Ezra Levant critiques Canada’s COVID policies—mask mandates, ICU bed cuts, and vaccine passports—calling them scientifically dubious and politically coercive, like B.C.’s Bonnie Henry and Alberta’s Tyler Chandrow’s restrictions. He contrasts this with Florida’s Ron DeSantis while questioning civil liberties under Trudeau, citing blackface controversies and the Rose Knight case. Levant highlights Rebel News’ legal battles—$200K+ in fines—and plans to hire 10 full-time lawyers via crowdfunding to fight vaccine discrimination, housing bans, and medical procedure denials. Meanwhile, his charity restores churches like Regina’s, proving grassroots support thrives where government fails, underscoring a broader clash between top-down control and individual freedoms. [Automatically generated summary]
A man should bottle his feelings up and never talk about them.
I know that.
But I'm going to break that rule just for today, so you'll hear some feelings.
I'm sorry.
Let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
Just go to RebelNewsPlus.com.
You get the video version of this podcast.
And as well, podcasts by Sheila Gunread and David Menzies.
I do a video show every day, and my friends do one every week, Andrew Chapato's too.
Normally, it's eight bucks a month, but for the election, it's free.
Just go to RebelNewsPlus.com and type in election as your promo code, and you get it for free.
I'm hoping you'll like it enough that you'll keep subscribing once the election's over.
All right, here's my show about feelings.
Tonight, I'm going to share my feelings with you.
No, please don't turn the channel.
It's September 3rd, 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 is government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Let me tell you a little bit about men talking about their feelings.
It's a bad idea.
Always has been.
And men go to great lengths to avoid talking about their feelings.
Just ask a man.
I don't mean a male feminist like Justin Trudeau or Gian Gameshi.
They pretend to talk about feelings as a trick or a trap to seduce women.
I mean real men don't talk about their feelings.
Here's a scene from the great movie, Movie Should Have Won an Oscar, called Talladega Nights, The Legend of Ricky Bobby.
Look, I know it's a comedy, and I know the feelings banter here is a joke, but it's funny precisely because it's true.
Hey, Cal.
I'm sorry about wrecking you today.
I mean, but that's for the team.
No, that's cool.
That's cool, Ricky.
That's cool.
You know, I was thinking, though, one time, it would be really awesome if, like, you could slingshot me in for a win.
Yeah, but, okay, but if you won, how am I going to win?
Yeah, think about it.
No, I was thinking about it.
I mean, it's not like you're finishing 18th.
Nothing wrong with silver.
Nothing wrong with silver.
I'm just kidding you, man.
I don't want to win.
I just bury it down inside.
Bury it deep down in there.
And never bring it up again.
It's painful, and I love you.
Bury it deep down inside.
Here's a serious man, Blake Masters.
He's actually a high-tech executive.
He's now running for the Senate in Arizona, apropos of nothing.
Just some comment about guys liking things.
He tweeted this out the other day about how men love to solve problems and talk about things more than talk about people.
And this made me chuckle.
He said, men will literally build functioning infrastructure instead of going to therapy.
I think a lot of feelings are sublimated into building towers or bridges.
I think the skyscraper race in New York City in the 30s was the focusing and sublimation of feelings.
It was how men were men back then.
Men will literally get into a sailing ship and cross the ocean in the Middle Ages to avoid an embarrassment.
Get this story about a man who accidentally farted in front of Queen Elizabeth I when he bent over.
Let me read from this historical memo.
John Aubrey, the diarist, tells a story about the Earl of Oxford.
When the Earl made a low obeisance to the Queen, he happened to let go a fart, at which he was so ashamed that he left the country for seven years.
At his return, the queen welcomed him and said, my lord, I had forgot the fart.
Well, obviously she hadn't.
But imagine leaving the country for seven years rather than to talk about something embarrassing.
I don't know.
Men are supposed to do things, not talk about things, certainly not talk about their feelings.
But I have had a lot of feelings about the pandemic, not just thoughts and words.
I think we've done action too, by the way.
We've helped more than 2,000 people through our Fight the Finds civil liberties project.
We just set up our vaccine consultations hotline where we're making lawyers available to ordinary people for free to get a half-hour consultation about forced vaccines.
