Calgary Mayor Geodi Gondeck escalates tensions by targeting the peaceful Freedom Rally, now in its second year, despite protesters shifting focus to federal policies like Ottawa’s 50% zero-emissions vehicle mandate by 2030—currently at just 5% adoption. Meanwhile, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney doubles security funding for churches ($5M annually) after last summer’s 60+ arson/vandalism incidents, yet faces skepticism over his role in enforcing court orders against Pastor Arthur Pawlowski, detained over 30 days for alleged breaches tied to the Coots border blockade. Critics like Nathaniel Pobloski question government transparency, while Patrick Brown’s inconsistent stance on lockdowns and Bill S233’s potential UBI-vaccine link raise broader concerns about political hypocrisy and eroding freedoms. [Automatically generated summary]
I'm Sheila Gunread, and this is the Rebel News daily live stream.
And I'm joined by my co-host, who's not my usual co-host on Mondays.
However, he's still a co-host from Calgary, Sid Fizard.
Sid, how's it going?
Hey, doing all right.
How are you doing, Aaron?
You know what?
It's great.
You had a very busy weekend, and we'll get to that.
We sort of threw you into the fire on Sunday, but I think you did a great job, and we'll talk about that as well.
But before we get into that, I'll tell everybody exactly what we're doing here because otherwise I'll forget and then no one will know.
So for our not already carefully cultivated stable of viewers, if you're new here, this is the Rebel News daily live stream.
It used to just be hosted on Friday, just hosted by the big boss man, Ezra Levant.
However, then the pandemic struck.
There was more news than ever, but you wouldn't know it if you got all your news from the mainstream media who in some instances like CBC, they declined to do local news because it was just too darn dangerous, I think.
They took the subsidy though for local news because, you know, it's not too dangerous to be cashing those checks from Justin Trudeau.
So we decided to extend the live stream from just Friday to Monday through Friday because there's more news than ever.
Olivia, there's some buzzing in my ear or static in my ear, and I hope our viewers aren't experiencing that.
So maybe you could check that out.
Perfect.
It's fixed now.
Nope, it's back.
It's fixed.
Okay, great.
So anyway, we extended the live stream five full day or five full workdays during the week.
It's hosted by me on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday.
And then we have a rotating stable of guests on Wednesday and Friday.
Sometimes Ezra pops in also.
So, you know, make sure you're watching because you never know when that's going to happen.
It used to be a great way for our viewers to support the work that we do completely willingly because YouTube allowed us to accept something called a super chat.
But then Biden got elected and big tech didn't really have to pretend to be free speechy anymore.
And so big tech demonetized a whole slate of conservatives, including us.
So we weren't able to take super chats anymore.
But because YouTube doesn't want us there, we insist on staying there as long as possible.
So there will come a time where they just completely purge us from the platform.
But in the meantime, we're going to be a thorn in their side by existing on YouTube.
But we also want to support other free speech platforms that allow us to say the things we want to say and think the things we want to think.
And so we are also simultaneously broadcasting on Rumble, Odyssey, and Super U.
And those are great free speech, independent platforms where they believe in the free and liberal exchange of ideas.
And on those three platforms, unlike YouTube, you can support the work that we do.
So through a Rumble Rant, if you send us one of those, we'll read it on air.
Through Odyssey, if you send us a hyper chat, we'll read it on air.
And on SuperU, if you send us a SuperU shout, we'll also read that on air.
So now's your chance, dear viewer, to have your say.
And we'll try to stop about every 15 minutes to read the paid chats.
And we're also, correct me if I'm wrong, still live streaming on Getter, which is great.
I think this is our fourth week on Getter and it seems to be going well.
And I'm going to try to spend a little more time on Getter because Twitter is a censorious hellhole.
Affordability Of Electric Cars00:08:16
And I don't know why I'm giving them my thoughts and energy.
So I think that's all the nuts and bolts.
Want to have your say, please consider sending us a paid chat on one of those other platforms.
Um, I think that's it.
Maybe we should get into the news of the day.
What do you think, Sid?
No, that sounds good, and there was a lot that happened over the weekend, so I'm happy to cover that.
Okay, first things first, though, um, because I think this is just kind of an interesting story, and it shows how out of touch the Laurentian, sort of Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal bubble of fancy people, how out of touch they are with the rest of the world.
And I think you might have a unique perspective on this, Sid, because you moved from Toronto to Calgary, and Calgary is a car city.
Like, we love our cars, we love our trucks out here in Western Canada, and a lot of that has to do with the weather, and things are so far away, and we have different jobs.
But for some reason, the people who live in that little like Bermuda triangle of government elites really think that we should be in an electric car because I guess if you can't afford to fill up at the pump, obviously you can just afford to spend $40,000 to $70,000 on an electric car.
And I see this story out today in the CBC, Olivia, if you want to bring that up.
Electric vehicles face roadblocks as feds try to boost sales, and then CBC gets it all wrong.
Cost, well, that's that's a little bit true, cost, scarcity, and a shortage of charging stations are undermining Ottawa's efforts.
I think cost is one.
Scarcity is because supply is in fact meeting demand here.
People don't want to buy these things because they don't make sense.
And a shortage of charging stations, I'm not sure that's true either.
I think they just don't make sense in Canada where they don't work well in the cold.
Everything's so far away.
And again, if you can't afford the increased price at the pump, why do these people think that you can afford to just buy a new car?
Like, if you can't afford your 1995 Toyota Turcel, you can't afford a Tesla.
But this is what the government thinks.
They're really pushing this.
And they want half of all new cars sold in this country to be zero emissions vehicles by 2030.
And for context, I think we're about at 5% of cars.
Eight years out, 5% of cars are electric or electric hybrid.
I just want to talk to you about this because you have a unique perspective on this because you moved somewhere where you don't really need a car to live to somewhere where a car sure makes life more convenient.
Yeah, no, to say the least.
And especially in Toronto, I mean, it's still a vehicle, but you have Uber, you have the subways right there, wherever you are.
You can just hop on public transit.
