Ezra Levant critiques Canada’s Conservative leadership race, calling it a chance to unite disillusioned voters—former Greens wary of big pharma, working-class victims of lockdowns, and truckers dismissed as racist by Jagmeet Singh. He praises Roman Baber for defying Ford’s lockdowns but notes his limited name recognition, while warning against Patrick Brown’s past hypocrisy. Levant highlights Pierre Poilievre’s eloquence and media resistance, contrasting with Scheer’s and O’Toole’s perceived betrayals of conservative values. Rebel News’ 400M February views underscore its influence in exposing COVID policies like BC’s vaccine mandates, which left thousands unemployed despite staffing crises, and Senate Bill S-233 linking pensions to shots. The episode suggests the party’s future hinges on boldly aligning with grassroots skepticism of government overreach rather than mainstream media appeasement. [Automatically generated summary]
The Conservative Party leadership race is in full swing.
I'll give you my thoughts on the candidates so far and what Rebel News' role will be in the whole thing.
By the way, I really want you to get Rebel News Plus.
That's the video version of this podcast because I want to show you clips today, and you really have to see them.
I'm going to show you Rebel News reporters in the Conservative Party leadership candidates events.
And I want you to see it.
I don't want you to just hear it.
Go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe.
It's $8 a month.
In addition to my daily podcast in video form, you get shows every week from David Menzie, Sheila Gunread, Andrew Chapatios, and the new show called Misunderstood with Nat and Cat.
So there's a lot there.
Just go to RebelNewsPlus.com.
All right, here's today's show.
Tonight, I'll give you my thoughts on the Conservative Party of Canada's leadership contest.
It's the Ides of March, and you're watching the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say is government.
But why?
It's because it's my bloody right to do so.
I've started following the Conservative Party of Canada's leadership race.
I have to tell you, for the last two years, I have not looked to politicians, to elected officials, to political parties for any help during the greatest crisis, I suppose, in this country since the Second World War.
I have found no help from any governing party or opposition party that sat in a parliament.
There were some independent or rogue politicians, we'll mention a few of them later, who were helpful, but no actual partisan entity came to the aid of citizens.
They were all co-opted along with big pharma, big government, and big tech.
It was terrible.
You know, the Bible says, put not your trust in princes.
I think that's the sort of thing they mean.
If you bet on politicians, you'll always be let down.
If I can defend politicians, though, for a minute, a politician has no chance of winning if the culture, if the dominant media environment is hostile.
We love to daydream about what would it look like if Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan, who are the Thatchers or the Reagan of our time, you know, I think if either of them was here, they would have a tough time because they had some cultural allies.
They had some media allies.
The battlefield had been shaped a bit.
I don't know if they could win in this environment.
When Stephen Harper was replaced in the 2017 Conservative Party election race, I think there was a brief moment where there were high hopes that after Harper and Trudeau going from third party to first party, maybe there's a chance for the Conservative Party to renovate, to rejuvenate itself.
It was such a close race, you recall.
And in the sort of wacky point system, I'm not quite sure if we know who truly won, but under the rules of the system in place, Andrew Scheer in 2017 beat Maxime Bernier by less than 1%.
And it was such a momentous decision, those few decimals of a percent.
It wasn't that long before Scheer essentially pushed Bernier out, or maybe you could say Bernier jumped.
But that led to a fissure and the creation of the People's Party of Canada, which even though it has not been successful in electing MPs, has been successful in taking some votes and energy away from the Conservative Party.
Now, I'm glad that they're out there saying the things they are, but it is a kind of split in the right.
And I think that having someone like Maxine Bernier within the bosom of the Conservative Party would have helped it find its confidence, helped it find its ideological conservativeness.
Instead, we had Blandrew Scheer, who really sold out, I think, his Conservative birthright, all the key platforms of the Harper Conservative Party, especially the carbon tax.
Scheer commanded that his own people support him, for example, in approving of the United Nations climate policy.
There were so many moments when Andrew Scheer had to choose between his own party and the media party, and he chose the media party.
Well, Andrew Scheer lost the election.
If Andrew Scheer could not beat Justin Trudeau with the facts that we knew, with the blackface scandal, with the other scandals, there was no chance he would beat him in better times for Trudeau.
He was replaced, but the 2020 leadership campaign for the Conservative Party of Canada was in many ways even more lackluster.
The two leading candidates, Aaron O'Toole and Peter McKay, in many ways indistinguishable from each other, again eschewing the Conservative wing of the party, both of them agreeing to a platform that would basically undo the conservative part of it in the hopes that that would woo liberals in Eastern Canada.
It simply did not work.
Aaron O'Toole did throw conservatives on the bus.
And while that reduced party support in the West, it did not include gains in the East.
I am so glad that they're all gone.
