Ezra Levant exposes Canada’s support for Ukraine’s Azov Battalion, a neo-Nazi group using Black Sun symbols and idolizing Stepan Bandera, while officials like Chrystia Freeland met with them in June 2018 without condemnation. Military training continued despite warnings, yet Trudeau’s government labels domestic dissent—like the Convoy protests—as Nazi-like, invoking the Emergencies Act to suspend civil liberties. Leslie Lewis, a Black conservative MP, defends unvaccinated Canadians and criticizes media hostility, arguing for reinstatement of fired workers and questioning vaccine mandates amid global policy shifts. Levant’s legal pushback against Trudeau’s actions faces likely dismissal, revealing a double standard: demonizing Canadian freedoms while enabling foreign far-right factions. [Automatically generated summary]
Let me start with the guest interview, Leslien Lewis.
She's throwing her hat into the ring for the leadership of the Conservative Party.
I have a good chat with her.
But before that, I have sort of a personal reflection on Ukraine and Nazis and liberals and all sorts of things.
I don't know, maybe it was too personal, too much of an essay rather than a news analysis, but I'll let you judge.
I felt like saying it.
You can let me know what you think afterwards.
If you want to see the video version of it, which I recommend, go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe.
I show a lot of photos and videos.
Photos and videos of the Holocaust, actually, to make a certain point, and photos and videos of the Azov battalion in Ukraine.
What's that?
Well, I'll try and explain it to you.
Go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe, eight bucks a month.
You get the video version of it, which I highly recommend.
All right, here's today's show.
Tonight, why is Canada supporting a Nazi battalion in Ukraine?
It's March 10th, and this is the Ezra Levant 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 to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Family Roots00:14:50
I don't know if you know this, but my family is originally from Ukraine.
My great-grandparents left there in 1903.
They're from Dniepro, which was once called Dniepropetrovsk.
It was under Soviet domination, and now it's Ukrainian, and who knows?
It might wind up Russian again.
I grew up in Alberta, of course, which is a lot of Ukrainian Canadians.
Western Canada was deliberately settled by the Canadian government with an appeal to Eastern Europeans who knew how to farm in those conditions.
It was smart.
There are still some communities in the prairies where German is the first language and Ukrainian too.
They teach Ukrainian in schools in places like Vegreville.
I'm Jewish too, and there were a great number of Jews in Ukraine until the Holocaust.
More than a million Jews were killed there.
Here's a famous photograph, terrible photograph, searing in your memory.
This photograph is being called The Last Jew in Vinnica.
Whereas in Poland, they had concentration camps where they would kill Jews in a mass building.
In Ukraine, it was mobile killing squads called Einsatzgruppen, deployment groups in English, and that's what they did.
Here's a picture of the Einsatzgruppen taking women of the town of Mizacz, if I'm saying that right, out to shoot them all in the forest.
What a horrific time and place.
Obviously, the Holocaust was perpetrated by the German Nazi Party and the SS and the Wehrmacht and led by Adolf Hitler and other German Nazis.
For example, here's Adolf Eichmann, who was in charge of the final solution, as it was called.
But in the countries that Hitler invaded and conquered, there were local politicians and local gangs and local militias and local soldiers that were only too happy to team up with the Nazi invaders.
We know this in other countries, in Western Europe, in Northern Europe.
I don't know if you remember the phrase Quisling, if you ever learned about that.
Vidkun Quisling, he's the guy on the left there.
He was the Norwegian who was happy to collaborate with the Nazi invaders.
He was made the head of the puppet Nazi government in Norway, but he was Norwegian.
The insult calling someone a Quisling isn't widely used anymore, I don't think.
I think people sort of forget what it means and who he was.
But for a generation, Vidkun Quisling's sellout to the Nazis made his name synonymous with disgraceful disloyalty, with being a traitor.
To call someone a Quisling is to be a traitor.
Well, it happened everywhere for ideological reasons or for opportunists just taking an opportunity in the moment.
If you feel hard done by in a certain regime, and then that regime is conquered by an invader, maybe you like it.
Maybe this is your big chance.
Maybe if you collaborate with the invader, you get to be on top now, not on the bottom.
If you enjoy violence, well, it was your moment, wasn't it?
If you had a hatred.
This is an appealing invitation to many young men.
It's how ISIS recruited terrorists to go to Iraq and Syria.
Come and do the violence to the infidels.
Come and have rape slaves.
Come and do everything you've ever wanted to do, not just with impunity, but with encouragement and reward.
And so it was with the local Nazi sympathizers across Europe.
It's just a fact.
It's tough to learn about these things as an adult.
I can tell you it's tough to learn about them as a kid.
I was a child in Jewish school in Calgary.
I learned about the Holocaust as a young boy.
And I even had our teacher and our principal were concentration camp survivors.
This was in the 70s.
Imagine their story.
So you're a six or seven year old and you're learning about the Holocaust.
And it's the first time you hear about places like Poland, where Auschwitz is, and maybe you hear about Ukraine.
I mean, you're just a kid.
What do you know?
You hear about Babi Yar.
That's this ravine where the German Nazis and their local supporters massacred more than 30,000 Jews in just two days in 1941.
You hear these things and they scare you and they color your views on the world.
When I was a child growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, I remember there were many Jews who refused to buy German cars like Mercedes because of the Holocaust.
I think a lot of the Polish jokes that used to be so popular in the 70s and 80s were a kind of revenge by Jewish comedians against the place where so many Jews were killed.
And I say all this because I like Germans and I like Germany.
And although I haven't been to Ukraine, I grew up amongst countless Ukrainian Canadians in Alberta.
How could you not?
And so the bitter history of the Holocaust met the reality of life two generations later.
We were all friends now here in Canada.
And though I believe in remembering the past and learning from it, we cannot engage in collective guilt.
I believe that there were Nazis in Germany and Nazis throughout the world who collaborated with the Germans.
But I also know that there were many righteous Gentiles who saved Jews, like Oskar Schindler, after whom the famous movie was made, like the family that hid Anne Frank.
The world is complicated, but we live in 2022, not 1942.
We must try to love each other now, and we can all agree that Nazism is evil.