You can practically bike anywhere you need to.
And it's not really in focus, the necessity of a vehicle as much as it is in a place like Calgary.
So there is certainly a distinction made in the minds of the people who live in either place.
And I think that's something that, yeah, it's just a lack of understanding on their part what is needed and why it is so essential to have these vehicles that run on fuel as opposed to electricity.
And as well, I think they talk about the output of these vehicles.
They want net zero with these electric cars, but it also negates the amount of effort that's put into creating these cars.
And these large batteries, well, there's a lot that goes into that and it's usually neglected, those efforts.
Yeah, it's true.
If you've ever seen like a lithium mine, a cobalt mine, they are these minerals are mined in places of the world where they have no regard for human rights or labor laws or wages or child slavery.
That seems to be something that they don't care so much about.
And then there's no remediation.
There's no reclamation.
It's just, here's this open pit of toxicity.
Let's move on to the next open pit of toxicity and take our slaves with us.
That's what happens.
That's what it means for the Western world to pat themselves on the back about how green they're going and driving an electric vehicle.
And it really is virtue signaling for rich people.
There's a reason why these cars make up less than 5% of new vehicle sales.
They are expensive and they don't make sense.
I think I saw Bruce Anderson the other day.
He's sort of one of those Ottawa fancy people.
I think he used to even claim to be conservative.
I'm not sure.
But he said, you know, it's no big deal.
If you cash in on the taxpayer subsidized rebates of these things, by the way, by the way, why am I paying rebates for rich people to buy their virtue signaling cars?
But he said, you know, it's basically you can really subsidize these things down to about $30,000.
Okay, that's great.
But how much chicken feed can I get in that?
And I don't know.
I don't know if they've ever seen the roads outside of the city, but half the time I drive by memory because I remember where the road was because you can't see where the road is because it's completely drifted over.
But it's just, they're so out of touch.
They think the entire country exists within Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal.
And I'm pretty sure those places get snow too.
But when you only have to drive from your government job to your government suburb, I guess it's fine.
Yeah, well, and that's the thing is when you're in these centralized locations, especially the GTA, these electric charging stations are all over the place.
You have access to them.
But I just imagine if I had that electric vehicle in the drive from Toronto to Calgary, there are places like if you were to drive through Northern Ontario, I almost imagine you would be lucky to make it all the way through without losing charge all the way.
Letting a tow truck come pick you up.
And I saw a video over the wintertime of a Tesla, I believe it was here in Calgary, that ran out of juice while in the middle of a snowstorm in the middle of nowhere.
And that's the thing is these cars, they're trying to drop the price of them, make them more easy for the masses to get a hold of.
But at the same time, you're spending twice as much for half the value because they aren't fully usable throughout the country.
Yeah, I don't even know if there's a charging station in Fort Saskatchewan.
I don't know.
I don't think so.
And it's not a tiny town.
I think there's about 25,000 people there, but I don't think there's a single public electric car charger there.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
Somebody might send me an email.
There might be one like at some virtue signaling place, but it's a very blue color town.
There's not a lot of virtue signaling happening in Fort Saskatchewan.
I just thought I would touch on that because it's so outrageous that, you know, you hear the Jen Saki, I think is how you say her name, Joe Biden's press secretary, when people are saying, well, you know, like, wouldn't it be helpful if there were more supply of oil and gas to deal with these high prices at the pumps?
And she says, you know, the answer is not more supply.
It's green energy.
Okay, that's great.
Even if that were the case, what does that do to help the people with gas-powered vehicles right now?
Nothing.
They just quietly go broke trying to get to work every day.
Exactly.
And I think you can kind of parallel it to public transportation, where, like you mentioned, Montreal, Toronto, they have very large public transportation systems.
But if you go out to a small town, well, maybe you've got a bus route or two.
And then if you go to a place like Coots, Alberta, there isn't any public transportation.
And I think that same premise applies to electric vehicles and the feasibility of it, where the further you go away from these central locations, the less and less practical it is to use these things on a daily basis.
Chaos at the Protest Route00:15:09
Yeah.
And for the harder it is to do what?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And, you know, not everybody can live in a big city.
If I move to a big city, who grows your food?
Right, like everybody's thinking, oh, just move closer to the city and then your life won't be so carbon intensive.
Okay, that's fine, but we're.
Your beef is not grown on an apartment patio, it has to be grown somewhere right, and people forget that there are people producing things that live outside the big cities and without them you will starve to death.
And yeah, that's exactly now let's talk.
You had a very exciting weekend and I think maybe um Olivia, we can bring up some clips of Sid's uh excitement on saturday.
But why don't you tell us sort of what unfolded at the weekly freedom protest?
Because it was more eventful than normal?
Uh, because a handful of left-wing activists decided that they were going to take back the streets.
I think they said like, take back the streets from whom other Calgarians?
They're not your streets?
Yeah, streets anyways, i'll let you get into it.
No exactly um, and these the Freedom Rally protests, they've been going on basically since the beginning of the pandemic across the country uh, and only for the last couple of weeks now uh, we've seen this counter protest arise and at first they were standing in a park as the protest, the Freedom rally went through.
Uh, the week after that they had blocked uh that same location off uh on the road, so that the protest group, uh the Freedom Rally, I should say had to find an alternative route around them.
And this past weekend what happened was, at first there was a couple, I guess, stragglers from the counter protest group uh that were.
They formed a sort of blockade I guess there was just a few of them standing on the road and police formed a line near the beginning of where the freedom rally would march and then later down uh the way the the rally route.
The rest of the counter protesters were all on the streets and there was a police line set up.
You can see it on camera there right now.
So there's the police line and you can see the Freedom Rally in the back, and then you can see another police line.
Behind the police line is the counter protest group and then behind the counter protest group were more Freedom Rally protesters.
So, um it, it was kind of all over the place, that intersection uh.
But that is where the protest group the Freedom Rally Group, I should say and the counter protest uh met on the streets uh, and shortly after the Freedom Rally group did make its way through uh, with the aid of police who had opened up the sidewalk for them to make their way past.