And our big new project is fightvaccinepassports.com, where we're going to file 20 strategic lawsuits against vaccine passports.
We have signed up about half a dozen clients already for that, and we'll be telling their stories in the weeks ahead.
I'm so proud of our Rebel News viewers.
I'm so thankful, who have chipped in more than $630,000 so far towards our goal of a million dollars.
You might have seen an email from me yesterday.
We're actually looking to hire 10 lawyers for battles to come, in-house lawyers working full-time on this.
Now, I know you're probably thinking, okay, that's litigation, that's lawyering, how's that really action?
Well, you're right.
I mean, it's a kind of action, I suppose.
We do journalism too, telling the other side of the story, which I think is important.
But look, the real change has to come from the government in the government politically.
I fear that no governing political party in this country, no official opposition in this country, is standing for liberty.
I like the People's Party and Maxime Bernier, and they're climbing the polls so much so that pollsters are no longer snidely referring to them just as other, but now by name.
But even the most robust polls show the PPC at around 6 or 7% nationally.
I saw one poll in Alberta that put them at 16%.
That's impressive.
But in our first past-the-post system, you can come in second place in 100 ridings.
You still won't get a single seat in Parliament.
We'll talk a bit more later today about Jason Kenney's latest move to reinstate mask laws and to shut down bars at 10 p.m. as if scapegoating blue-collar workers is anyway related to the virus.
So yeah, I don't have high hopes.
Our political class has failed us.
And if you saw my interview yesterday with Professor Bruce Party, you'll know my views and his about failures in every part of the establishment, like a net where every knot is broken.
I think that's why people are so upset, so desperate.
Look at the word desperate.
It comes from despair.
It's the opposite of hope, really.
Aspire, espoire in French, same root.
It's the saddest word in the dictionary, to give up hope, to give in to despair.
That's where we are.
Pandemic Propaganda00:10:48
But that's a feeling, not just a thought, and that's why I wanted to make fun of men sharing their feelings a bit.
What do we do with our feelings?
We hide them in our muscles.
And how do we hide our feelings better?
We get bigger muscles.
We get bigger muscles.
But I don't just have thoughts and plans and words.
I have feelings too.
And I want to tell you about them.
But please don't make too much fun of me.
18 months ago, I had a bit of fear in me.
I didn't know how bad the virus was, and I had seen plenty of terrifying videos from China, some of which are now obvious to me that they were propaganda.
This man simply collapsing and falling down is obviously a hoax.
Coronavirus doesn't do that.
This was propaganda too.
This makes no medical sense.
It looks like stormtroopers are spraying the air above a road.
That's just not sensible.
That's not public health even in China.
That was propaganda to make us afraid.
And we all were afraid in those early weeks.
At least I was.
But two weeks to flatten the curve didn't turn into a crisis.
The mighty U.S. Navy hospital ships that Donald Trump deployed in New York and LA were never used.
And we now know that the early reports of mass deaths were caused by human decisions, including euthanasia.
Quebec's inquiry into the matter shows that doctors and nurses euthanized COVID patients, just deciding to kill them with morphine, not help them.
That's why Quebec has half of Canada's COVID deaths, despite having just a quarter of the population.
That's why so few people actually know anyone who died from COVID.
And by know someone, I use Scott Adams' definition of have you personally talked to that person in the past five years.
So unless you knew a lot of 85-year-old Quebec nursing home victims, I'm guessing you probably don't know someone who actually has died from this pandemic.
By the way, they did the same thing in New York State, too.
So our fear and confusion in those early days and weeks gave way within for sure a couple months because we knew the contours of the disease much better.
It was a disease we learned of the old, to be sure, but mainly of the old and already sick and, to be honest, of the fat.
And things were subsiding a bit in the summer as coronaviruses do, as flus do, until suddenly the fear machine revved up at the end of August last year, about a year ago exactly.
All at once, in unison, every province and city, it was like an orchestra.
Within weeks, every province and city had their mask laws out of nowhere.
There were no mask laws for the first six months.
In fact, the opposite.
Here's Teresa Tam saying, don't wear a mask.
So our advice right now is there is no need to use a mask for well people.