And I think that under Andrew Scheer and Aaron O'Toole especially, the Conservative Party simply stopped being conservative.
It started to support cancel culture within itself.
Think of all the people who were thrown out of the Conservative Party of Canada because they had a conservative opinion that wasn't just perfectly in line with the leaders.
Derek Sloan being an example of that.
Jim Karahellios, an example of someone who was thrown out of the party.
The carbon tax, I've already mentioned it.
And in fact, the lack of courage to challenge the lockdowns, even if you didn't want to challenge it on medical grounds, on economic grounds, on freedom grounds, not a peep from the so-called Conservative Party for two years.
And I think the worst part of conservatism in the last few years in Canada has been the acceptance of cancel culture in the form of censorship.
That's the broadest kind of canceling, isn't it?
You can cancel an individual person, but imagine canceling entire schools of thought, censoring entire media platforms.
That sounds like Justin Trudeau because that is what he does.
But I want to remind you of this terrible heritage critic under Aaron O'Toole.
His name is Alain Reyes, and he's no longer in that position.
But look at what he said on behalf of Conservative Party members on behalf of Aaron O'Toole in debates in Parliament about the government's role of censorship.
I've shown this to you before.
In short, he wants more censorship faster.
He said this many times.
It wasn't a flub or a gaffe or a fluke.
But we don't see it in the bill.
There's nothing in this bill that allows for the regulation of social media or platforms like YouTube.
And it's clear, we would have liked to have seen this in the bill.
The minister even says we have to find a way of preventing hate speech, conspiracy theories, and fake news that's shared.
But right now in the bill, unfortunately, we won't even be able to amend it in that aspect and because it's simply absent from the bill.
Do you see what I mean about not investing my hopes in a political party?
Who would support that kind of party?
Who would support a party that really did very little for ordinary Canadians over the last two years other than take their pay raises every April?
In fact, I don't know if you recall, but MPs are getting another pay raise in two weeks.
And although some of them claim they don't take it, I don't believe them, do you?
But I feel like the ouster of Aaron O'Toole, which came on the heels of the trucker convoy, Aaron O'Toole, ironically, the first casualty politically of the trucker convoy, again, the truckers accomplishing what no one else had done until that point.
And I think we have a miraculous and unexpected opportunity to refurbish the Conservative Party.
And I have to tell you, I'm feeling pretty good about it.
And I would not have said those words short weeks ago.
I'm going to tell you the candidates who have expressed their interest in running, there may be others.
In alphabetical order, Roman Babber, who is an Ontario MPP, so he's a provincial-level politician, very careful, very thoughtful, not wild in any way, put forward principled and fact-based objections to Doug Ford's extreme lockdowns.
And by principled and fact-based, for example, he would publish this letter to the Premier where he showed how ICU capacity was actually not in a crisis at all, and that really proving with the government's own statistics that there was no need for a lockdown.
Well, he was obviously kicked out of thin-skinned Doug Ford's caucus, as were several others.
I think Roman Babber, even though he was made into an independent MPP, was one of the very, very few governing politicians who actually stood by his principles.
And I'm lucky to say that he happens to be my elected official in my neighborhood.
And I think he was a tremendous credit to the anti-lockdown pro-freedom case.
And I'll be forever grateful to him for that.
I mean, seriously, what's your local politician's excuse for not having done it?
I'm not sure if he has a big chance at all, in fact, because I don't think he's well known outside Ontario.
I don't think he has a national team.
But I'm glad he's running to bring that anti-lockdown pro-freedom voice.
And I certainly hope that he then converts that into a run for the federal parliament under whoever does succeed.
So I'm really delighted that Roman Babber is running.
I think that's excellent.
The second candidate, alphabetically, is Patrick Brown.
You probably know Patrick Brown because let's call it Spade a Spade.
He is a disgraced Conservative activist who, through just sheer organizational ability, managed to win the leadership of the Ontario PC party until he was defenestrated for his sexual antics involving young women that he would bring home from bars.
He was a notorious womanizer, and his party heard more and more and more stories, and they finally threw him out.
Well, he was born again as the mayor of Brampton, Ontario, which is quite a trick considering he did not live there until he chose to run for their mayor, which again speaks to his ability to organize.
So although Patrick Brown is ideologically untrustworthy, has tremendous problems with moral character, the guy knows how to hustle and he shouldn't be counted out.
I watched his speech that he announced his intentions to run over the weekend, and he certainly has some good advisors.
I mean, in it, he basically apologized for the manner in which he promoted the carbon tax in the past, and incredibly, given his role in canceling others in the party who are not like him, claimed that he is against cancel culture himself.
I want to show you a couple of clips from his speech, the only problem of which is it's not true, but boy, it was nice to hear him tell those lies.
Here's a little bit of Patrick Brown.