But it was uh, a bit of a mess, I guess you could say.
For a little while I don't understand why police kettled everybody on onto one intersection.
Um, you know that there's room on the streets for everybody and, if you know, these are two sort of adversarial, serial opposing groups.
Why let them get to the same place and cause a big kerfuffle?
Why not hold one back, let one walk through, and then let the other one walk through?
Because it's my understanding that the weekly freedom protest people, I've covered them too.
I covered them for quite a long time before we had a Calgary team.
I would come down every weekend.
They follow the same route every week.
They just go around, come back, you know, they gather, they make the walk, and then they come back.
And they're not disruptive.
They're orderly.
It happens like clockwork.
They start and they wrap it up and they're done.
So I don't understand why police allowed the chaos to happen at that intersection.
I fully believe the counter protesters have a right to protest and be there and have their voices heard.
That's perfectly fine.
But I think there was a better way for police to deal with this because I feel like a lot of the chaos on the corner here is created.
It didn't have to be this way.
Well, and I think a lot of this comes from a last-minute response by the Calgary police where they, I don't think they really knew what to do or how to handle the situation.
I believe a block prior to where the counter protest group was, there was a very weak attempt by Calgary police to have the freedom rally make an alternate or change their route slightly.
But that didn't pan out.
So the freedom rally went straight head on to the police line that was blocking them from mingling, I guess you could say, with the counter protest group.
So it was a very weak attempt, though, I think.
And inevitably, they had to call in for backup so that they could resolve the situation by opening up the sidewalk on the one side and letting the freedom rally protesters go through.
Although that said, many in the freedom rally were able to get around the police barrier just by walking like a little ways over and they ended up on the back side of the counter protest.
Now, nothing really happened.
It was just like a back and forth, like talking, people being like, oh, your idea is wrong, your idea is wrong.
But there was no police line between the counter protesters and the freedom rally on that side.
So it was weird.
Everything felt like it was in shambles.
And I talked to one of the higher up police officers who was there kind of managing the situation.
And I asked him, it seems like you've created a bit of a logistical problem for yourself because there's the freedom rally and then there's a police line and then there's another police line and then there's the counter protest and then there's the freedom rally protest.
So if they were trying to stop the two groups from mingling, they failed in that regard.
It was just, it was a big mess on the Calgary police's part.
Although, and as you saw as well, they were using the bicycles and pushing the counter protesters back.
And they did inevitably let the freedom rally through.
So I don't necessarily know what to make of it, but I think for next weekend, because I'm sure this is probably going to happen again, that's my expectation.
They should act sooner or at least have a better plan in how they're going to allow both of these groups to protest and what they're trying to protest.
So maybe can you give me an estimate of the size, one versus the other?
I'm really bad at guessing.
I did put out a little drone video that does show the whole Freedom Rally and the counter protest.
The counter protest, maybe there was 30 or 40 of them.
And the freedom rally group, like maybe 20 to 1, I think, to be honest, at least.
So there is quite the disparity there in the size of these groups.
Yeah, thousands come out for the freedom rally every single week.
And, you know, there's 30 troublemakers show up.
You know, it didn't erupt into violence.
So, I mean, whatever.
I might even be pushing it to call them troublemakers, but it's the thing every week goes off without a hitch until 30 antees show up.
And then all of a sudden, the street corner descends into chaos.
And you can tell who's who by their masks, right?
I saw on Twitter somebody say, At this point, if you're wearing a mask, that's basically an NDP lawn sign on your face.
You can sort of see it.
Yeah, well, and I think the big difference between these two groups, like we go to the Freedom Rally protests quite often, and they know who we are.
And we ask people, hey, do you want to, like, do you have time for questions?
This and that.
And there's people that say yes, there's people that say no.
They're very much of an individual mindset.
Although, when you try and ask the counter-protesters, like, what exactly are you protesting?
What are you counter-protesting against?
They usually don't have a good answer or they stick to this kind of line that they've been told, where they've been told they're not allowed to answer questions for people like us.
So they're very much in this state of group think, which is, I think, the big difference between them and the Freedom Rally protesters.
And that's why I think the counter-protest, which one individual was hesitant to give me an answer, but he did give me a vague one where they don't like the fact that the Freedom Rally protesters are walking through the streets, disrupting them, and they disagree with the stance on vaccine mandates.
So it's very much so a pro-government narrative, stick to what we are told.
And then there's the Freedom Rally protesters who are very much like, I deserve to have bodily autonomy.
I deserve to have a voice and have the opportunity to make choices in my life.
It's weird how the left-wing anarchists are out there enforcing the government narrative.
Like, how did that happen?
How did that switch get flipped?
And, you know, it's interesting to see the responses of the politicians.
So, Jason Kenney, maybe we can show that clip.
He doesn't even know why people are out there anymore.
And I'm pretty sure I know.
But, Olivia, if you have that clip, can you show it?
This is from the press conference over the weekend that where Jason Kenney says he doesn't even know why the freedom protest takes place every weekend.
I think this was a clip from Efron's Twitter.
And I would just say I'm not quite sure what the protest is about because Alberta effectively does not have any more public health measures.
They've all been lifted some time ago.
And I would suggest that maybe people could find more productive ways of expressing their frustration.
But maybe here's an idea.
How about we all just move on from the frustration of COVID?
How about we leave it in the rearview mirror?
I mean, there are still some remaining federal travel restrictions, which we think are wrong.
We have a motion in the legislature calling on the federal government to drop the pointless federal travel restrictions.
But I guess the point I would make is we could spend the rest of our lives in this society arguing over COVID, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Or we could just move forward.
And here's the good news: Alberta's emerging into a period of dynamic economic growth.
There's lots of good news now and on the horizon.
I say, let's embrace that positive future as opposed to getting stuck in the division of the past two years.
Every family, every community, business, faith group, we all know people have been divided over COVID.
Let's stop accentuating the division.
Let's find ways to come together as Albertans.
He's trying to ignore the damage that's been done over the last two years.