Then suddenly every place made masks the rule all at once.
Why?
Conformity.
You could feel it, if that's a feeling.
I could sense that people wore the masks as a sense of tribe.
Whose team were you on?
Back then, Trump was still president.
If you hated Trump, you were a masker.
If you hated Trump, you mocked his simpler suggestions for remedies like hydroxychloroquine.
And at this point, a sour feeling came out.
Whatever solidarity there had been in the first month, whatever relief there was in the months that followed when the virus subsided that we were going to get through it, it was replaced by this political and personal division.
That's when we started seeing the scapegoating.
That's when people took it upon themselves to be mask bullies and mask police.
And as I've said before, none of them ever used the language of someone genuinely scared of getting sick.
No one ever said that.
It was all about compliance and obedience and submission.
Not a single mask scold that I have seen, and I think I've seen 50 videos.
Not a single mask cold says, put your mask on, you'll get sick, or put your mask on, you'll make me sick.
None of them, because that's not why people felt the need to rage.
It was about compliance.
It was about signaling what team you were on.
If you were part of the faceless blob strength in numbers, solidarity, or if you were part of the dissident individualists.
And that division, that us versus them pitting us against each other, that was so key to rewire our society, to prepare the way for vaccine laws, to make us practice separating from our friends and neighbors and even our family, to practice not going to church anymore, to funerals or weddings anymore.
It prepped us.
It prepped us to distance from each other, to even hate each other, to hate outliers, to hate independent people who didn't want to submit, to blame them as dirty, almost like animals, almost subhuman.
This was the front page of the Toronto Star last week, a collage of hatred against those who aren't vaxxed, implying they ought to be left to die, really.
It's just so gross.
I see a shocking story today about a woman who needs life-saving surgery in Alberta, nothing to do with the virus.
But her doctor told her there would be no surgery if she didn't get the vaccine.
It was held over her.
Get the jab or you will be left to die.
A few months ago, Trudeau said we would never get this way.
I think we are very aware of the fact that these new variants, in particular the Delta variant, are very concerning.
We see this.
We've seen surges of COVID in several European countries related to the Delta variant, even if they already had high rates of vaccination.
That is why we're continuing to keep the message that in order to come back to a more normal way of living in Canada, everybody should get vaccinated.
We see every day hundreds of thousands of people being vaccinated.
Vaccination is moving forward quite quickly.
lead the planet in terms of first- and second-dose vaccines.
We do hope not to have to make it this vaccination compulsory because we see to what extent Canadians, once given the proper information and the encouragement of doctors, their peers, and other community leaders, are stepping up and getting vaccinated.
So we will continue to encourage and find ways of enticing Canadians to get vaccinated because, yes, even if we have now reached 80% of eligible Canadians having the first dose and 50% for two doses, we still have a lot of work to do to get to a situation in the fall where we can have a more normal situation, a more safe situation for all.
I don't know if he believed that.
I don't know if he believes anything, but obviously you can't count on him.
Doug Ford said the same.
Well, I've never believed in proof.
Everyone gets their proof when they get the vaccination.
You're right.
Anything can be fraudulent, right down from money to certifications.
I just, no, we aren't doing it.
Simple as that.
And we're just going to move forward now if Kiwi and Egg both have become absolute forced vaccine bullies.
Trudeau couldn't be clear about us versus them, saying they and those people threaten his life and that of his kid.
So the folks out there tonight shouting, the anti-vaxxers, they're wrong.
They are wrong about how we get through this pandemic.
And more than just being wrong, because everyone's entitled to their opinions, they are putting at risk their own kids and they're putting at risk our kids as well.
That's why we've been unequivocal.
If you want to get on a plane or a train in the coming months, you're going to have to be fully vaccinated so families with their kids don't have to worry that someone is going to put them in danger in the seat next to them or across the aisle.
And we know that the way to get through this as well is to make sure that people can go into non-essential businesses and feel safe that they're not going to get catch COVID from someone next to them.
And that means we're going to work with provinces and territories who want to move forward on vaccination certifications, on vaccination passports, so that everyone can be safe.
