canada's ambassador to China, was on the scene and he was speaking in diplomatic terms, but he made it clear that he disagreed with the Chinese government.
I note this because the last time that these Canadians were on trial, I'm going to call it a show trial, Dominique Barton was not there.
He sent some lower-level diplomat, which I found confusing and disappointing.
So I don't know what to read into that, but I would think that China wants to define an issue in the Canadian election.
I just, I don't, you raise a good question.
How do they think it'll break?
I don't know.
But it's clear they want to meddle a little bit in what Canada is about to decide over here.
I think that's what they want.
Well, they certainly want to do that, Ezra, but the timing is perplexing.
You know, I'm certainly not an expert on Canadian politics, but my friends tell me that Trudeau could actually win an absolute majority if the election were held.
If that's the case, then Trudeau would be free to implement his pro-China policies.
And one of them would be just bring Meng Mengzhou.
But something like this, it would seem to me, highlights the failure of Trudeau's approach to China.
So it might not change the election results, but it's certainly not going to help the incumbent prime minister, a friend of Beijing.
So this has all the hallmarks of another Chinese mistake.
But, you know, this is one of those things where China must have some reason for doing this.
It's just that we can't figure it out.
Yeah, I mean, one of the things that puzzles me is, are China's decision makers receiving unvarnished news, even news they don't like?
Or is there a culture of fear and compliance?
No one wants to tell them the truth.
So perhaps diplomats or other sources of intel shade their information color it a little bit to please their masters.
What I mean by that is I think that Canadian public opinion has hardened against China in the last two and a half years.
We see that in poll after poll.
Canadians are becoming more and more skeptical.
And I have to give credit.
I often criticize the Globe and Mail, but they've actually been outstanding in their coverage of this issue and other Chinese issues.
I really admire the work, especially by Steve Chase.
So I think that maybe there's a chance that Chinese diplomats are reporting back to Beijing and saying, oh, boss, it's going really well.
We've left them on the knees now.
Because I remember there's a news story a little while back, Gordon, that China was actually getting ready to send a big jet to Vancouver, expecting Meng Wanzou to be released.
They had this whole plan for a wonderful return home triumphant.
And I think they were stunned that the Canadian court said, no, she has to continue the legal process.
So they've been wrong before, whether that was self-delusion or just trying to say the right things back home.
I think that's a risk when you have a dictatorship, isn't it?
Well, it is.
And you point to something which is really important, and that is, especially over the last couple of years, we have seen Chinese diplomats engage in tactics that actually alienate target countries.
And they've been doing this more and more.
And China, the Watchers, actually speculate what you said, and that is that they cannot report what they see on the ground to their superiors in Beijing because that would be considered to be politically unacceptable.
It would undercut what Xi Jinping, the Chinese ruler, is trying to accomplish and the approach that he's taken.
So they can't do that.
Now, we have witnessed a number of cases of that in other countries.
So we shouldn't be surprised that they're also making the same mistakes in Canada.
So I think you're absolutely right about what's happening inside at this particular time, because at least from the outside, that is what is appearing to happen.
Hey, let me ask you a question about something we used to track fairly closely, but I think it fell off the front pages, and I don't know why that is.
Maybe it's just pandemic coverage has taken up all the space.
But whether or not Huawei and other Chinese associated companies would be allowed to build the 5G internet backbone, really, of Western countries.
And we've seen some countries debate this, some literally pay to rip out their Huawei hardware.
Has there been any movement on this file in other countries?
I know the UK had some debates on it, and Australia seemed to be going pretty hardline against it, but New Zealand, maybe not yet.
Do you have any news?
Because I haven't seen a lot of news on this issue, probably in six months.
Yeah, there hasn't been much news, and it's a really important issue.
And generally speaking, and you look at the Five Eyes Consortium, that's the intelligence sharing consortium among Western democracies.
Canada is really the only country that has yet to make a decision.
All the other countries have, to varying degrees, decided to rip out and replace their Huawei equipment or not buy Huawei 5G networking gear.
Canada is the only one that has not.
And, you know, Beijing is obviously looking to the upcoming election because if Trudeau does get what he wants, which is his outright majority, then clearly he's going to go with Huawei.
At least that's the way it appears to me.
Now, one of the things that could happen is that Trudeau's minority partners actually score bigger.
And if that's the case, then Trudeau would not be in a position to do what he wants to help his friends in Beijing.
But this is something that the Canadian public, I hope, puts the pressure on their prime minister, regardless of how they vote in the upcoming election, because this is critical.
If Canada goes with 5G from Huawei, then I don't know how it remains part of the five Eyes.
Yeah, wow.
Let me ask you just for a quick update on a few different things.
Taiwan is always in the news, and Japan has spoken about how defending Taiwan in an interesting way, because Japan really has an inward-looking foreign policy and military policy dating back to the Second World War.
Can you give us any tidbits on Japan or Taiwan or the recent Olympics and how Taiwan won a medal and China itself claimed it?