And not only that, but if you talk to the people at the Freedom Rally, which Jason Kenney, I don't think has made any handful of criticism.
Exactly.
He doesn't know why they're protesting.
Why don't you go down there and talk to them?
Ask them.
Well, he doesn't know why they're protesting, just like he doesn't know what a vaccine passport is, right?
So, and it's unfortunate because if you go down to these protests, you find that people are still struggling to find jobs.
People, like he mentioned, he's apparently against the federal travel restrictions.
Well, those are still in place.
There's so much damage that's been done.
If you think about the education sector, well, post-secondary education, I don't know if this is still the case, but while I was in Coots, I interviewed some students.
I believe they're, I'm not exactly sure what university they were with, it was in Alberta, but they still can't go on campus.
So, they really just want to shrug all of this COVID stuff under the rug.
And he says this is about COVID, but really, it's not.
It's about the overreach that we've seen from our federal, municipal, and provincial governments over the last two years.
And even though they've dropped some restrictions and some mandates, they've essentially left the door open for this to happen again in six months or however soon they think they can get away with it once the population is forgotten.
Well, and he just wants us to move on from COVID.
What he means is: I want you to forget what I did to you: what I did to your business, what I did to your church, what I did to your pastor, what I did to your job, what I did to your family's finances, what I did to every family celebration over the last two years.
The third party in all of that was the government.
There are still people in Alberta who are laid off, constructively fired, because Jason Kenney has allowed the private sector to impose vaccine passports on their employees.
There are people who work for WestJet who are fired.
There were people who worked for Alberta Health Services who were fired.
There were people who worked in the oil patch who were fired.
CN fired.
CP Rail fired.
CNRL fired.
There were people all over this province who were fired because they refused to participate in the biomedical police state for whatever reason.
They either refused to get vaccinated or to divulge their vaccination status.
He wants us to move on from the segregation.
They are out there protesting what their government has done to them or has allowed to be done to them for the past two years.
And what I have not heard from Jason Kenney is: I'm sorry.
I'm sorry we did this to you.
I'm sorry that the division your family's experiencing, I'm sorry we did that as a government.
I'm sorry that you lost your job because of an unscientific government policy.
He's never said that.
People are out there protesting because even though Jason Kenney wants to move on from the damage he did to himself through his COVID measures, the people are still experiencing the fallout and they have every right to be out there and protest.
Well, and one of the things, especially which I know we're going to get into in a little bit, but at these freedom rally protests, as of late, they've been what would you say, calling to free Pastor Archer Pawowski, who he's been behind bars for over 30 days now.
And I think Jason Kenney would probably like you to forget about that as well.
And hopefully, we can not see that he is forgotten because, as our Calgary-based reporter Adam Selsa said, he's probably the most persecuted man in Canada.
So I really hope that there's some resolve on that front.
But as Jason Kenney alludes to, this is not a political maneuver, but we'll get into that in a little more in a bit.
Yeah, well, we'll talk about that in a second.
Before we move on from the protest chaos over the weekend, which was hardly chaos except for the police actions causing chaos, because 30 people on the street should not be able to disrupt thousands, but the police, I think, caused that a little bit.
The mayor of Calgary, who somehow, somehow, through some miracle of ineptitude, she is worse than the previous mayor Nahid Munchi, Geodi Gondek.
She has a little bit of Jim Watson in her, Jim Watson being the mayor of Ottawa, and she wants more enforcement.
I'm not sure of what.
Mayor Calls for Increased Enforcement00:15:16
She wants a police crackdown on the freedom protest that has been happening there longer than she's been mayor, by the way.
So she doesn't get to just come in and rewrite history.
These people have always been peaceful, always.
The only time chaos happened was over this weekend, and it was hardly chaos because 30 counter protesters showed up.
That's when the problem started happening.
She's just tired of these people protesting for their freedom.
And so she's sick of it and she doesn't want to look at it anymore.
So she, her series of tweets, maybe we can bring those up.
Giodi Gondeck is the worst.
She's apparently spoken with Beltline residents, but not the protesters.
And let's be clear, some of these protesters are from the Beltline.
But anyways, she says, I spoke with Beltline residents and businesses this morning.
I was in the Beltline this afternoon.
Okay, so why didn't you go talk to the protesters?
Anyways, this weekly disruption this community faces is not a protest.
It's a parade.
At Central Memorial Park, it's a festival with merch and food vendors, yet no permits or licenses.
Ah, so the government's not getting their cut.
That's the problem here.
There's what does it matter?
What do you need a permit for?
Really?
Like, it's the government wants their cut.
They want their little involvement in all of this.
They want to give the okay.
And what they want to be able to say is apply for a permit, deny the permit, and they give you a ticket for not having a permit when you have your, when you're giving away food or whatever.
She goes on to say, why not enforce the bylaws?
Why is the standard response that this will fizzle out?
It won't.
This is not about mandates.
Those are gone.
By waiting for this to die out, enforcement agencies have allowed it to grow.
Telling residents, businesses to wait it out is shameful.
This is how you get more protests, lady.
You know, like if you don't want people to show up and protest government overreach, the answer is not more government overreach.
You're going to have more people out there protesting you and you're going to have more vendors and more food and more merch.
Well, that's the problem is anybody who's in government wants everything to be controlled by government.
It's a misunderstanding of what their position is in this world.
And I think for a lot of people coming from Toronto, I can tell you that it feels very much so like the government is the man in the clouds, so to speak.
He is the one that the government is the one that controls the life of us, of all of us.
But that's just not the case.
They're there to kind of maintain order to a degree, but they're not there to control our lives and every aspect of them.
Yeah, she goes on to say, community members standing their ground are not counter protesters.
I venture to guess how many of those people are actually from the belt line, by the way.
They are people with a right to a safe and welcoming community.
And while council has no formal ability to direct police or other enforcement bodies, we can be vocal and stand with our fellow Calgarians.
So she's on one hand saying we don't have a right to demand more enforcement, but her next tweet demands more enforcement.
And it's the mayor.
So she's flexing her muscles here.