And what's more, the federal government has announced we're going to pay for the development of those privileges that you get once you get vaccinated because everyone needs to get vaccinated and those people are putting us all at risk.
And Aaron O'Toole is siding with them instead of with Canadians who did their part and stepped up.
He's talking about personal choice.
What about my choice to keep my kids safe?
What about our choices to make sure we're getting through this pandemic as quickly as we can?
Those people, those people.
You mean Canadians?
Is that who you're talking about?
Millions of Canadians, maybe 10 million Canadians.
Bonnie Henry, the BC public health tyrant, never elected in her life, but loving every minute of her celebrity.
She wrote a loving book about herself.
She's living her best life.
She's not done yet on the stage.
She announced a doctor.
She announced that she will ban non-vax people from all walks of life in BC, even if they're medically unable to take the vaccine because they might die from the vaccine, for example, in an allergic reaction.
And I was also asking about, I'm just curious about exemptions.
I haven't had a whole chance to look at all the details here, but if someone cannot be immunized, is there an exemption?
If someone does not want to use the vaccine due to religious reasons, is there an exemption?
And will there be exemptions for people traveling from outside of the province into British Columbia?
Or how do they follow the same guidelines as British Columbians?
Yeah, so the short answer is no.
This is a temporary measure that's getting us through a risky period where we know that people who are unvaccinated are at greater risk of both contracting and spreading this virus.
So if there are those rare people who have a medical reason why they can't be immunized, these are discretionary events that we're talking about.
So they will not be able to attend those events.
By the way, hundreds of Canadians have died from the vaccines.
I bet you didn't know that.
In Ontario alone, more than 100 young people have been rushed to hospital for heart problems from the vaccines.
Imagine saying to them, you need to take your second dose, even though you might die from it, or you will be banned from school and work and gyms and public meetings and weddings.
That's what BC's saying.
Imagine calling yourself a doctor and saying that to millions of Canadians.
Protecting Rights in a Divided Canada00:05:55
But I can see why.
I'm not dumb.
A poll by Leger shows that this is a very popular position for politicians to take.
I mean, demonize people for 18 months, us versus them, compliance, fear, the other, those people.
You can identify them because they're not wearing a mask.
They're not flying the flag of obedience, which is what the mask is.
And if they think they can hide it amongst us, we'll give them a passport they must show to merely travel in their own country, merely travel on their own street.
So 18 months of prepping people to hate and fear and marginalize and judge and scold.
And it's liberals and conservatives, both.
It's every party doing this.
And here we are.
A majority love the new tyranny.
That's what Leger says, to strip citizenship rights from citizens.
You know, Omar Cotter, the al-Qaeda terrorist, he's allowed to fly on planes.
You know that.
I know that because I saw him on my flight last year.
I saw him with my eyes.
He will be allowed to fly on planes, but I will not in my own country.
So here's my feelings part.
I said I'd tell you my feelings.
I should just do some exercise instead or maybe, I don't know, mow the lawn.
What do we do with our feelings?
We hide them in our muscles.
And how do we hide our feelings better?
We get bigger muscles.
We get bigger muscles.
Yeah, I should do what those guys are doing.
But here's my feelings.
You know how Trudeau lies about who he is?
How he says he's an anti-racist, but we discovered he actually dresses up in racist blackface so many times he lost count.
You know how he says he's a feminist, but he actually admits he sexually assaulted Rose Knight in Creston, B.C.
This lesson that we are learning in, and I'll be blunt about it, often a man experiences an interaction as being benign or not inappropriate, and a woman, particularly in a professional context, can experience it differently, and we have to respect that.
And you know how the entire establishment in Canada pretends to be against bullying and to care about your mental health?
Bill, let's talk.
You know, that whole propaganda month or whatever it's called?
When people say, be kind.
And you know how the left says they care about minorities and civil rights and protecting marginalized people?
You know how Trudeau and the entire establishment say, they're pro-choice.
Keep your laws off my body.
I'm starting to feel that might not be true.
That like Trudeau himself, maybe Canadians have been faking it, have been lying about who they are.
Maybe Canadians don't actually believe in pro-choice, keep your laws off my body.
Maybe they don't actually believe in protecting minorities or people with medical or religious or conscientious differences.