When the media tried to make me cancel culture's latest victim by smearing me with false allegations, I fought back and won.
And even when this battle was still raging, the people of Brampton stood behind me and lifted me up and chose me to fight for them as mayor.
I have always fought for a justice system that works for victims, not just the criminals.
When a serial pedophile, Madeline Harks, moved into Brampton, a monster who had over 60 victims, over 200 offenses, I led the charge that resulted in the police putting this perpetrator back behind bars and started a national conversation on protecting the rights of a community over the rights of a repeat dangerous offender.
When my constituent, Darlin Henry, was attacked in a local park and was re-traumatized by her assaulter being granted bail, I worked with her to build the national campaign for bail reform.
I have fought criminals and gangs who bring illegally imported guns into the GTA.
When everyone else was silent against legislation that bans religious symbols, I fought to protect religious freedom.
You might wonder why I have a bean in my bottom about Patrick Brown.
The real answer is that he's not truly conservative and he's been this lifelong political grifter.
But it was his encounter with David Menzies when we heard that lockdown Patrick Brown, who had enforced one of the strictest lockdowns in North America, was secretly playing hockey with his pals at a public arena that was closed to children.
Our David Menzies went to that arena and caught Patrick Brown red-handed.
The way he lied about it in the moment and the way he lied about it afterwards and had Davis charged with trespass is a disgrace that no one should ever forget.
I just want to play you that classic moment when Patrick Brown was caught sneaking into a public arena as mayor to play hockey with his friends when he had banned hockey for the children of Brampton.
Take a look at this.
Holy mackerel, I think I see Patrick Brown himself.
Patrick BrownCaughtRed-Handed00:17:11
Oh, hey, how you doing?
Mr. Brown, right?
David Menzies with Rebel News.
You're in a city facility?
What's that?
You're in a city facility?
Yeah, so are you.
Yeah.
So are you playing hockey here?
No, I'm just coming to check in our facility.
So I'm going to check you.
You're not supposed to be here, actually.
We were told that you play pickup here.
Mr. Brown, how come the kids in Brampton can only practice sports, but your buddies can play hockey?
So I don't know why you are harassing people in the city of Brampton, but you shouldn't be.
Oh, who's harassing who?
Your guys handed out 122 bylaw violations in one week.
Mr. Brown, why is there a hockey game going on in this arena?
I thought you're only allowed to practice sports, not play them.
And who is paying the $1,000 a day, Mr. Brown, for this rink?
Mr. Brown, are these taxpayer dollars being used for your buddies to play hockey on this rink?
Or are you paying it?
Or perhaps we'll lead Solomon.
So Mr. Brown, why is there one law for me and one law for thee in this city?
Mr. Brown.
That was absolutely great journalism by David Menzies.
Just wonderful.
And I should tell you that although David Menzies was arrested by police, put in the back of a police car and charged with trespass, those charges were thrown out because it was just a political.
And the fact that the mayor had five police cars swarm David Menzies and issued that charge shows how corrupt Patrick Brown really is.
Other than that, great guy.
Other than that, he's just fine.
Another candidate who I would put on the left-hand side of the spectrum, the progressive side of the party, as they would say, is a liberal named Jean Charé.
He was one of the two remaining conservatives after Kim Campbell was wiped out in 1993.
That's how long Jean Charais has been around.
He was one of the youngest MPs back then, and suddenly it was just him and one MP from Atlantic Canada, the Reform Party in the Bloc, Héme Cois, having devoured the rest of that Conservative Party.
It wasn't until Stephen Harper came to cobble the pieces back together.
Jean Charé was recruited to run as the provincial liberal in Quebec.
And of course, when he joined the provincial liberals, people said, oh, no, he's a Tory.
Well, after being the Liberal Premier of Quebec, he wants to come back and run the Conservative Party of Canada.
And so the same accusations fly.
Now, Jean Charé had a softer launch than Roman Babber or Patrick Brown.
He sort of had a Zoom, like a low-fidelity, low-quality Zoom launch.
But put aside that technical aspect, his platform is simple.
He says, whatever else you think about him, he can win.
And isn't that the most important thing as opposed to an endless future of Justin Trudeau?
Here's an excerpt from his video launch.
Again, put aside the low production values.
It is sort of a chuckle.
But listen to the man himself.
I'm running as a conservative, period, not a hyphenated conservative.
And I'm running based on the values that I've lived by all my life when I was in government.
And that means fiscal conservatism, market-based economy, policies that generate economic growth so that we can have choices, support for families, a practice of federalism that respects the jurisdiction of the provinces, the respect of the rule of law and our institutions.
Those are the things that I believe in as a conservative period, not a hyphenated conservative.
I tell you, that is similar to the promise that Aaron O'Toole made, which is I'm going to be a little bit more liberal people.