The next one says, it's past time to deal with people not following the law.
Oh, Geode, what are you going to do?
Are you going to run over them with a horse?
You're going to pepper spray them?
What are you going to do?
These are peaceful protesters.
There's never been an incidence of violence in two full years.
The only time things devolved was when the counter protesters showed up.
And that's exactly what they are because I ventured to guess and not many of them are actually from the beltline.
It's past time to support people in their own communities and businesses.
Yeah, I agree.
That's why I was against the lockdown that she was in favor of.
And that's why she's not.
Sorry.
And that's why the protesters are out there because they want businesses to open without these restrictions by the government.
They want to go in and shop at these restaurants and other stores, but they haven't been allowed to because of the government.
The government has effectively over the last two years shut down small businesses for the sake of larger companies who, for whatever means, can continue operating while the small guy is basically getting destroyed by our government.
Yeah.
She goes on to say it's past time to face the fact that this quote protest requires more than quote crowd control.
What does that mean?
What are you going to do to these people, Giodi?
What are you going to do?
You know, what do you want the Calgary police to do to these peaceful protesters, you absolute maniac?
And then she says, enforcement must stand with the community.
They are.
They are.
They're keeping everybody safe while allowing them to practice their civil liberties.
Well, and especially if you consider the numbers of either crowd, well, if you want to stand with the community, I think that leans in a certain direction that she might not find favorable.
Yeah.
Yeah.
She just doesn't like people exercising their civil liberties, and they've been doing it longer than she's been mayor.
So she can just take a back seat here and let people continue to do what they're legally allowed to do in a free country.
This is in Hong Kong.
They can go out on the streets and protest the government.
And I don't care if Jason Kenney doesn't know why they're out there anymore.
They're still allowed to be out there.
They can be out there for whatever reason they want.
30 people counter protesting or 3,000 on the other side, they're all allowed to be there, even if they don't have a reason, which they do.
And it's funny, too, because, I mean, perhaps now the protest group, I mean, they might have their two years of experience in having the burden of the government, of Jason Kenney and of municipalities is welcomed down on them.
But now it's less targeted towards municipal and provincial government.
Now it's mostly the federal government.
So the Freedom Rally group is perhaps less inclined to be angry with people like the Calgary mayor or Jason Kenney, the Premier, and that their concerns may be more redirected to other groups.
So it's funny that they're trying to come down on them now when they're probably less inclined to go after these politicians.
Yeah, that's true.
That's a great point.
This might not even be about Giodi Gondeck anymore.
And yet she's going to make it about herself, isn't she?
And that's going to blow up in her face, I think.
Now, moving along to politicians who are completely tone deaf and just lacking self-awareness whatsoever.
Yesterday, so Sunday, the Alberta government, Jason Kenney, announced the doubling of funding to protect places of worship from hate crimes.
And I was quite interested in this because there's been a real spate of hate crimes against Alberta Christian churches, namely locking them up, chaining the doors, putting fences around them, arresting their pastors in front of their children, real civil liberties violations.
And I thought, boy, if we could only catch the people behind all of that.
But that's not what Jason Kenney meant because he's that guy.
So yesterday they announced an increased funding from the Alberta Security Infrastructure Program, increased from $2 million to $5 million annually.
And I'm not against this.
I just think you're lacking a little bit of self-awareness.
This has a lot to do with the church burnings, vandalisms that happened last summer to protect churches, not-for-profit agencies, registered charities, and other organizations.
They can apply for grants for security and technology improvements.
And so I'm not mad about this.
I think this is a good thing.
And I'm usually generally against government spending.
And they announced it at a church that was targeted for arson last year, the Calgary Vietnamese Alliance Church in Forest Lawn.
And so the announcement was made there.
And I think that's great.
The church was one of 50 Christian churches targeted by vandals across the country last summer.
I think it was closer to 60, actually.
And so, yeah, great.
Because there, I think maybe there have been two or three arrests related to this.
And they were, I think the one was like a busybody white leftist girl, privileged, highly privileged girl.
So I'm not against this, but I'm just sort of astounded at how Jason Kenney is now painting himself as, you know, the defender of Christian churches in this province, when he was the most heavy handed against Christian churches, who decided that what the government was asking the churches to do was in strict contradiction with what their faith mandated.
to them.
And so you were actually on the call yesterday.
You were on the call.
You weren't in person, right?
I was in person.
Oh, you were in person.
I don't know why.
I thought you were on the call on the press conference call.
So even better, you went down to this press conference in person and you put a question to the Premier and it was a mealy mouth response.
And I'll go through why I think that is the case, but your question was great.
So let's maybe roll Sid's question.
Are we rolling that question?
But right now, of course, you're investing in religious infrastructure.
But I think many around the province have the concern that you may not be best protecting their religious freedoms, as we've seen with Pastor Arthur Pawlowski.
He still remains behind bars.
This is well over 30 days.
If you could just comment on that situation and maybe perhaps ease some concerns or just give some light to that situation.
So in Canada, we have something called the rule of law, where courts are responsible for adjudicating criminal charges against individuals, not politicians.
So we have an independent judiciary.
That individual, I understand, has been detained by the police because of multiple breaches of terms of release, court orders, as well as an incitement to, an alleged incitement to violence at the Coots border crossing blockade.
And so that individual has all of the rights of any individual under the Canadian legal system.
They are presumed guilty and sorry, excuse me, presumed innocent until proven guilty, of course, in our system of law.
And they have a right to access to counsel.
They have all of the, that individual or any other individual has all of the same legal rights as anybody.
So this is a matter that is before the courts.
And, you know, as a more general comment, I would just suggest that going to a very tense, combustible situation and inciting people to be willing to die and commit acts of violence for their cause is very likely to have legal consequences.
And I would suggest that, you know, nobody is above the law.
No politician, no person that calls himself a pastor is above the law.
The rule of law applies equally to everybody in our system of the rule of law.
So, is he defining what a pastor is?
Just on that last line, I mean, I guess people who call themselves pastors, I guess they need permission from the government to be a pastor.