Maybe Canadians don't actually believe in anti-bullying.
Sort of looks like Canadians love bullying.
We've all seen the videos.
Canadians love it.
It makes them feel righteous and superior and safe and on side with authority to pick on other people.
Maybe that means they'll be picked on last if they do the picking on.
That's what I'm feeling.
I'm feeling a sense of sorrow and loss.
I've told you before about my feelings about police.
How for the first, oh, I don't know, 45, 47 years of my life, I was pro-police.
But for the last 18 months, I've seen police abuse peaceful protesters and even rough up our own rebel journalists, even arresting them.
And I'm very sad to say I cannot truly call myself a police booster right now.
I have to work hard to remember that not all police are bullies.
Some police are indeed very good guys.
Well, that was just police, and now here I am at the age of 49.
I have a sense of loss, a sentimental question, a nostalgic question.
Were Canadians all these years, were my friends and neighbors, was the towns and cities in which I lived, were they really who I thought they were?
Was Canada really the place I thought it was?
Did we really care about protecting people?
Did we really care about the civil liberties and Charter of Rights?
Did we really care about letting people do their own thing, about having privacy and choice?
Are we really a place that will set up a very real system, a legal system of apartness, a vaccine apartness?
You know how you say apartness in Afrikaans?
They pronounce it apartheid.
But not based on race, although a disproportionate number of the non-vax people in Canada are minorities, by the way.
Now, I still have some hope.
I have to.
I'm not completely despairing.
I think I'm built to have a little bit of hope.
I feel in my heart that if we had a leader anywhere who was willing to fight back and make the case for freedom and privacy and limited government and for defrocking these fraudulent priests of the new biomedical security state, I feel like if someone stepped forward and showed leadership, they would have followers soon, as Ron DeSantis showed in Florida.
When he started, it was not easy.
The first two weeks he took a lot of flack, and then people got behind him, and now he's winning.
I don't mean a nobody.
It has to be someone in a position of authority, someone in the establishment already to make a difference.
A judge, a premier, an opposition leader, someone in a high station in life, but I see no one there, just no one.
And that is me talking about my feelings.
That is why I am sad.
But it's not a trifling sadness about some particular event.
It's a deeper sadness that has caused me to look back at my 49 happy years as a Canadian and think, was it real?
Or was it fake?
Stay with us for more.
ICU Bed Reallocation Controversy00:07:51
Thank you, and good morning, everyone.
As Premier noted, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed, and our response to it needs to change as well.
COVID-19 has become essentially a pandemic, as the Premier said, of the unvaccinated.
And that means that the path out is still clear.
But the Delta variant is causing a concerning rise in hospitalizations, and we need to be able to respond to it.
COVID-19 vaccines continue to provide excellent protection, even against Delta.
And I want to thank the 2.6 million Albertans who have chosen to roll up their sleeves.
Now, yesterday, we reached the critical milestone of having 70% of our eligible population here in Alberta fully vaccinated.
So that's 70% of all of us who are 12 and older.
And that's truly an amazing achievement, especially when you consider that we have a much younger population than other provinces do.
The problem is that we still have 30% of the population without full vaccine protection.
And the Delta variant is moving through them faster than previous forms of the virus and faster than we expected, even up to a few weeks ago.
That's Alberta's disgraced health minister, Tyler Chandrow, announcing more restrictions in Alberta.
Not yet a vaccine passport, but you know that's coming.
In fact, just the other day, Ontario Premier Doug Ford claimed that every province in Alberta wanted the feds to bring in a vaccine passport.
Here's Doug Ford saying that.
For the past three months, along with Canada's other premiers, I've called on the federal government to develop a national vaccine passport.
Now, Doug Ford is a notorious liar.
Just weeks ago, he was saying he would never bring in a vaccine passport.
So I don't know how much we can put, how much credit we can give to him when he says that's the case, but it wouldn't surprise me.
I should note, and you can see by the chart on the Alberta government's homepage, the number of ICU beds, intensive care unit beds in the province of Alberta has been shrinking pretty much every day for the last two months from a high of 260 ICU beds just in May to around 200 or below in August.
Why would the health minister in the middle of a so-called emergency?