I'm going to support the carbon tax.
I'm going to stay away from those populist right-wingers.
I'm going to ban rebel news.
But you have to understand that's just the price we pay for power.
So, yeah, I'm not going to put the conservative ideology into office, but put a little water in your wine.
It's better to have a sort of good conservative winning than a super good conservative losing.
That was the promise that Aaron O'Toole made.
Aaron O'Toole couldn't keep that promise.
I think that's essentially what Jean Charé is saying.
I'm built to win.
I am a winner.
And he can point to winning.
And he was the Premier of Quebec.
Now, that may dazzle Anglophones and Westerners and Ontarians like me, but interesting enough, I saw these polls from the province of Quebec that show Jean Charé is not popular in Quebec.
Just because a guy's from somewhere doesn't mean they like him.
They got rid of him because they were sort of sick of him.
According to these polls, and you can see they're en français, Pierre Polyev does better than Jean Charé.
Jean-Cheré is not setting things on fire.
Now it's early days, but that's an interesting rebuttal.
Now, the fourth candidate going in alphabetical order by last name is our friend Leslie Lewis, and I was delighted to have her on the show the other day.
I like her.
And by the way, it was a delight to have her on our show so early, and she kicked off her campaign in 2020 on our show, too.
So I regard her as a true conservative and an ally.
I'm not sure if she is yet of a national stature that could win.
But she's stronger.
And I mean, one of my criticisms, if I was candid, of her when she was running the first time, was she wasn't yet seasoned.
She was an accomplished lawyer and a business person and had an excellent story to tell, but she hadn't yet served time in Parliament.
Well, now she has for a few years, and I think she's getting a little more savvy and a little bit more seasoned.
So I think it's wonderful to see her running again, and I'm very glad she is.
Now, the last candidate going by alphabetical order is Pierre Polyev, someone I have known for more than 20 years.
In fact, I don't know if you know this, but when I was a young man, just of 29 years, I ran for parliament briefly myself.
When Preston Manning stepped down, I sought the nomination in Calgary Southwest for what was then called the Canadian Alliance.
And I won that nomination, and I started a campaign.
I don't know if you know this, but I was actually putting up campaign lawn signs around Calgary Southwest.
It was my home riding.
I lived there.
My parents lived there.
My grandparents lived there.
It was home.
But then five weeks before the by-election, again, Calgary Southwest, one of the safest ridings in all of Canada for a conservatives going to be shoe-in.
Well, five weeks before the vote, Stockwell Day, who was the leader of the Canadian Alliance, was replaced by Stephen Harper.
And Stephen Harper did not have a seat in Parliament, and he needed speedy and safe access to Parliament.
Well, listen, Calgary Southwest, five weeks away.
And so I grudgingly stepped aside.
I did not want to at the time.
I think it was probably a blessing in disguise, although it was very well disguised back then.
So back then, Pierre Polyev was, if you can believe it, as a young man, was the communications director on my campaign.
Well, he's certainly gone a long way since then.
He's the member of parliament for the Greater Ottawa Area Riding.
And I think he's become one of the most eloquent conservative spokesmen on very important issues that are somewhat complex.
His grasp of finance matters, of monetary policy, are very impressive.
I don't think that, I mean, I think he outmatches and his caliber of analysis is much stronger than the finance minister, for example.
And I think he can go toe-to-toe with officials.
I think he's actually a very bright guy who has a strong command of financial issues.
And what impresses me more is he's not shy to push back against the media party.
He does it vigorously, not with a meanness or a cruelty that makes it personal, like maybe Trump might do or maybe I might do.
But he lets it be known that he is not going to bend the knee to the media party, which is frankly, I think, the central characteristic of Andrew Scheer and Aaron O'Toole.
They were scared.
They were shell-shocked.
They had lost their mojo.
They had lost their courage and confidence.
And so all it would take would be a CBC reporter to say, boo!
And they would panic and do whatever they were told.
Andrew Scheer and Aaron O'Toole would sell out their own party for the temporary approval of a CBC or Toronto Star journalist every time.
I don't think Pierre Polyev is that way.
It's interesting.
I told you the polls showing that Pierre frankly has a chance against Justin Trudeau.
Polls don't yet show the Conservatives winning, but it's early days.
It's fascinating to me to watch the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star, two newspapers that despise conservatives, come out almost every day with advice on which conservatives to choose.
It makes me chuckle a bit.
Would you take advice on who to lead your party from someone who wants to destroy your party?
I don't know, but full marks for audacity to the Globe and the Star and the CBC for giving advice to Conservative Party members.
One of the reasons that I'm enjoying the race so far, besides the fact that I feel like finally, we've got some real conservatives in the race, Roman Baber, quality guy.