My real worry, to tell you the truth, is that nobody even knows what a Nazi is, what the Holocaust was.
Nazi is just some insult that Trudeau uses against truckers, right?
Nazi is just what you're called after they call you racist, sexist, anti-gay, transphobic.
It's just, they throw that in too, don't they?
I mean, seriously, if we sent reporters out to the center of the city and asked random people on the street, hey, excuse me, can I start for a second?
Who won?
Let's just ask who fought the Second World War.
Do you think a random person on the street would know?
If you ask them who won, do you think they would know?
I'm not saying that you and I are smarter than anyone.
I'm saying that things fade over time.
People are interested in their own lives, their own times, new immigrants to Canada from non-traditional sources of immigration like Africa or Asia.
They don't know the history of the European Holocaust.
I doubt they studied the Holocaust in school.
They don't really study anything in school.
So it's all sort of fading away.
I'm conservative.
You might call me right-wing, though.
That doesn't really mean a lot these days.
And I've traveled widely in Canada, at least until they put unvaccinated people on a no-fly list.
It was brought in by Trudeau, who implied unvaccinated people are tantamount to Nazis.
Anyway, there won't be a no-fly list over, no-fly zone over Ukraine, but there really is a, you know, Trudeau bravely imposes a no-fly list over Canada.
I've traveled before the ban on flying.
I've traveled to nine provinces and to two territories, and I have met a lot of people in my life.
And I run in populist conservative circles, and I talk to a lot of people online also.
And I have to tell you that in my 50 years, I have never met a Nazi in Canada.
Just never.
Never seen a real Nazi.
Not once, ever.
It's not in our national history.
It's not part of our culture.
It's just not real here.
Oh, there are a few pretenders, people who play dress up, people who get a tattoo, or people who hide in their basements, taking pictures of themselves on the cell phone, saying, Heil Hitler.
There are LARPers, live-action role players, or people playing dress up.
They do it for the shock and awe as rebellion against society, against their parents, against the world, because they're frustrated by things, or simply because they know it's a bad thing, and they want to show that they will do bad things.
I told you I went to Jewish school as a young kid, but I also went to school in the country, West of Calgary, countryside.
And obviously my sister and I were the only Jews in the whole school.
And it was there that I first encountered a kid drawing a swastika on a desk.
Now, I was shocked.
I was hurt.
I mean, here was the symbol that I had been taught was a symbol, a sign of violent death to the Jews.
But the kid who was scrawling the swastika, I remember his name, I'm not going to say it.
When I challenged him, he literally didn't know what it was.
He had no clue what he was drawing.
He didn't know what it was called.
He didn't know what it meant.
He just saw it and knew it was a very bad thing to do.
And that is why he drew it.
It would be like drawing a naked lady or a swear word.
That's what he did.
And I tell you that shocking but harmless encounter as a child, that was the most anti-Semitic Nazi thing I've ever seen in my entire life in Canada.
A kid who didn't even know what he was saying.
Canada is not racist.
Ukrainians and Germans are not racist.
They're not Nazis.
In fact, they're quite liberal and tolerant in many ways.
In fact, I think sometimes, and I've been to Germany a few times, I think Germans in particular are still reacting to and apologizing for and trying to counterbalance their past.
And in some ways, they're punishing themselves for what their grandparents did.
I think they're too liberal now, as if it'll balance things out.
All right, 10 minutes of my personal stories.
Forgive me.
But I wanted to make it clear to you that I'm sensitive to Nazis and anti-Semitism, and I care about the Holocaust.
And I've visited the Holocaust Museum in Israel and the one in Washington, D.C. several times.
It's on my mind.
It's part of who I am, but it's in the background.
It's not the center of who I am.
And it bothers me deeply when liberals like Justin Trudeau and his deputy Christia Freeland and the rest of the fools in the Liberal Party throw around words like Nazi so cavalierly.
You know, it's as if they're because what they're doing is they're they're taking the chilling, shocking, horrific evil of the Nazis.
Here's another picture of the Einsatzgruppen in Russia.
And they're using it as a talking point, as a little heckle, just a dart, something to fill the daily chatter, something just to zing their opponents with.
They're profaning it, really.
It's like a very sharp knife that has to remain sharp, but you're dealing it with overuse.
No, the truckers are not Nazis.
How much vitriol do we have to see of Hong Kong, which is an acronym for Hail Hitler, do we need to see by these protesters on social media?
That was the worst.
An Israeli Jew in the Liberal Party trotted out to compare horn honking to saying Heil Hitler.
If you've got to engage in those kind of mental gymnastics, sister, to find Nazis where there are none, you live in a pretty safe place.
There are no real Nazis in Canada, which is why demand exceeds supply, which is why hustlers and hucksters and race baiters and the Southern Poverty Law Center and the so-called Canadian Anti-Hate Network work so constantly to promote hate hoaxes.
There just aren't enough real incidents of hate in Canada.
The Canadian Anti-Hate Network, it's an Orwellian name, they're actually paid more than a quarter million dollars by Trudeau to dig up hate and then make public complaints about it, to gin it up.
They'll call anyone a Nazi.
They're getting paid to do so.
So here I'm now, I've just taken up all your time and I have not yet told you what I want to tell you.
I want to tell you about real Nazis in Canada.
I don't think there are any because I haven't met any.
Certainly not amongst the Conservative Party or the People's Party or the Truckers.
But there have been a few.
I haven't met every Canadian.
There have been a few actual Nazis who sneaked in.
One of them was named Michael Chomiak.
He was one of those local collaborators with the Nazis I told you about when the Nazis would conquer a country.
He was one of the locals.
He ran a pro-Nazi newspaper, and he just happens to be Christia Freeland's grandfather, Christia Freeland, the deputy prime minister of Canada.
Now, you cannot blame a grandchild for what her grandfather did before they were even born.
That's not fair.
That's not right.
And that's what I would say to all Germans and all Ukrainians.
But Christia Freeland actively covered up her grandfather's crimes.
She hid them.
She covered for him.
And she's being, well, if not a Nazi, I won't casually call her a Nazi in the same manner that she calls the Truckers Nazis.
She's been awfully sympathetic, shall we say, to Nazi collaborators, past and president.