But it's real, real interesting to hear Mr. Nobody's Above the Law want to rewrite his own history with regard to the Sky Palace.
The Sky Palace, whatever they were doing up there, it was going on for long enough for someone to get fed up enough to fly a drone up there to take pictures.
And instead of turning himself into the Alberta sheriffs and demanding that they ticket him the way they ticket pastors and peaceful protesters and people trying to have birthday parties, nothing happened to him because he is above the law, isn't he?
Well, and something incredible too that he says is he's speaking to Archer Pulowski and saying that Arthur was calling for violence.
Well, it's my understanding that that's never been the case.
And multiple times, and he's reinforced this multiple times.
Pastor Arthur has said over and over again, it has to be peaceful.
That's the way it has to be done.
And I think he conflated an incitement to violence with what Pastor Arthur was actually charged with.
And he was the first person ever to be charged with this.
And I believe you would know more about this, especially the Critical Infrastructure Defense Act.
What was it exactly?
The Critical Infrastructure Defense Act.
He's the first person ever charged under it.
And the law is there to prosecute pipeline saboteurs, wellhead bombers, the Webo Ludwigs of the world, eco-terrorists.
That's really what it's for.
But they got creative and used it on a pastor who gave a sermon to truckers who were blockading the Coutz border.
What's interesting in all of that is the truckers were never charged with anything under the Critical Infrastructure Defense Act.
So how do you charge the pastor who simply said, hold the line, which I guess is now a crime in this country based on the treatment of Tamara Lich.
But he went down there, gave a sermon, said, hold the line, said it has to be peaceful.
Ezra went back and re-watched Pastor Art's sermon from the blockade, and he reiterated multiple times that it had to be peaceful.
This is not the first time that Jason Kenney has said that there had been violence and/or calls to violence from Coots border blockaders.
We can just go back a little bit to remember when he said that a police officer or law enforcement anyway was assaulted at the border by blockaders or their supporters.
And that absolutely wasn't the case.
It was a minor fender bender.
But Jason Kenney, once again, not knowing all the details or maybe even knowing all the details, but not caring, stood up in a press conference and made that allegation, just like now, where he is saying that Pastor Art engaged in incitement to violence.
He absolutely did not.
In fact, he reiterated calls for peace.
Yeah, and that assault actually took place between two civilians, not an RCMP officer.
So that statement was a complete fabrication.
Yeah, it's just, it's really, it's fascinating to watch him just play fast and loose with the facts.
And he just keeps going.
Like you think that you would do your best to get this right.
Senate-Origined Bill Dies In Committee00:07:44
And if you don't have all the details, say, I'm sorry, I'm leaving that in the hands of the courts.
I don't even have all the details there.
Fine.
But there's another layer here because Jason Kenney can't wash his hands of this and say, ah, it's independent judiciary.
The government does not get involved with the courts.
That's not the case here because Pastor Art's troubles subsequent to his troubles with feeding the homeless and the poor in downtown Calgary, what the government called an illegal public gathering, ridiculous.
But it stems from his contempt of a court order stems from a court order sought by the government.
It wasn't sought by police.
It was enforced by police.
It wasn't sought by prosecutors.
It was, again, enforced by the police.
It was sought by Alberta Health Services.
Alberta Health Services, an agency of the government under Tyler Chandro at the time, Health Minister Tyler Chandrow, who was under the premier of this province, Jason Kenney, went to court, got a secret court order restraining the rights of peaceful protest of all Albertans and named several people in that court order by name.
And then they also got a court order demanding entry into Pastor Art's church.
That came from the government.
So Jason Kenney cannot wash his hands and say, oh, this is the independent judiciary.
It's got nothing to do with us.
This has everything to do with us.
That court order or those court orders set off the cascade of events where we are today.
And what's worse, too, is I spoke with Nathaniel Pobloski when I was at the Saturday Freedom Rally, and he'll tell you very clearly that the government are the independent judiciary, I guess, I'm not sure, but they're basically keeping Arthur's legal defense in the dark for the most part, at least.
They're not laying out the facts.
They're not doing what they need to do for Arthur's legal defense, what they were supposed to be doing.
So it is unfortunate.
And it does seem like this is being done in a vindictive manner rather than a neutral one, which expected the law to be upheld in a neutral way.
It's just, this is the law.
We're going to go through the proceedings.
We're going to figure out what happens.
But that doesn't seem to be the case with this.
Olivia whispers in my ear that we have some chats to get to.
I know that we were supposed to check on those at every 15 minutes, but then we were talking and then we forgot.
And I apologize to anybody who was expecting us to get to those sooner, the way I promised.
I broke my promise.
I'm sorry.
We've got one from Paul Otto Newman.
Let's just get this out of the way here.
We've got one from Paul Otto Newman.
Hi, guys.
Does Rebel News plan to have somebody up in Fort McMurray tomorrow to cover the by-election?
The results could be a barometer for the leadership review in April.
I think the results are going to be a barometer for the leadership review in April, and Brian Gene's going to win handily.
I think I might cover them just sort of out of the corner of my eye.
I might live tweet them.
But I think it's clearly a shoe-in.
And Brian Gene is winning this by-election as a UCP candidate, running against the UCP, running against Jason Kenney.
He basically, his entire platform is: I'm going to win, and then I'm going to challenge Jason Kenney for the leadership.
It's really been fascinating to watch.
And he won that nomination as he won the nomination against Jason Kenney's hand-picked candidate on a platform of getting rid of Jason Kenney.
So that should tell you something about that leadership review coming up in exactly a month, I think, a month and two days.
So it's very interesting.
I think Jason Kenney's in a lot of trouble.
I think it's going to be a very tight race.
Yeah, you might be running out of time.
We'll see.
Well, that's the thing.
If they are going to change leaders, they got to do it right away, right away.
They're running out of runway on this because the NDP, they're just running the same old, same old Rachel Notley.
She's just there, she's back.
She's just going to run again.
They never do anything new or interesting over the NDP.