Leslie Lewis, my favorite, Pierre Pollia, perhaps the strongest winner of them all.
And there may yet be a couple more entrants, is I feel like we're having a real choice here.
I mean, I think we did have a choice between Andrew Scheer and Maxime Bernier, but you really have it starkly put.
If you loved the last two years of lockdown enforcement, well, vote for Patrick Brown.
He was one of the most brutal enforcers out there.
If you hated the last two years of lockdown enforcement, well, maybe you would support Roman Baber, the candidate of all of them who actually stood up and lost his seat with the government because of it.
Maybe you'd be waiting for Pierre to make his move, to take his chance.
I feel like there's some real candidates that someone could get behind here, keeping in mind the biblical warning against putting trust in princes.
So I'm excited about the fact that we have this contest, because Aaron O'Toole wasn't ready to let go until the truckers kicked him out.
I'm excited about the fact that there are some quality candidates there with some real differences of opinion.
And I'm also excited that Rebel is involved because even since 2020, the last leadership race, Rebel News has grown tremendously.
I think I told you that in the month of February alone, and the number is so staggering it's even hard to believe, that amongst all our media platforms, including social media, Twitter, YouTube, Rumble, Instagram, email openings, things like that, in the month of February, we had 400 million views and impressions.
400 million in one month.
That's about the same traffic we used to get in a year.
Rebel news has been so large during the lockdown crisis, during the pandemics, and then especially during the convoy reports.
We really have introduced ourselves to Canadians who maybe didn't even know us before.
And to the world too, by the way, you might know that I myself and many of our staff were on foreign news, including the biggest channels in the United States, on Tucker Carlson's show, for example, and, you know, Alexa Lavoie on other channels, including in Germany.
So Rebel News is so much larger, and we were really, for the last two years, we've been one of the few media outlets people can trust to do anything but read the official narrative line on the pandemic, that Rebel News is in a different place in 22 than we were in 2020.
And the Conservative Party, having lost two elections in a row, is in a different place.
And I think just as there's a very decisive question to be put to Conservative Party members, Rebel News is not just a medium, it's not just a way to see the world, it's an issue in itself.
Like I said, Andrew Scheer and Aaron O'Toole both tried to cancel Rebel News.
They were so afraid that the mean girls in the media party would say, don't talk to Rebel News.
Why are you talking to Rebel News?
That they didn't dare.
And in so doing, not only did they ignore millions of truly conservative Canadians, including voters in their own party, which demoralized the base, but they signaled that with the merest puff of resistance, you could deter them.
They weren't confident or courageous that they would surrender the first zephyr or breeze of resistance.
In other words, watching how easily Andrew Scheer and Aaron O'Toole were scared off of simply talking to Rebel News.
I mean, sure, it denied them the access to our Rebel News viewers, but it signaled how weak they were and how easily manipulated they were.
And we know it's true.
Aaron O'Toole never resisted in any substantive way the lockdowns.
If you can't even resist some mean girls in the press gallery saying, don't talk to Rebel, how are you going to resist the combined might of big tech, big farm, a big government?
You can't.
And we see this already.
Rebel News has attended every political event that we could find.
For example, you saw that Leslie Lewis was on my show the other day, but our reporter was a welcome guest at Roman Babber's launch and put some questions to the man.
Here's a little reminder of that.
You were speaking about fighting cancel culture and deplatforming and bringing a good civil political discourse back to Canada.
What concrete steps do you plan to take to actually do that in our political landscape?
We have to be welcoming of folks that feel that they did not have a home in the Conservative Party of Canada.
And that goes in particular for folks that are disillusioned with the party for not standing up for them in connection with lockdowns and passports.
So I think we need to start to have a healthy conversation.
We need to reach out to young people.
We need to reach out to new immigrants, new Canadians, communities that we typically don't do too well with.
And I believe that I'm in a good position to do that.
I did not hesitate to be the only mainstream politician in Canada, elected politician, to speak against the lockdowns when it was very unpopular to do so.
About 15 months ago, I decided that I wasn't going to be able to continue and watch some of the difficulties that families and children were experiencing against the background of a public health exercise that probably should have been conducted slightly better.
COVID is in serious infection, but we should have focused protection.
We should have protected long-term care homes where most of the risk is and built hospital capacity.
So speaking out when others refuse to do so is something that I bring to the table.
Canadians will always know where I stand.
What a delight to be there alongside all the other media treated normally.
That is how it should be.
We were even at Patrick Brown's launch.
It was a bit crowded, but we were there the whole time.
We went right in and reported on it.
Here's a short clip of Lincoln Jay there.
So I want to ask the people of Brampton here today why they should trust Patrick Brown as the leader of the Conservative Party.
Let's check it out.
This leadership race needs to ask themselves, can this candidate become prime minister or will they keep our party in the opposition benches?