And I'm not even talking about her grandpa anymore.
Here's a story from our friends at True North showing Christia Freeland holding up the colors of blood and soil, the colors of the Bandera movement, an actual Nazi movement in Ukraine.
Freeland was caught with this scarf, with this banner, and she deleted the tweet, but not before it was captured.
Okay, could happen to anyone, I suppose.
Freeland is pretty deep into Ukrainian nationalism.
Again, no problem.
I believe in nationalism, by the way.
Do you know that she has an apartment in Ukraine?
I didn't know that.
I think that's wonderful.
Nazi Symbols Revealed00:15:35
I wish I had an apartment in other countries to go visit to.
Here's the story where I learned that.
She wrote about it.
She talks about her grandparents and all that she learned from them.
By this point, she was still keeping her grandfather's Nazism a secret.
She actually has the temerity in this essay to claim that her family fled Nazism.
No, sister, your grandpa was a Nazi and you were hiding it.
You were pretending you were anti-Nazi.
Your grandpa was a Nazi.
Okay, fine, fine.
Family is family.
And things in the past are muddy.
We've talked about before how everyone says that they would be the one guy in the crowd not seek hiling Adolf Hitler.
But we know that's not true because we've watched in the past two years how most people have absolutely gone along with everything awful.
Nothing as awful as the Nazi Holocaust.
But brutal treatment of dissidents, of segregation, of dehumanization, of jailing pastors, of telling us who we can meet and can't meet, who can come to our house, who can say what, who can work where, who must be fired, who must submit to the state.
It's not the Nazism of Babi Yar, but it's the Nazism of the Nuremberg laws in 1935.
And it absolutely is.
And what did you get?
What did you do these past two years?
That would be a good approximation of what you might have done had you been around in the 30s in that terrible place and time.
I prefer not to talk about Ukraine and Germany and Poland and Russia during the Holocaust.
Certainly not to my Ukrainian, German, and Polish and Russian friends.
I want to learn from the past, but I don't want to be trapped by it.
And I certainly don't want to be turned hateful because of it.
I don't want to engage in collective guilt because of it.
I love Canadians and I love Alberta, where I grew up, and I'm deeply grateful that I grew up there amongst Ukrainians and Scots and Mormons and the Indian Reserve not far away.
I was lucky to be born in 1972.
I think the people born in 2002, I think I'm luckier than them.
I think that's true.
But let's not talk about history or blame for things in the past or collective guilt.
Let's talk about today, okay?
And I don't even mean Christia Freeland hiding her past or lying about her past or pretending that she was an anti-Nazi.
I mean what she's doing now and what Canada is doing now.
Look at this story from the Ottawa Citizen just a couple months ago from the Ottawa Citizen.
The story is Canadian officials who met with Ukrainian unit linked to neo-Nazis feared exposure by news media documents, say documents.
A year before the meeting, Canada's Joint Task Force Ukraine produced a briefing on the Azov battalion acknowledging its links to Nazi ideology, the Azov Battalion.
So this isn't just Christia Freeland's personal life now.
This is a government policy of the government of Canada.
Did you know the Canadian government was meeting with Nazi paramilitaries, and they knew about it.
It wasn't an accident.
Just like the Nazi militaries who worked with Hitler's Nazis at Babiar.
Let me read a little bit from the story in Ottawa Citizen.
Canadian officials who met with members of the Ukrainian battalion linked to neo-Nazis didn't denounce the unit, but were instead concerned the media might expose details of the get-together, according to newly released documents.
The Canadians met with and were briefed by leaders from the Azov Battalion in June 2018.
The others and diplomats, the officers and diplomats, did not object to the meeting and instead allowed themselves to be photographed with battalion officials, despite previous warnings that the unit saw itself as pro-Nazi.
The Azov battalion then used those photos for its online propaganda, pointing out the Canadian delegation expressed hopes for further fruitful cooperation.
Oh, wow.
But it wasn't just meetings.
It was military training.
Is that another accident also?
Allegations of Canadian troops training neo-Nazis and war criminals sparks military review.
A review into how Canada approves the foreign military personnel it trains should be ready by early next year, but parts of the study will need to remain secret.
The review comes as a Jewish group in Ukraine is highlighting a new video of Ukrainian paratroopers singing a song to honor Stepan Bandera.
Bandera was an anti-Semite and Nazi collaborator whose organization is linked to the murder of more than 100,000 Jews and Poles during the Second World War.
He is revered in Ukrainian nationalist and far-right circles.
The Canadian military was warned in 2015 before starting its Ukraine training mission about the dangers of the far-right within the Ukrainian military ranks, but the senior leadership largely ignored those concerns.
Stepan Bandera.
That's Chrystia Freeland's hero.
That was that banner she was holding.
She was holding that banner, the Bandera banner.
Now, let me be crystal clear.
The Azov Battalion does not represent all of Ukraine or all Ukraine military or all Ukrainians.
And frankly, even if it did, that doesn't excuse Putin's work against Ukraine that is brutal and deadly and invasive and imperialistic and illegal.
Led by Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent who seeks to rebuild the Russian Empire.
But when Putin claims, as he does, that one of his aims is to denazify Ukraine, he is not talking about it like Yaara Sachs, saying Hong Kong is the sign of a Nazi takeover.
He's talking about armed militias, like with tanks and things.
Hong Kong isn't a real thing, but real Nazis with real military gear and real military battalions, that actually is a real thing.
And it looks like the Canadian military was actually training them, possibly supplying them with missiles?
I don't know.
Now, I'm not saying that's justification for an invasion by Putin, although it is very, very odd, isn't it?
I'm just saying it's a real factor.
If you try to Google anything about the subject, you'll note that it's pretty hard to find Putin's actual statements about the Azov battalion.
I checked in Google.
I have to go through page after page.
They will not let you find it easily.
They'll give you 100 links to fact checks or rebuttals to Putin's case, many of which point out the obvious that Ukraine's president is himself Jewish, Volodymyr Zelensky.
So obviously it can't be true that there's Nazis in Ukraine, right?
Well, it is true, even if it is weird.
They don't often use the German Nazi flag.
Why would they?
They're Ukrainian.