So, like I said, if Jason Kenney, if the party's going to change leaders, they have to do it immediately because they're headed into an election campaign.
Bappis gives us a buck.
Hey, Rebel, your live stream keeps freezing.
Oh, I don't know.
Things seemed fine on my end, except I had a little bit of a Skype lag, but sorry to hear that.
Yankee sends us a buck and sends and says, just testing this.
You know, there's no escaping Yankee talking.
He just gets in the live stream and talks to you.
He gets on the Skype calls and talks to.
Just kidding, Yankee.
You're the best.
Joyful from the Heart gives us a buck.
Hey, Sheila and Sidney, do you know Canadians can submit a claim if they were injured by the COVID jab?
And then she sends a link to vaccineinjurysupport.ca.
I'm not sure if that's an official website.
So don't, but I'm just reading the chat.
Fraser says, Bill S223 is currently waiting for third reading in the Senate.
If you're not vaccinated, you will not receive EICPPOHS social services pension that you paid into.
Okay, Bill 233.
The reason it says S, a lot of people, this is a sinister bill, don't get me wrong, but I think this is the UBI bill, the universal basic income bill.
And the reason people are freaking out because they're like, oh my gosh, it's already in the Senate.
It's a Senate-originated bill.
So bill, here's a civics lesson.
So bills can originate in either House, in the Senate or the House of Commons.
So because it has an S in the front, it originated in the Senate.
So it'll pass one, two, third reading in the Senate.
Then it goes to committee, and then it goes to the House to pass.
So this might die in committee.
It might go to the House and not pass at all because the basically things that originate in the Senate, there's no accountability.
So they can originate the wildest things ever because they don't have voters to answer for.
So it's always some sort of liberal crank.
A lot of times, their pet project, they originate those as Senate bills and then they go through third reading in the Senate because nobody cares.
And then they end up in committee and they often die or they end up in going to the House of Commons.
And then the MPs who are, yeah, so Livable Basic.
And this is the UBI bill.
So things sometimes will go to the House and the House MPs are thinking, holy smokes, my constituents are going to think that I'm absolutely insane if I touch this with a 10-foot poll and things will often die there.
And so a lot of the Senate originated bills end up as Senate busy work.
Don't get me wrong.
This is sinister.
And the liberals, CERB basically was UBI.
I think CERB was the test for UBI.
So this one could get much further than other Senate originated bills, especially with the support of the NDP who have been rattling the chains for UBI for a very long time.
Kids and Hockey Talk00:11:06
So we'll keep a very close eye on this.
But just because it's in the Senate doesn't mean that it's going to be passed like tomorrow.
This bill, because it has an S in the front, means it's a Senate-originated one.
So if it has a C, that means Commons originated.
And if it has an S, that means Senate-originated bill.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
Okay, let's keep going.
Aaron Burton, 32, gives us 20 bucks.
Wow, thanks so much.
That's very generous.
I found Rebel last summer and I've never looked back.
It's so nice seeing real news, and I wish I'd found you sooner.
Keep up the amazing work and thank you to you all.
You know, we have a lot of new people here.
People who maybe had heard things about us in the mainstream media, but never bothered to like check us out for themselves.
And a lot of them were looking for alternative viewpoints on COVID lockdowns and found us that way.
A lot of people who, you know, were not COVID skeptical at the very beginning because they didn't know anything about it.
And China lies.
And so I was one of those people where I was like, this thing is way worse, way worse than China's even telling us because China is a bunch of liars.
But then, you know, you change your viewpoint as more evidence rolls in.
And there are a lot of those people who have come to us that way and we welcome all viewpoints.
And I think generally our viewpoint on most things is leave people alone and let them make up their own minds and let them think what they want.
I think that's a viewpoint on issues that sort of transcends politics.
My politics are standing alone.
I just want to thank you as well, because unlike most media outlets, it's because of our viewers that we exist.
So likewise, just want to thank everyone who's watching and everyone who stays tuned.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, if we weren't doing a good job, we would know about it right away.
We wouldn't exist because we don't have bailouts propping us up when we get everything wrong, CBC, including at least two stories about the convoy that they had to completely retract.
But anyway, AMT60, a buck.
Politicians never apologize for any wrongs they do.
Look at our PM who walks out of parliament when an apology was demanded by a Jewish conservative member.
All our politicians are pathetic and many under the World Economic Forum.
Yeah, that was Melissa Lanceman, whom we've been critical of in the past, but I'm pretty sure that she's not standing with neo-Nazis.
And I'm pretty sure that the convoyers weren't neo-Nazis, nor were they Russians, CBC, by the way.
Sorry, go ahead.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but is it not a narcissistic trait to never apologize?
I think you're right.
And, you know, it's interesting to watch Justin Trudeau try to rewrite his own history.
You know, he's accusing other people of being sexist, misogynistic, homophobic, blackface groper.
I'm not sure that that's a fair criticism.
You know, when his MPs, I think it was Mark Gerritson, who is, again, a lot of contenders for the dumbest MP out there, but he's right up there.
He's giving Seamus O'Reagan run for his money these days.
Maybe you can bring up that tweet where they are so threatened by Pierre Polyev's candidacy for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada that they're digging up Pierre Polyev's like high school yearbook photos, which make me like him more because he's in his high school yearbook photos, he's complaining about the welfare state.
And I was like, he clued into the welfare state a hell of a lot sooner than I did.
Smart guy.
What you're telling me he's been consistent with his ideology over the years since he was a youngster.
You're trying to make me not like him for that.
I think that's great.
But Mark Gerritson should maybe be more concerned about the yearbook photos of his boss.
Because how many blackface yearbook photos does your boss have to have before you're like, ah, ah, maybe he is a white supremacist?
I don't know.
Something to think about.
AMT60 gives us a buck.
My sister has a paralegal in her freedom group and said that not getting CPP or pension, et cetera, is not true unless government changes it because I was worried about it as I'm retired.
I think that's in regards to Bill S233.
Yeah, I'm not sure what the vaccination requirements are in that bill.