I don't know about you, but as a late Quong Conservative Party member, I am tired of fighting only Total News.
All right, first of all, what brings you out here today?
Why are you here potentially supporting, not supporting Patrick Brown?
What brings you here today?
Part of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'ah, and we're supporting Patrick Brown.
They told us to support him.
I'm not really supporting him personally, but just because of our mosque is supporting him, so I'm just kind of joining in with them.
I'm a resident of Brampton, living here since the last four years, and haven't seen Mayor Patrick Brown doing a good job.
And as a Canadian, I would like to see him going forward as a leader of Conservative Party and running for the race of our next Prime Minister.
I am here to support Patrick Brown because I've been in the city of Brampton for over 40 years, and essentially Brampton was not on track.
And when Patrick Brown came in, Patrick Brown put Brampton back on track.
And if Patrick Brown could bring Brampton back on track, I do believe that he could bring Canada back on track.
Jean-Chara was in Calgary the other day.
Want Reporters Show the Truth00:06:02
He only had a very brief media scrum, but we were right in the thick of it.
Now he had to rush away, but we were right at the front.
What we did in Huawei, I'm very proud of what we did in helping to sort out the situation of Ms. Mengwanzu.
And I worked with the family of Michael Cohring so that we could free the two Michaels.
And we worked with them very, very closely throughout the whole process.
And I never did anything and would have never done anything that would have been contrary to the interest of my country.
So in fact, we were very, very active in helping resolve that matter and to bring the two Michaels home.
So on that, on the Long Gun Registry, the police forces in Quebec are the ones who said, if you're going to do away with the registry, why don't you just transfer over to us the information that's there?
That's the long and the short of it on that.
It was very simple to do.
You can see by our media flag there, I think that other one there is the Western Standard Online.
Again, Jean Charais knows that if you're going to Calgary and if you turn up your nose at Rebel News, well, why did you go to Calgary at all?
Rebel News is the largest media outlet in Alberta.
It would be very weird to go there, but turn up your nose to Rebel News.
I don't know if we've been to a Pier PolyAve event, but I look forward to it.
My point is that Rebel is in the mix.
And so far, I'm delighted to report that none of the candidates, including Patrick Brown, who once had five police cars come to tackle little old David Menzies, none of them have fallen into the CBC media party trap of renouncing and denouncing the populist streak in the party.
So I'm delighted to see that.
I see our role in this is not particularly endorsing anyone over anyone else.
I mean, I think you can sort of divine my views on the subject, who I'm sympathetic to and who I'm not.
But, you know, our role is to be the keeper of the plane for conservative ideas, to tell the other side of the story, follow the facts wherever they lead, and to stand up for what I think is part of the new coalition for conservative parties.
And here's what I mean by that.
Over the last two years, I've discovered that there are people who used to vote for the Green Party who now don't have a political home.
They were skeptical of big pharma and can't believe their party sold them out.
There are working class people.
You probably have met a number of them, Amazon delivery drivers, people who brought you your DoorDash when you were afraid to go out of the house or whatever.
Working class people who were treated roughly and poorly and unfairly by the lockdowns, who couldn't just work from the cottage via Zoom.
I think there are working class people who were sold out by their own union bosses who refused to stand up to forced vaccinations, suddenly being imposed in collective agreements.
How did the corporations get away with that?
As the saying goes, that both the company and the union are saying the same thing.
One of them is not necessary.
So those people used to vote NDP, but Jagmeet Singh denounced them and denounced the truckers as racist.
Do those people have a home?
I think that the Conservative Party can be a home for this new coalition.
And I think that's something that Rebel News believes in.
I think that how the leaders treat Rebel News is a proxy For things.
This is not just solipsism or narcissism on my part.
Of course, I like it when they talk to Rebel News.
I want to be asking questions on our, I want our reporters to engage.
I want our reporters to show you what's going on.
But Rebel News is actually a kind of political IQ test.
Not so much for intelligence, but for courage.
If you want to lead the Canadian Conservative Party in 2022, are you more obedient to and afraid of journalists at the CBC, the Toronto Star, and the Globe and Mail who never would vote for you and who hate you no matter what, who wish you ill, who don't respect you and don't understand you?
Are you more obedient to their aesthetic tastes and their rejection of rebel news?
Or are you more interested in who watches rebel news, the 400 million impressions in the month of February?
People who simply want the other side of the story and want a fair shake, people who are skeptical of the way we were all treated the last two years and are looking for someone to actually fix things.
I think in the end of the day, it comes down to the fact that we are uncontrolled by them.
There are some other media outlets in the country that I deeply respect.
They're independent media.
But I think the number one thing about rebel news that you know is that we will champion freedom and conservative ideas no matter what.