They use their own symbol.
Sometimes they use another Nazi symbol called the Black Sun.
Here's Catherine McKenna, the disgraced former Trudeau cabinet minister, giving a shout out to some pretty Ukrainian girls on Women's Day a couple days ago.
When I pointed out on Twitter that the girls in the top right corner were wearing that Nazi symbol, the Black Sun, Catherine McKenna deleted the tweet, just like Christia Freeland deleted the tweet.
It's happening a lot, isn't it?
It's not just the Azov Battalion.
Here's another one.
Don't take it from me.
This is from the BBC.
This is a documentary that they made a few years ago.
I just want you to watch the first minute or two, okay?
Take a look.
This is from the BBC.
This video has sent a shiver across Ukraine.
The marching young men are far-right nationalists from the Nazionalny Druzhini, or national militia.
They're at a sacred spot, Ukraine's crucible.
Maidan, Independence Square in central Kiev.
This was the Maidan in 2014, as hundreds of thousands of people rallied and ultimately forced out an unpopular president.
Russia branded it a coup, orchestrated by neo-Nazis and fascists.
It wasn't true then.
But four years on, Ukraine's far right is on the march, and there appears little appetite for stopping it.
Here's a major pro-Ukraine news outlet showing the delivery of javelin anti-tank missile systems to the Azov battalion.
A shipment of N-Log grenade launchers and instructors from NATO countries arrived in Kharkiv.
The Azov regiment was the first to learn about their new weaponry.
Can you zoom in on the photo on the right?
Look at that guy's arm patch.
He's a Nazi.
Not a Hong Kong pretend Nazi who doesn't exist.
I mean, like he's a real Nazi and he says so.
Isn't that incredible?
Here's something you might not see every day in Canada.
The NATO flag, the Azov flag, and the German Nazi flag all together.
You gotta admit, that's weird.
This is normalized, though.
Here's Ilya Ponomarenko, if I'm saying right.
He's the editor of the Kiev Independent.
And he was sworn in as an honorary member of the Azov Battalion.
Hokie Doki.
Some of his writers are in the battalion too, he says.
That's what he's saying.
Here he is, happy to tweet the Azov Battalion and its Nazi-style logo in the picture.
I should tell you, Christian Freeland has given hundreds of thousands of Canadian tax dollars to this Kiev independent news agency.
Oh, what, you didn't think Trudeau's media bailout?
You thought it was just for Canadians, did you?
And now let me end this story as I began it.
I don't like war.
I don't like Putin.
I don't like civilian casualties.
I hate to see the news out of Ukraine.
I don't like propaganda on any side, frankly, but I have a difficult time sorting through rumors and fog.
And, you know, from the truth here, on all sides, it's very difficult to know what's going on.
And I don't trust the journalists in most cases.
But one thing I am seeing so often is that there really are Nazi pillar paramilitaries in Ukraine.
It's not most people.
It's not all people.
It's, you know, it's not even most people who care about Ukraine.
No, not at all.
But they are there.
They really are.
It's happening often enough that liberal MPs keep casually tweeting pictures of the Nazis until they have to take them down.
Here's a CTV story.
They promoted one of these Nazi battalions, but they didn't recognize some of their insignia.
How would you?
Look at how they backpedaled.
CTV News Vancouver aired a story Tuesday that included an image of two female Ukrainian soldiers who were wearing, get this, an offensive symbol on their uniforms, which was regrettably not recognized before being broadcast.
The image has been removed from our coverage.
An offensive symbol.
What was it?
A swear word?
Was it a naked person or something?
Offensive, offensive, like what?
Why the weird vagueness?
What was the image?
Why won't they say what it is?
You know, calling it offensive is how someone might react to it, but it doesn't actually describe it well.
Because they want to pretend that this is not happening.
There are no Nazis there.
They want to pretend that the only Nazis in the world are here in Canada at the Trucker Convoy.
You know, the ones saying honk honk.
How much vitriol do we have to see of Hong Kong, which is an acronym for Hail Hitler, do we need to see by these protesters on social media?
How much, how many?
You know, the official hate finders, they go nuts to find Nazis where there are none.
You know what I'm talking about, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Canadian Anti-Hate Network.
I went to both of their websites today completely silent on the actual, real, armed, paramilitary Nazis in Ukraine that Western powers are arming and training and promoting.
I don't get it.
I mean, maybe I understand it coming from Christy Freeland.
I mean, these are her grandfather's people.
But I really don't get it.
I mean, you can be for Ukraine, but against the Nazis, right?
I think that's the best way to be.
I just find it bizarre and crazy and troubling that the most real Nazis left on Earth.
I mean, really, are there any actual Nazis anywhere else on Earth?
The real ones have been officially deemed the good guys.
No, I don't think they're the good guys.
I'm not going to claim that all Ukrainians are like those folks.
I want to believe, and I think I do believe, that they are a small fringe.
That's the language Trudeau used to talk about, the Truckers, didn't he?
A small fringe with unacceptable views.
The small fringe minority of people who are on their way to Ottawa or who are holding unacceptable views that they're expressing do not represent the views of Canadians who have been there for each other,
who know that following the science and stepping up to protect each other is the best way to continue to ensure our freedoms, our rights, our values as a country.
So when we really do have a small fringe of Nazis with unacceptable views, shouldn't we call them out?
Or at least just brainstorming here, maybe stop arming them and training them and promoting them.
Remember this when they call you a Nazi next time.
Stay with us for more.
Politician's Concerns About Liberties00:15:12
Welcome back.
Well, I am delighted that the Conservative Party of Canada is having another leadership race.
It is no secret that I was a critic of Aaron O'Toole, not just because he didn't win, which of course is the main characteristic you look for in a politician, but because I don't think he was particularly conservative.
And I think one of the side effects of the Trucker Rebellion was that issue was forced and the Conservative caucus said goodbye to him.
It was a bit of a miracle.
Political accountability, I think.
And the race is on.
The starter pistol has been shot.
The date, if I'm not mistaken, of the new leadership vote is in September 10th.
Now, that feels like an eternity from now, but it's not too far away.
I suppose they put it in the distance to get a chance to some outsiders to throw their hat in the ring.