I mean, he's the one who says it's an emergency, why has he closed more than 20% of all the ICU beds in the province?
I mean, I'm not an expert in health care management, but if we're in an emergency, don't you need ICU beds?
That's pretty basic stuff.
But because, specifically referring to hospitalization and the number of beds taken, that excuse was the reason they are bringing back more restrictions.
I put it to you that a less incompetent health minister who was not closing hospital beds in the middle of the pandemic would not have to punish Albertans joining us now.
Via Skype from Calgary to talk about this is our friend Adam Sos, a reporter in that city.
Great to see you again, Adam.
Thanks for having me.
I have never heard of this shutting down 20% of the province's ICU beds in the middle of a pandemic.
I mean, the billions of dollars that have been thrown around willy-nilly on foolish and useful things, useless things, excuse me.
Surely we can agree that an ICU bed is probably the least dumb way to spend money.
And if you need to build an extra 10, 20, 30, 50 ICU beds to avoid locking down the province, so do it.
I've never heard of a health minister closing ICU beds in the middle of a pandemic.
What gives?
I mean, Tyler Chandrow has not necessarily been making the best choices as of late.
One could somewhat glibly joke that they have reallocated the money towards lotteries and gift cards for those willing to get vaccinated.
The only thing that I can possibly think of is when they scare us with these startling numbers saying ICU beds are at such and such a capacity, reducing the number of ICCU beds certainly helps that narrative.
But this is a nonsensical decision.
This government is spending to excess on ridiculous things, and they're being rightfully criticized, unfortunately.
You should never give NDP supporters a righteous reason to criticize you, but they're being rightfully criticized for closing down these rooms during what they're purporting to be this incredible emergency.
Yeah, I mean, normally I wouldn't believe what the NDP says either, to be honest, but the chart I just showed you came straight from the Alberta government's own COVID website.
So, I mean, if they're confessing it, I think we can take it as the truth.
Very frustrating.
But other than mask restrictions, mask laws, is there anything that's different in Alberta?
Are there any other rules other than forced masking?
Yeah, there are.
So some slightly good stuff, mostly very bad stuff.
On the bad front, there is the absolutely arbitrary closure of alcohol sales at bars at 10 p.m.
As though, I think Sheila joked, the boogeyman COVID monster comes out after 10 o'clock only.
So you're going to see these bars that have been struggling to stay open finally starting to make some money.
They're going to be able to stay open, but they very specifically will not be able to sell alcohol, which is extremely problematic.
We've also seen this $100 gift card for people willing to get vaccinated.
Now, for most folks in Calgary, that probably doesn't make a difference.
But for young, impressionable people, an extra hundred bucks, or for people perhaps in marginalized communities who $100 could really make a difference.
They're clearly targeting people and coercing them in a way through a bribe to get these vaccines.
So that's problematic.
The one place that they have stepped back from is with regards to schools.
They are leaving it to the discretion of schools to make those decisions.
Unfortunately, we have seen schools tend, with the rare exception, to err more on the side of mandatory masking, vaccination for employees, things like that.
You know, I'm just thinking about the decision to ban alcohol at 10 p.m. because at 10.01, that's very, very deadly.
But at 9:59, it's perfectly safe.
I know one place where they don't have any rules banning alcohol, and that's on the patio of the Sky Palace, where Tyler Chandrow and his cronies look down on people like so many ants in an ant farm.
I think it's disgraceful that the province is caving in.
I think the only saving grace is it's not further, but who's kidding whom?
They're going to go.
I mean, I actually do believe Doug Ford when he says all the provinces want in to this vax passport.
I hope Alberta can resist going further down the road.
I hope it can become sort of the Florida of Canada in terms of freedom and allowing business to proceed.
I think the slap at bars is an outrageous attack without any scientific basis.
That's what I think bugs me the most is these are just performance.
It's public health theater.
I know from other jurisdictions that bars being open, that is not a place where these things are being spread.
The food service industry is frankly the industry other than the health industry that's most hygiene oriented.
It's just complete BS.
Last word to you on this subject.
Good News Revealed00:05:26
Then I want to switch and talk to you about some good news.
Actually, let's do that now.