In my brief reading of that bill, it was simply about the creation of a universal basic income, which is, of course, a disincentive to work and be productive for everybody, including the people who are currently working, because you're like, why am I working?
I can just get UBI, like those people I'm already paying to not work.
It's a huge disincentive to the economy and it would be catastrophic, absolutely catastrophic.
But that doesn't mean the liberals won't do it because if it's a bad economic idea, that's never stopped them.
Look at the carbon tax.
They're raising that in 14 days, 15 days, 16 days.
Prices at the pump are out of control.
And they're like, you know what would help?
Raising the prices of the pump with the carbon tax.
Just buy an electric car.
It's fine.
I think that's all of our chats.
We should get to one last thing.
And it is sneaky Patrick Brown.
Over the weekend, he announced that he is running for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada because why won't he just go away?
Just go away, Patrick Brown, stop.
But he doesn't have anybody in his life who's telling him to stop doing this thing.
So he's going to run for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada.
And I think we have that clip from Efron where, again, talk about a politician with little to no self-awareness when he's talking about how he was anti-lockdown, which is crazy.
He was so hard locked down.
Anyways, maybe we can roll that.
And when COVID locked down threatened the freedoms of families and businesses and the mental health of Canadians, I was one of the only big city mayors to speak up and demand an end to restrictions.
And when COVID lockdowns threatened the freedoms of I can't the gall of this guy.
He was the guy who put up chain link fences around soccer parks outside.
And then when that wasn't enough to keep the little kids from playing, he put private security guards at the parks to keep the little kids from playing soccer, all the while keeping an ice service in a publicly funded arena where just him and his stupid friends could play hockey while criminalizing soccer for little kids and militarizing the parks.
The gall of this guy.
He wasn't anti-lockdown.
He was Dr. Lockdown.
Yeah, I know that that report from David Menzies was quite something to see.
It is truly incredible.
I guess it would be elitism where it is one rule for thee and one rule for me.
And I think he'd probably like to keep it that way.
Although right now, it does seem popular to advocate for no lockdowns and advocate for the free movement of people within our society.
So it seems more like he's just playing to what he hears might sound good as opposed to what he actually believes in.
Yeah.
I mean, we're not all hard of remembering.
The people of Brampton are not hard of remembering.
They know about the millions of taxpayer dollars that Patrick Brown spent keeping little kids out of parks outside during the early days of the pandemic.
When we caught him at an arena.
Playing hockey.
When he told all the little kids you can't play hockey, and then his big excuse, he did exactly what Justin Trudeau does when he gets caught doing something wrong or when people try to speak truth to power.
Instead of saying yeah, i'm really sorry, I did that, and uh, let's let everybody play hockey, let's pull down the fences at the parks.
This is crazy, i'm a hypocrite.
Instead of just like completely owning his mistake, he said, ah, those people who caught me, they're a bunch of far-right extremists, so disregard what they're saying.
Disregard your own eyeballs watching that video.
Disregard it because you shouldn't like the people who are saying it about me, which is exactly what Justin Trudeau does all the time.
It's such a Trudeau thing to do, get caught doing something, get criticism and then attack the messenger instead of owning up to your own mistakes.
Very Trudeau.
Yeah, this video here.
Oh, he's just checking out the rink with his hockey bag that had his name on it.
I wish there was a way oh sorry, I wish there was a way to quantify how much damage was done to our children because of actions like this.
It's it's truly an incredible thing, and for how long it had gone on, for I I can only imagine how hard it was for our younger ones but um, I don't think that's something that's fully been quantified, even though it is known.
Yeah, I think that this will be one of the great crimes against young people.
Um, I think of a generation.
What was done to little kids in the name of public health, for a disease that hardly harmed them at all?
Speech delays, socialization delays?
Um, young athletes having their dreams stolen from them, or young athletes being injured because of a medicine that they were forced to take to do the thing that they loved and i'm dancing around the words here so we don't get kicked off of Youtube.
Um, and the teachers who are still trying to enforce these things be above and beyond the will of parents who are saying, leave my kids alone.
We have hypochondriac parents in a battle, or hypochondriac teachers in a battle of will with the parents, who are really the ones in charge of the education system and of their children.
Thanking Viewers, Ripping Up Rules00:02:17
Um, they just won't give up.
They won't give this power back easily, that's for sure.
Um, I think we are all caught up Olivia, unless i'm uh missing out on some chats.
Okay, we're good.
Um, we are at 11 o'clock here in Alberta.
Uh, one o'clock in the center of the Universe in Toronto.
I want to thank you Sid, for filling in for Adam on such short notice.
You did a great job um, and great work again over the weekend.
I pointed it out in the staff meeting this morning, but you really ripped it up this weekend.
You were the right guy in the right place on the right stories.
I want to thank everybody at.
I want to thank everybody from home.
Gotta laugh after i'll let you go.
I just wanted to thank our viewers as well.
Yeah, Yeah.
Yeah.
That's right.
We don't do anything without the support of our viewers.
Good grief, the Skype lag.
Okay.
I want to thank all of our viewers for tuning in.
I want to thank everybody who pitched in to keep the lights on here at Rebel News.
Thank you to Olivia and the producers in the office and to the web team who let you know when we're going live.
And I'm back here tomorrow, I think, with David Menzies.
And as David Menzies always says, stay sane.
There will be no occupation in Victoria, based on what I've heard from Delmanic and the city of Victoria.
And I would just say to these people, goodness me, get a hobby.
Find something else to do with your time.
We are removing restrictions at a pace that is consistent with the work we've done for the past two years.
And 94% of adults in British Columbia are vaccinated.
So we are spending an awful lot of time with a small group of people who seem to have nothing better to do with their time but to drive around in circles honking their horns.
I wish they'd take some time to watch television and see the evening news about real tragedies and real disruptions in freedom that are going on in Europe right now.
Give your head a shake.
Find a better way to take your energies and put it to positive outcomes.
That's my recommendation.
And I'm hopeful that some of the people who were planning to come here will take that to heart and do the right thing.