I see reports that Jean Charais, the former Mulroney cabinet minister and then Liberal Premier of Quebec, is considering throwing his hat in the ring.
Patrick Brown, the former Ontario PC leader, who's now the mayor of Brampton.
Pierre Polyev has been actively campaigning.
Roman Baber, the Ontario MPP who came out against lockdowns, announced his campaign last night.
But one of our favorite people is throwing her hat in the ring.
I'm talking about Dr. Leslie Lewis, the MP for Haldeman Norfolk, who did so well in the last leadership campaign.
What a delight to welcome her back to the show.
Dr. Lewis, it's great to see you again.
You can see I'm a fan and I don't even care who knows.
I'm not hiding it.
Great to see you again.
I'm delighted that you're running in the leadership campaign.
Tell me a little bit about your strategy, what you're going to emphasize as your issues.
What do you hope to accomplish?
Thanks for having me here, Ezra.
So many people would ask, well, why are you doing this again?
And to be honest with you, that not much has changed since last time.
I'm still concerned about the direction of the country.
I'm still concerned about our $1.3 trillion debt.
Now with the war between Russia and Ukraine, I'm concerned about some of our environmental policies that we have where we didn't develop our pipelines.
And looking back, we can see that that was a grave mistake.
And so I want to put forth a platform that will get Canadians on track, make sure that we're developing our natural resources, and also that we also have a plan to protect the environment.
I don't believe that those things are mutually exclusive.
I also want to see people, businesses, have hope again.
And as you know, 80% of all Canadians are employed by small businesses.
And so we have to find a way to get them back, get hope back to them so that we could rebound out of COVID and get people employed, start building up revenues and pay down that debt.
Those are interesting points.
And of course, I agree with, I mean, the pipelines.
Canada could so obviously be a supplier of what I call ethical oil to the world.
We could displace Russia and OPEC nations.
I believe in the economic issues.
I think those are very important.
But Dr. Lewis, one of the things that has come home to me over the last two years is that sometimes we take our civil liberties for granted.
Because yes, the debt is important.
And yes, pipelines are a solution.
And yes, getting small businesses there, that's all important.
You can't buy groceries.
You can't pay the rent if you don't have those things.
But there are some other intangibles, civil liberties, freedom of speech, that I think the lockdowns in the last two years have really showed us the importance of those age-old principles.
What do you have to say about freedom of speech and freedom of protest, the recent civil liberties inferno of the Emergencies Act?
Can you talk a bit about those, not the pocketbook issues, but more the heartfelt issues a bit?
Absolutely.
I think it's very important that in a democracy that we uphold those liberties.
And many Canadians and many immigrants came to this country because we were the beacon of hope of democracy.
And when we have policies and practices that undermine that, it really erodes confidence.
I was very, very concerned during the Convoy protest because I was just two blocks away from Parliament.
And so I had to walk through that protest every day.
And I was able to speak to people, people who came all the way from BC, and they just wanted to be heard.
And it's not as if they wanted to be there.
Some of them had reached out to their MPs.
They weren't getting answers.
Some of them, they did whatever they could, but they wanted answers as to why the government wasn't listening to them.
And they came all the way to Parliament so that they could be heard by the government and nobody wanted to listen.
And it was very, very sad to see that the approach that Justin Trudeau took, that he refused to meet with these individuals and then he labeled them racist, demonized them.
And it was very, very disconcerting to see that how fragile our democracy is and our rights.
And the evoking of the Emergencies Act was something that I also wasn't very pleased with because it suspended civil liberties.
And people were very, very concerned that if this could be done so easily, what could the government do?
Could they freeze our bank account for other issues that they disagree with us on?
Yeah, I'm really worried about that, actually.
It really accelerated cancel culture.
Cancel culture is bad enough when it's some woke mob on Twitter, but when the prime minister and the finance minister and the justice minister are directing it and there's no court process, then banks are going along with it, I think that's really terrifying.
You know, I remember when you and I last met, it was actually on that very chilly day on Parliament Hill at the Trucker protest.
It was quite something.
Not all conservative MPs or senators went down there.
I think if I had to guess why, some disagreed with them, but more, I think, were scared of getting offside with the mainstream media.
And I think that's, frankly, Aaron O'Toole, what happened to him, is I think maybe his instincts would have been sympathetic, but he was just too afraid to defy, I mean, the media was such a strong player in this drama.
And they weren't just a neutral observer.
They were a team.
Let me ask you about that, because I think that should you become leader, obviously Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party machine are going to be your nominal opponent.
But I think that in Canada, the toughest opponent for any conservative is the mainstream media.
I think they mock, first they ignore you, then they mock you, then they lie about you.
And I think in the case of Aaron O'Toole, and I'm not asking for you to defend him or to condemn him.
I'm just saying when I look at his tenure as leader, I think he was terrified of being devoured by the media, so he sought to please them.
How will you handle a hostile media who hate the very thought of a black woman being a conservative?
I mean, I think they would hate you triple because of that.
Yeah, I've seen them really misstate positions that I've had in the past and try to make it seem like if I was anti-LGBTQ plus, which is really ridiculous because I worked as a refugee law, worked in refugee law and defended people who were being persecuted because of their, because they were a member of the LGBTQ plus community.
And so I defended those people in court.
And so for I could see the media has even taken something like that and not recognize it.
So I know that they're not my friends.
But I'm not here to make friends with the media.
I'm here to serve the Canadian people.
And I understand the cost and I'm prepared to pay the cost of that.
And as you said, that day, that cold day that I interviewed with you in front of the convoy, it was because I believed that these individuals came here and they needed to be heard.
These are people that were traumatized, that were locked down for two years, that maybe losing their jobs, may have had family members lose their jobs, and they wanted to be heard.
And I am being paid by these individuals, some of them making $15, $25 an hour.
And politicians are making hundreds of thousands of dollars an hour.
So I don't understand why a politician wouldn't want to hear from their constituents.
I think it's very, very important.
It's the part of our democracy.
And it's something that I felt that I had to do or else it would be meaningless, my job as a politician to me.
Thank you for that.
I want to ask you a question because I remember when you were running for the leadership last time, you really took the party by storm.