Enough talk about these health fascists.
Let's talk about some good news.
Adam, I want to give you credit.
You know, when arsonists, anti-foot thugs, anti-Christian bigots across this country were torching churches, burning churches, vandalizing churches, most people did nothing.
The media downplayed it.
Justin Trudeau said almost nothing about it other than he found it understandable that it was happening.
The police really did their best to hide it.
It was not called terrorism.
It was not called a hate crime.
It was just accepted.
That was normalized, but not you.
You personally went to the local Indian band at Soutina Nation, as it's called, that abuts the city of Calgary, and you talked to them about their church.
Now, their church had not been torched, but their church was in desperate need of repair.
And so you thought, well, let's pay it forward.
Let's fix it up.
Why don't you tell us about it?
And then we'll play a clip of how it went down.
You know, I mean, it was such an honor, and it just seemed to work out so organically.
It all started.
We were covering the Calgary stampede.
We went to the Elbow River camp, which is where the First Nations communities share their culture.
One of the first people I spoke to, we started talking about residential schools, started talking about the situation with the arsons across the country.
And almost immediately she said, well, my grandpa, with some of the elders, actually built the church at Soutina.
So that is our Catholic church that we own as a First Nation.
And she invited us out to go visit.
So we went out and we spoke with herself, some other members within the community.
They shared the history of the church and how integral it is to their community.
And throughout that conversation, at one point, she said, you know, it would be nice if we could do something.
The church has seen better days.
It would be incredible if we could do something to kind of restore the church to its former glory.
I immediately looked at K2, the videographer, who often comes out with me, and I gave him kind of a nod.
I think he knew what I was thinking immediately.
And I knew that our rebel supporters would be 100% in favor of helping the church and letting people know that places of worship deserve to be respected and honored.
And in no time, we started work on the church.
We finished that work thanks to your incredible generosity.
Less than 24 hours, we raised funds for that church.
The roof went on this week.
They did an incredible job.
We also managed to get a pest control company out there.
They actually had about a $1,400 tab for getting rid of pest control.
And I want to extend a great thanks to Peregrine Pest Control because they actually discounted that entirely.
Zero dollars.
Wow.
There was a window.
Yeah, go ahead.
Go ahead.
Don't keep talking.
Yeah.
And so incredible.
Another Calgary business, actually, there was a window that was broken in a break and enter not long ago.
It wasn't a vandalism.
Someone broke it and slept there and left.
But I called a Calgary Glass Company.
They wanted no credit.
They just wanted to altruistically repair the window.
So they came out and measured it.
It ended up being an older style window.
So they had to custom make it.
They're making that window now.
They're going to replace that also at no charge.
So the church is in much better shape than we found it, certainly.
Well, that's amazing.
All credit to you.
You talked to the chief.
You did everything.
It's sort of like a government negotiation.
I mean, the chief is analogous to a mayor.
You know, that's the political boss.
You made sure you had your quote permits.
You know, you talked to the chief.
You talked to the folks you were there.
You handled it very carefully, which is the right thing to do.
And there's some great footage.
You guys made good use of the drone.
Let's just take a quick look at how that actually went down.
So, Regina, as I mentioned, first of all, thank you so much for welcoming us out here again, for meeting us here.
We set the fundraiser goal to try and replace the roof, and we actually surpassed it in about 18 hours.
So, we are going to go ahead on August 30th and 31st.
We'll be out here replacing that roof because we far surpassed the goal.
Once we get the roof off, if we find any other problems, we're going to be able to take care of that as well.
Then, as we mentioned, we're going to be replacing the back window here.
A company is going to come out later this afternoon and measure it up and get some glass made.
And we just spoke with Steve, who came out and checked out the facility.
And Peregrine Pest Control is going to be taking care of the pest problem out here.
So, we're very happy to be able to help.
You mentioned last time that would mean a great deal to this community to get the church back in working order, but we've been able to do more than we even hoped originally.
What does this mean to you and the community?
Oh, we're so grateful.
You know, we thank God that we've got people like you to come and help us because this is our house of worship, like I said, and we need to try and get it in better shape.
And so we're really grateful.
Well, I tell you, I'm so proud of our rebel viewers for donating to fix up that church.