Give us a little bit of an update because I know you follow so many, there's so many parts to the China story these days.
Maybe give our viewers a bit of an update on a few things that you think have been interesting since the last time we spoke.
Yeah, I think the most important Japan development is that the defense minister actually came out and said that if there were to be an invasion of Taiwan by China, Japan would have to get involved.
And that triggered a threat, not from Beijing officially, but obviously from the Chinese regime, that they would actually use nuclear weapons against Japan in that circumstance.
That obviously would be a violation of their no-first use policy that China has roundly and loudly declared.
But clearly, Japan is standing with Taiwan, and that's great news because that gives encouragement to others in the region to do the same thing.
This really is, I think, the result of that summit meeting in Washington between Prime Minister Suga and President Biden.
And I think that, you know, at the time, many people, including me, were disappointed with the official pronouncements on Japan and Taiwan that followed that.
But since that, there's been a number of developments in Tokyo showing that Japan is really becoming stalwart in the defense of Taiwan.
Well, you know, that's the best news I've heard all day because I know that you and I have been nervous a little bit about Joe Biden on China.
But if you're saying that the meeting between the Prime Minister of Japan and Joe Biden may have been a source of confidence or direction for Japan to speak up, I find that, I mean, these days, you got to find hope where you can.
And that's a little bit of hopeful news there.
I'm really glad to hear that.
Any last thoughts about Taiwan itself?
I saw that China was claiming one of their Olympic medals for their own, and that's just some shenanigans.
But how is Taiwan?
I know sometimes that there's a politics in Taiwan that says, well, can't we just make up with China?
Let's not fight.
Let's get rich with China.
Are the reunifiers sort of in retreat because people realize the danger?
They watch Hong Kong.
They see the new laws coming down in Hong Kong and they say, yikes, that's the future for us.
What's the read on Taiwan these days?
Yeah, the people who want unification with China are actually louder than they've been, just generally, but they don't seem to have that much influence.
So they're not resonating with people in Taiwan.
And largely, it's because people in Taiwan, regardless of how they feel about China, believe that they're Taiwanese, not Chinese.
And the most recent self-identification surveys confirm the trend towards Taiwan identity.
So I think Taiwan is safe.
One of the interesting things, of course, is that China actually believed it would have the greatest number of gold medals in the recently completed Tokyo Olympics.
And then the last day, the U.S. pulled ahead.
And so what China did in response was to aggregate the gold medals from Taiwan and Hong Kong to show that China actually had more.
This was just sort of hilarious, but it shows you to the extent that Beijing really is looking at the Olympics as a source of legitimacy for the regime.
China's Olympic Misstep00:02:50
Yeah, and of course, they've got the Olympics coming up in a couple of years.
Gordon, great to see you again.
Once again, folks, please join me in following Gordon on Twitter.
He's my number one source of China news at Gordon G. Cheng.
Take care, my friend, and enjoy the rest of your time in Canada.
Thank you so much, Ezra.
It's just really, really good to be up here.
Right on.
Well, I'm glad you think that because we have our challenges, as you know.
But thanks for giving us your insight into things.
Take care, my friend.
Thanks, Ezra.
ahead.
On my show last night, Smith writes, typical example of rules for thee and not for me.
Now you're talking about Obama's party.
But really, it's the same for all of them.
I don't know if you saw, but Catherine McKenna, who's flamed out as a cabinet minister and not running again, she loves to tweet about herself, lots of photos about herself.
So she tweeted that she was going to Nunavut, the Northern Territory, on the government time for a little vacation to swim in the Arctic.
But all her photos when she landed was her without a mask.
But I checked, and the rules in Nunavut say if you go into that territory for two weeks, you have to have sort of a semi-quarantine.
You have to wear masks and socially distance.
She landed, immediately started politicking no mask.
It's a small thing, but if that were anyone else, they'd be getting thousands of dollars of tickets, maybe tens of thousands of dollars of tickets.
And she, and the rest of the liberals screech at anyone who doesn't want to stay in a COVID jail hotel.
Then again, Trudeau himself went to the G7 summit, G7 summit in the UK.
No masks, lots of personal contacts, super spreader event.
Look, they simply don't believe it's a danger.
Just like they don't believe global warming's a danger.
Same Catherine McKenna jetted to the far north.
That's a very long journey.
So when she says no using fossil fuels, she just means for you not to use it.
Jose writes, CNN qualified half of the United States who do not want to comply with mask mandates as irresponsible.
And the problem, but Obama's as classy.
Yeah, I mean, like I say, a lot of this is classist.
I mean, I'm not a Marxist, but I can't help but see there's a lockdown class, typically well-to-do people who are loving this lockdown, making more, the same or more money for the same or less work.
And then there's just working people, whether you're a waiter or a waitress or someone who's hassled by the rules police.
It's a clear class divide.
I wouldn't even call it right-wing or left-wing.
It's just people in power letting you know that they're powerful and exempt than the rest of us.