I think everyone was very excited, but there was that one knock against you that you were fairly green.
Now you've been in parliament a couple years.
You've gotten to know the system a bit.
You've been practicing, I guess, being a politician.
Tell me what you think you've learned since the last go-around.
How have you gotten stronger?
What are you better at now?
What did you maybe not know about two years ago that you think, okay, now I understand it or now I'm working on that?
How are you different now than two years ago?
I don't know.
Well, there's some good and there's some bad in that because I think that one thing I've learned is that when you're coming in, you just want to see change, you want to see things move, and you realize sometimes that the wheels of politics turn really slowly.
And so that was a little bit frustrating for me.
But you learn how to work within the system.
And that's something that I think that you can only get that experience by being within the system.
And so I'm glad that I do have that experience.
I'm glad that I have a seat now.
And I feel that the policies that I have now, they come from a place of authenticity.
And that hasn't changed.
And I think that that's what's important to the people.
That's what they want to see.
That you're going to stand up for them, even if it costs you, even if it's not popular.
And they know that when you present a certain policy, you have the best interests of Canadians at heart.
You know, I'm a super fan and I'm not hiding it, but I want to ask you a tough question because that's what we do here at Rebel News.
We don't hold back.
And I want to ask you, and I don't know if it's fair, but in Canada, there's a tradition that if you're running for prime minister, you do have to speak both languages.
And I know that really limits because most people grow up unilingual.
I mean, I certainly wouldn't pass that test.
What would you say to people who say, well, Leslie Lewis is great, but her French skills are not strong, and a quarter of the country speaks French?
What would you say to that?
Yeah, I think it's very important that you speak French.
And so I'm making an effort to do that.
I've continued with my French studies.
Unfortunately, during the election, I took a little bit of time off because I really wanted to focus on the new riding.
My riding had had a great MP, Diane Finley.
She'd been there for 17 years.
And so I felt a sense of vulnerability going in as a new person that they didn't know me.
So I did take a few months off my French lessons, not doing it the way that I should have.
But I'm very serious about it.
And the people of Quebec, they just want to see that you're trying and that you are committed to learning it.
And to be honest with you, though, I feel that if there were a French person who couldn't communicate in English and he was a great or she was a great candidate, I think that things are evolving to the point where people would accept that.
For the first time, we have a governor general who does not speak French.
And I'm sure she's making efforts to speak French.
And she has some unique qualities that she brings to the job.
And so I think people would recognize those in me also.
And also recognize that I'm a person who values education.
So I'm going to make the best effort to continue to learn French.
I want to ask you a question on behalf of Canadians who have not been vaccinated for whatever reason.
Perhaps it was a religious reason, perhaps it was a medical decision they made.
Perhaps they're hesitant and they've just weighed the odds and the risks.
For whatever reason, they made that choice.
In most places, vaccine mandates are coming down, although some governments still require them to work there.
But in Canada, you still can't get on an airplane or a train or a ferry if you're unvaxed.
It's almost like there's a no-fly list for millions of Canadians.
And of course, there's the possibility that other lockdown restrictions can be brought back in.
They've been brought back in before.
What would you say to Canadians who are glad that things seem to be loosening up, but we're still not out of it yet?
Do you have a message to Canadians who are unvaxed for what you might do for them?
Well, I think we have to look at what's happening around the world and around the world.
We're seeing that the mandates are being removed.
And throughout this pandemic, we've heard over and over, trust the science, trust the medical officers of health.
And the medical officers of health across the country are saying that it's time to remove the mandates.
And they've done so in most of the provinces.
So I think it's time that the federal government does put a plan on the table that will end the mandates.
Right now, it's just a means of discriminating against those who are not vaccinated because we know that we have other means of accommodation.
We can test the unvaccinated to have an increased level of security.
And so the prohibition for them not being able to get on a plane or a train, etc., I think that it's just outdated.
I don't think it's necessary.
And I think that the government needs to follow the science and look at what other jurisdictions are doing and look at what the provinces are doing and get up to speed and end those mandates.
Do you think people who were fired over the last year because they didn't get jabbed and now the mandates have been removed, do you think they should be, especially in the public sector, do you think they should be invited back to work?
People Fired Over Vaccination Mandates00:03:56
Oh, yes, absolutely.
I never believe that people should have been fired because they are unvaccinated for a medical choice.
We've always had medical freedoms in this country, and especially when the science came out that whether you're vaccinated or unvaccinated, you could still spread and contract COVID.
I think that at that point in time, the policy should have reflected that.
And it's very important for us to look at personal responsibility.
I think every individual should take responsibility for themselves to do whatever they can to protect themselves, protect their family, and minimize the strain on our health care system.
But I also believe in informed consent, and I believe in medical privacy.
And I also believe that people need to make these decisions in accordance with their doctor, and they need informed consent to make their decisions.
And I don't believe that people should have been fired for a medical choice.
What's a website that people can learn more about you?
And if they want to sign up to be a part of this, where can they get more info?
LeslandLewis.ca.
And all the info that you'll need is there, how to take out a membership, because you have to be a member to vote.
And everything that you'll need to be a member and also to donate is on the site.
So look forward to seeing you all.
I will be doing tours and small group meetings, and I hope to meet some of you in person.
Well, that's great.
I really appreciate you stopping by.
It was a pleasure to have you in the last campaign.
I remember that we were one of your very first stops, and it was great to meet you that day.
And we've been following your career ever since.
And I'm delighted that you're in the race.
LeslandLewis.ca is the website.
Great to see you, and good luck out there.
Okay, thank you, Ezra.
Nice seeing you again.
All right, you two.
There you have it.
Leslie Lewis, candidate for the Conservative Party of Canada.
Stay with us.
More ahead.
Hey, welcome back to your viewer feedback.
Clone42 says, I had almost completely written off the rule of law, but a handful of recent rulings gives me a sliver of hope that reason might return to Canadian courtrooms.
Yeah, well, I was glad to see that ruling by Justice Heenahan.
Of course, we knew that we had won during the election, but it was nice to see it in writing.
We're not done in the courts because I think Trudeau is not done trying to bring in a new authoritarianism.
He really meant it when he says he admires Castro and China.
He really does.