And if that means putting ourselves offside with the Conservative Party, as we often have been for the last few years, well, so be it.
We are not partisan shills.
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The Toronto Star and the CBC may be controlled by the Liberal Party, but we are controlled by no one, and we owe our allegiance to no one but you.
That's my monologue and my thoughts on the Canadian Conservative Party.
I look forward to following the race.
And I'd like to hear from you who you think should be the winner, who you think has the stuff to not only win the Conservative Party Conference, but beat Justin Trudeau, because Jean Charais is right.
That's what we have to do.
My point is, if you win and beat Justin Trudeau, but you're nothing but an echo of him, well, what was the point?
Stay with us.
Well, as I said earlier, the whole reason the Conservative Party of Canada is having a leadership contest is because the trucker rebellion forced the issue within the Conservative Party caucus.
You had the freighty cats like Aaron O'Toole who didn't want to be seen with such grubby populace.
And then you had the bulk of the party who said, no, we've had enough of you, mate.
And so it is that we're in a leadership race.
Truckers Take Washington?00:09:44
Well, how about in the United States?
I think one issue is that the lockdowns are slowly easing.
Even in blue states, mask rules are falling.
I think that they never had some of the atrocious rules we had in Canada, like the curfew in Quebec.
They didn't have a no-fly law.
But there still are vestiges of the lockdown, including cross-border trucker mandates.
And that brings us to our next guest, our friend Jeremy Lafredo, who has been freelancing with us, embedded within the U.S. trucking convoy.
As you saw, he interviewed Senator Ted Cruz on the subject last week.
He joins us again now via Skype from the cab of a truck in which he is embedded.
Jeremy, great to see you again.
Thanks for joining us.
Nice to see you too.
Thank you.
So you're actually in a truck right now, am I right?
And are you driving or are you parked?
The truck is driving, and I'm a truck.
Yeah, I'm in a truck right now.
Well, that's great.
Tell us a little bit.
Where are you exactly geographically and how many trucks are with you?
And what are you guys doing?
Because, of course, in Ottawa, they just sort of had an encampment.
But I understand that things are a little bit different where you are.
Why don't you give our viewers a bit of an update?
Sure.
So right now I'm on my way back from Washington, D.C. to where the truckers are stationed in Haggerstown, Maryland, about 60 miles outside of the Capitol.
And what happened today was the truckers went in.
They wanted to peacefully stroll through Constitution Avenue and make their voices heard, hunt their horns, show their grievances with the government's policies.
And one by one, we saw police, Capitol Police, they were jumping from exit to exit in front of the truckers and closing down streets as the truckers passed them, closing down exits off the highway into the Capitol.
And this caused disruptions in traffic that we have not seen in Washington since the beginning of the truckers protest.
And it was all caused by the authorities' response to the truckers, not the truckers themselves.
And so this is a giant escalation on behalf of the authorities here in Washington, D.C.
It's fascinating.
That's exactly what they did in Ottawa.
And then they later imported that tactic to Toronto, where they would shut down the entire downtown prophylactically in advance.
I mean, by the way, all the truckers were always peaceful, but they wouldn't even let them drive through.
I think they did this for two reasons.
One is to make it more dramatic.
Oh my God, it's an insurrection.
Lock it down.
But the second is to cause real inconvenience to local citizens and businesses and blame that on the truckers.
They would never say we're doing this at the direction of a police chief or a mayor.
They would say, oh, it's those bloody truckers making us do it.
I've seen this tactic up here, Jeremy.
Yes, that's exactly what we're seeing.
We got waves and thumbs up from many people as we drove today, but when the police would cause traffic, we would see people in their cars giving the trucks middle fingers.
And, you know, totally under the assumption that it was the truckers causing these traffic jams, not the authorities themselves.
So a part of this operation, in my opinion, is to turn public opinion against the truckers, even though they're not doing what the public believes they're doing.
Yeah, well, I mean, the fact that you're parked an hour away from D.C. in a giant area that is of inconvenience to nobody, that's very interesting because, of course, the move on Ottawa, and I can tell you because we had someone embedded in that first convoy, and then I went there in those first few days, it was very organic.
There were some people who called themselves organizers, but I really don't honestly think they were organizing much.
They were just more like mascots, even.
And so a lot of truckers said, well, I'm just going to Ottawa and I'm just going to wait as long as it takes.
And so I think there were just lots of individual, independent-minded guys and gals.
So it wasn't as structured as what you're describing, having a place where everyone goes back to.
In Ottawa, it was more like every truck for itself.
I think, oh, I hear some hunking.
On the one hand, I guess the fact that you guys are organized means there's less chance of a legal fracas like there was in Canada.
But maybe it was the surprise encampments outside parliament.
Maybe it was the sort of street festival feeling that inspired the country.
I don't know.