That's a positive thing to do in reaction to the hate crimes and the arson.
But, Adam, I want to say the lion's share of the credit for actually making it happen goes to you because, I mean, our donors, obviously, they put the dough forward.
But without your careful negotiation, finding the roofer, talking to the chief, making sure, like, there's a lot of, I'm going to say, red tape there that you got through to make it happen.
And you made a lot of people's lives just a little bit better.
Supporting Our Australian Community00:04:09
So, congrats.
Well, and thank you so much, Azra, for allowing us to do this without Rebel, without you saying, yes, go for it in your passionate response.
This would not have happened.
So, I want to extend a thank you to you as well for making this a possibility.
Well, listen, it's, I mean, I did next to nothing myself, but thank you for doing things to our viewers.
And I would like to do more positive things like that.
As some of our viewers know, we have donated over $200,000 Canadian to Christians in the Middle East, especially in the Nineveh Plain of Iraq.
Our friend Sheila Gunreed went there to look at how our money was spent.
You can see that information at savethechristians.com.
So we do like to do some pure charity work that's not political at all.
Although right now, the bulk of our charitable work is political.
It's civil liberties work defending Canadians.
Our work is never done.
The world always needs fixing.
And that is something we do here besides just the business of Rebel News.
We do also do some charity too, actually.
And Adam, thanks for being a part of it.
My pleasure.
Happy to do it.
All right.
There you go.
A happier note to end our Alberta broadcast on today.
Thanks, Adam.
Stay with us.
final thoughts ahead.
What a busy week, one of the busiest weeks of my life.
You know, it's incredible.
Rebel News is at the front line of the issues of the day.
We tell the other side of the story in the pandemic, about the election, about vaccine passports, about the world.
And when I say world, we have a growing team in Australia, and we have a new reporter in the United Kingdom.
I think they're doing great too.
And I want to let you, my mainly Canadian premium show viewers, know that both the UK and Australia pay their way through crowdfunding.
I mean, we would support our talent there anyways, but I want to let you know that Australia is a very passionate part of Rebel News and very active.
And in fact, if you see the news from Australia, you know it's even worse there than it is here.
So we're very busy journalistically, but we're even busier legally, not only on our own fights.
For example, the Election Debates Commission has banned us again, but mainly on fights for other people, working in concert with the Democracy Fund.
The Fight the Funds Project is still going strong.
Now there's going to be a lot more fines again, I think.
But this vaccine passport, forced vaccines, people getting fired over it, people getting banned from living in places.
I even see reports of people losing custody of children over it.
And now we have this case in Alberta of someone being denied life-saving surgery that's got nothing to do with COVID because they're not vaxed.
I think we are in just terrible times.
But however sad I am about that, and forgive me for doing a monologue about my feelings today, I think we have to keep fighting because we have to.
I mean, I think of some of the Jewish proverbs.
One is, it's not up to you to save the world, but neither are you free to do nothing.
I think that's a good one.
Another is, and you've probably heard this one before, if not you, then who?
And if not now, then when?
So these are some of the ideas that guide me as we fight on.
I appreciate your support.
The fact that you're watching this show, although we've made it free to the public during the course of the election campaign, it probably means that you're a supporter of ours, eight bucks a month or more, so thank you for that.
If you want to support any of our legal projects for the civil liberties side of what we do, you know you'll get a charitable tax receipt for that, so hopefully that can make it easier for you to give.
I truly want to hire 10 full-time lawyers to fight these battles, and I know you might be thinking, as we're enough with the lawyers, well, that's the only way I know how to fight, so that's what we're doing.
I feel like this is the darkest time in Canada since the Second World War.
The Darkest Time in Canada00:00:36
And the only reason I would say that was darker is because so many thousands of people died in combat.
But actually, in terms of civil liberties and pitting Canadians against each other, setting aside the death toll of the Second World War, which cannot be set aside.
But if you exclude that part of the calculation, we are in a darker time right now than we were then living in Canada domestically.
That's our show for today and for the week.
Don't let me get you down.
Don't let me get you down because I promise you that we'll continue to fight until the very end.
You know we will.
Until next week, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night.