Like he says these things, and people saw us, people must think, oh, he's kidding or he's exaggerating.
No, he really means it.
I sure hope that the courts will rule for freedom, but I wouldn't bet on it.
Dan In Burnaby says, so you won the case.
Now what?
Will you be allowed to ask little Justin questions or will he just ignore you as usual?
I expect it'll be the latter.
Well, I mean, you saw what happened literally hours after that court case when Alexa LaVois and Tamara Ukolini and the rest of our team was allowed to put questions to him.
He simply refused.
He literally refused.
And the Parliamentary Press Gallery will not let our reporters come near Trudeau.
Literally, our rivals and our competitors are banning us from coming into any gallery press conference.
So it's too bad because I think someone ought to ask Trudeau some tough questions.
It happens so rarely without us.
Andrew Merlach says it's real funny seeing how angry he gets when confronted by people who have views he finds quote unacceptable or anyone not on the liberals' payroll.
Harassing Questions00:15:30
And how funny is it that 97.7% of Canadians don't watch the idea of credible media.
Oh, the irony must burn.
Yeah, I mean, a lot of chutzpah there when Trudeau was over in Europe criticizing Putin for being an authoritarian and cracking down on the media.
Did he forget what he just did in Canada, including seizing private bank accounts and declaring a national emergency because there were some peaceful trucker protests?
Unbelievable.
Well, that's our show for today.
I wonder what you think about my dear diary entry.
That was personal reflections as much as anything.
But I just find it odd that someone, Christopher Freeland, Justin Trudeau, who calls everyone they don't like a Nazi, are actually supporting the last Nazis in the world.
And I want to make it clear: I'm not saying that Ukrainians are Nazis or the Germans are Nazis.
They're not.
But there are these paramilitaries.
They're the last real Nazis in the world.
And Freeland is supporting them and arming them and training them.
What's with that?
That's it for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, good night.
Keep fighting for freedom.
And let me leave you with this video of the day from Alexa Lavois, who met some Communist Party supporters who crashed a pro-convoy rally in Ottawa.
And it was an interesting exchange.
I'll let you see.
All right, everybody.
Good night.
You say a better world is lost.
So here, Alexa, for Ruben News, I'm in the city hall where counter-protest just happened.
We are still the Saturday, 5th of March, and it's two weeks after the convoy left.
But they are protesting against the convoy, saying that they are full of white supremacists, racists, misogynists, and other names that I will not tell now.
But I'm coming here to see their point of view, what they have to say to me, and look at how we have been treated so far.
Let's check it out.
I'm wondering, what is the protest about today?
This is a reaction to the occupation of Ottawa a couple of weeks ago by the truckers, and this is to show solidarity with the community and emphasize love and not hate.
And what is the damage that the convoy has caused in your life?
Well, I live downtown, so I heard a lot of noise.
I got fumes from diesel.
I had people yelling at me from trucks as they drove by.
It was really nasty.
I felt like I was under siege.
Nothing like what's going on in Ukraine right now, but I did feel under siege.
Learning to live with COVID is coded language.
That means it's okay if disabled people die.
No, it's a statement.
How many science degrees do you have?
I have a degree in biology.
In biology?
Okay.
So you don't understand that.
20% of the population knows.
I don't understand.
I'll ask you a question.
Well, okay, I'm done.
I'm listening to this.
Thank you.
No, no, no.
I'm just asking.
I just try to understand what's going on.
This is the people who had to survive the occupation by the far-right convoy of difficult people.
Many of them were traumatized, especially the people living downtown.
That maybe seeing the Canadian flag doesn't make you nervous again because we had three weeks of the Canadian flag in trucks, meaning there's bullies coming.
Watch out.
And people felt very frightened of that.
You call the convoy the left, extreme, the left-wing white.
White?
Well, let's see.
I realize that not all of them were Nazis because, you know, only several of them had Nazi flags.
I realize not all of them were white nationalists because only several of them had white nationalist flags.
Yes, this was a very ultra-right conservative protest of, yes, anti-vaxxers who had their rights to, you know, to protest.
And we lived in a city where people took over downtown to tell us, no, you're a weak person.
Take off that mask.
It's an oppressive Illuminati conspiracy theory nonsense.
Yeah, well, f ⁇ them.
They have enemies for life now.
Every one of them.
If they ever come back and brag that they were part of this convoy, they have enemies for life.
Do you think that some of the people just right here are Nazi and white supremacists as well?
No, I don't think so.
But maybe you can pull some.
So what organization are you guys with?
They're with Nazis of Canada.
Nazis of Canada from the French that are.
And so I'm a Nazi now.
No, I was just having a joke.
Is it a judgment?
I don't know.
I don't know.
You came here to the judgments.
You had the judgments when you came here.
No, I just asked what is going on here.
Can I ask what organization you guys are with?
So the police basically stood by and let them do whatever they wanted to do.
Even though the police chief was saying they were taking measures like not letting them refuel, we would then see journalists down here and there were lines of people bringing in jury cans full of fuel to refuel.
Is it because it was not the crime to do it?
It was just supplying.
No, it was a crime.
They made it a crime to do it, but then they weren't enforcing it.
So there's different definitions of peace, right?
So I don't think that anyone thinks it's peaceful to set up fireworks next to somebody's home at midnight every night for a week.
But people are dying because we're not wearing masks.
It was really disturbing.
I live in downtown.
I saw people coming in the streets really aggressively, driving bywards, going over the high walk.
So yeah, I think it was terrible.
I don't agree with what they did.
Well, there were also some signs like the American flag, the yellow flag, which is a really racist flag.
And it was mostly racist people.
Yeah, I don't have any issue saying that.
There was people who obviously have the right to be angry.
I'm angry with the mandates too.
I don't like them.
But I think they were racist.
Yeah.
Take care of much.
What media are you?
Have you joined them for maybe a day to join them and talk to them?
I work there.
I live down there.
I had to cross and it was impossible for me to go.
The issue is that your line of questioning is a little bit aggressive.
And so that's what he's trying to say: is maybe you need to reframe it.
He's already told you that he saw aggression in the streets and felt it himself.
And so that's when you stop and you stop pressing as a journalist if you are in fact a journalist.
I was just wondering.
You're harassing people.
I'm not harassing you.
Yeah, you are.
I'm watching you.
You're harassing people.
Okay, I've asked you to leave.
Please leave.
I'm a public space at the moment.
I'm free and I can see.
You're harassing people.
Please leave.
I'm asking you.
I've seen you following people around.
Go.
Yeah, because I'm asking you to.
I'm asking you to leave.
What is your authority on me for asking me to leave to a public space?
Oh, my God.
I think all of us are feeling pretty uncomfortable, so it'd be great if you'd leave.
I'm just asking questions, asking like why.
Yeah, and you've asked a bunch.
I don't want to be on this.
You've asked a bunch of questions.
I think it's time to go.
Yeah, but I'm just asking like what is going on here.
Maybe just take a break and let everybody cool off.
People are feeling a bit harassed.
So maybe just take a break.
I'm just asking questions.
I've never been feeling harassed nowhere else than any other.
But people are telling you how they feel about it, right?
And so just please hear them.
Please hear them.
They are here for making their voice heard.
Why they don't let's take a break.
okay what is all this qr code man What do you mean?
What is all this QR code?
Oh, it's the QR code so people can get information.
They like QR code.
She's not following me.
I'm French fake code.
I'm not fake going.
I'm not talking to you.
Sorry, I'm not talking.
But you know a fake goal.
I'm not allowed to talk to you.
Sorry.
I'm not going to speak to him.
Please stop harassing him.
I'm not harassing him.
I'm asking questions.
I'm not sure that they're not going to speak to you.
Please go away.
So it's just live.
The people in the front just make aware, everybody, that they had bad people in the back, not on their side.
And we should be aware of them and be careful.
So they are actually doxing us in the front, telling like we are here and we are bad people?
What's going on?
I don't know what they want to hide from us, but we have nothing to hide from them.
Like now I'm surrounded.
So first time that I need to have like as much security for one camera and one microphone.
A leader and a brother that I greatly admire.
So I cannot stand shoulder to shoulder next to you.
following me I didn't touch you.
I have my camera so I can prove that I didn't touch you.
You touch me.
So to talk about this, we're gonna bring up our next speaker.
And folks, it is my great pleasure to introduce this speaker.
You're following me now.
So I cannot standing shoulder to shoulder next to you following me.
Folks, it's my honor to welcome Congress.
Larry has a long time.
This woman walked over to plus anti-racism and peace movement.
You want to answer my question today?
He wants to film me, but he don't want me to ask him questions.
So it's getting a little bit tense here.
We try just to see the other side of the story.
So we saw so many flags today.
We saw the Communist Party of Canada.
We saw Defend the Police.
We saw so many boards writing like we are against Nazi or other.
So what is going on here?
I did take one minute to go and see the people at the parliament or they are just based what they are saying by the legacy media telling them what they saw so far or they were able to see by themselves what happened during the convoy.
I will never know because they don't want to answer to my question.
And it became clear, and it became clear that the oligarchs around the world, mainly headed by the Communist Party of Canada, would be making their moves and good.
So what is the Communist Party of Canada?
They are not in good faith.
They are a pro-convoy and just trying to doxy.
All you can say that I'm pro-convoy, they start talking to you for 15 minutes.
We're not going to entertain.
I'm sorry.
I was just wondering why you have a flag of Communist Party of Canada.
Well, they're supporting.
They've been very supportive.
So what can we do in supporting the community?
So that's all.
I think you can't.
I just love peace.
I have always turned the other cheek.
I don't know if you can see they actually block me.
Not only the security, but now the people.
And we can feel the tension here.
I'm just asking simple questions to understand the other side.
And most of them, they don't want to answer to me.
And now aggressivity is rising, but I do not do anything.
Most of the time, I'm just laughing because it makes no sense to be angry over someone who tried to understand what is going on.
The integral, important paralysis of the Charter is that it should be called the Canadian Charter.
Charter says of race, gender, class, ethnic origin, just helping my.
I'm just recording what is going on.
You do not understand about Canada.
Well, quite a bit, I'd say.
They say that we are harassing people, but they are harassing us, following us, blocking us, putting some stuff in our face, and almost like grabbing our stuff.
And as well, what they were saying is like, oh, if you touch me, I'm going to sue you.
I'm sorry, you touched me, and you came towards me, and you're following me.
So who is harassing who here?
They keep saying that the convoy was violent, they were harassing people, and as well they were Nazi and white supremacists.
But so far, since I'm here, not only I get arrested, but I get almost some violence against me.
They almost push me.
They block the camera.
They were giving me some name against me.
What is going on?
And it's only a protest that has been, what, an hour?
And this convoy was there for three weeks.
And I was there on the ground since the 28th and never see any violence there.
It was peaceful and for freedom.
But where is the peaceful protest here when a journalist just tried to ask a simple question?
So I'm in Parliament Hill and we have two counter protesters behind me and they put on Terry Fox board writing go home traitor.
So at the end to that is not the same that putting a freedom mandate board as well there.
I don't know, like board that against the people there instead of, I don't know.
I'm just wondering what part of this is inaccurate information because last I checked.
Go Home Traitor Protest00:01:40
Me is a traitor on it.
I just don't understand go home traitor.
They're asking for a democratically elected government to dissolve so they can, what, implement their own hand-picked one?
I would call that traitors to democracy.
I would pretty well call that being traitorous.
That's your point of view, but as well, why you say that terrorist fox?
That's not a point of view.
That's literally what's happening.
I just try to understand all your board.
That's it.
No, I'm just curious.
I'm just so curious here.
What exactly is it you're trying to get from me?
So, why am I getting attacked for something that is quite laughed at you?
No, but plenty of people here have.
The harassment of me, which are you screaming at me?
No, I don't justify it.
It's not okay.
But it's not okay to yell.
Because I have to shout away all this motherfucking shit.
I can't even hear myself.
I can't even hear my fing self.
Do you heard me?
Do I'm yelling?
Do I'm yelling?
This was not okay.
So many stuff is not okay.
But that is the polarized population.
I'm sorry for that.
I didn't create it.
And I'm just there for understanding both sides of the story.