What's your take on how it went in Ottawa versus how it's going in Washington, D.C.?
Yeah, well, here in Washington, they're unlike Ottawa, there are organizers.
And there is somewhat of a divide between, I've noticed talking to truckers, between what the truckers want and what the organizers are organizing.
So the truckers, you know, want to go to Washington and make their grievances known.
And then you have the organizers who, you know, they want to keep meeting with politicians before they do anything.
They want to keep doing loops on the beltway.
But these truckers, they have families.
They have bills to pay.
They can only stay here so long.
And they just drove across the country and they do want to go to the capital.
So there is a little divide between the strategic and philosophical tactics between the truckers and the organizers.
One thing that's different between now and last month is, of course, the war in Ukraine.
And I think that's taken up a lot of the attention of the political class, the media class, the chattering class, as it's sometimes called.
I mean, it is dramatic and grave, and there's even talk of World War III.
So you can imagine that the attention is there as opposed to the truckers, who I think actually in Canada, they just filled a massive void in the news.
Like that was the thing for everyone to talk about for almost a month.
But it's almost like a light switch was flipped.
And now all people are talking about is Ukraine.
I saw your interview with Ted Cruz, and there was another center in the meeting.
Are the truckers getting through to any legislators?
Are they getting, like, other than the cross-border mandate, is there something they're focusing on?
I just feel like some of the air has gone out of the balloon because a few foundational things have changed.
Correct me if I'm wrong on that.
No, that's a great point.
And you hear a lot of talk about that around here.
The fact that Ukraine is taking up a lot of the media's attention, both on the liberal media and the conservative media, it's pretty universal.
And so the truckers are under the assumption the only way that they will pay attention to us if we go into the Hawk's Nest, Washington, D.C., where all the media is, where all the politicians are, where they will have no choice but to look at us and point their cameras at us on the Capitol lawn or on Constitution Avenue.
But if they don't do that, if they stay here in Maryland, they're under the assumption that there's no incentive for the media to come an hour away and see what's going on.
Yeah, I mean, that's the thing.
They were literally in Canada.
They were parked right outside the parliament buildings, which, by the way, is right where a lot of the media had their offices and even some of their homes.
I mean, an hour away from Washington, D.C., you might as well be a million miles away.
I mean, I can't imagine some of the national Capitol Hill media getting in a vehicle and driving an hour out to the base camp.
I mean, I'm not criticizing the truckers.
I'm just saying logistically, being far away, it's sort of out of sight, out of mind.
Look, I got one more question for you.
And I've been thinking about this a lot because in Canada, the emergency order that Justin Trudeau brought in in the face of the truckers actually allowed him to, believe it or not, seize and freeze bank accounts of truckers and their supporters.
So is there a GoFundMe or a Give Send Go or a crowdfunding campaign for the American truckers?
And if so, how is it going?
And are they worried that it'll either be shut down, like GoFundMe shut down the Canadian truckers, or it'll be frozen like Trudeau did to give send-go.
Is there that financial crowdfunding aspect of this?
Sure.
So that's definitely a fear.
It's mentioned by everyone.
You keep hearing one way or another, you saw what happened in Canada, you saw what happened in Canada.
And so, no, there's not a give, send, go.
There's not a GoFundMe.
The organizers actually were smart enough to open up a 501c3, and they're doing everything without any crowdfunding big tech site.
And they've raised maybe a million dollars, but not the $10 million that you saw in Canada.
Oh, sorry.
Go ahead, Jeremy.
I apologize.
I interviewed you.
I interrupted you for a second.
Just FYI for our Canadian viewers, a 501c3 is what the IRS calls a registered charity or a non-profit.
So just for our Canadians.
Well, listen, Jeremy, I'm glad you're in there, and it's interesting.
It's very different.
The vibe is very different from where you are from what it was in Canada.
I'm still quite interested, and I'm glad you're there.
Thanks for doing this assignment for Rebel News.
I feel like we really do have eyes on it, and literally you're coming to us from inside a truck on the highway right now.
I appreciate that.
Please do stay in touch, and thanks for this update.
Jeremy In D.C.00:03:16
All right.
Thank you, Ezra.
All right, there you have it.
Jeremy Lafredo on assignment for Rebel News between Washington, D.C. and Haggerstown, Maryland.
Stay with us.
Moran.
Your viewer mail.
Jack Masterman says, Kenny wants people to just forget about COVID.
I don't think so.
There should be a public inquiry into the policies of the government.
And the health ministers, I don't care that they gave themselves immunity.
The public deserves answers.
Immunity should be rescinded.
They should face incarceration.
You know, I've heard lots of calls for inquiries, but of course, who would do the inquiry?
The judiciary, as in a judge?
Are you talking about the same judges who approved every single lockdown matter so far?
Who would do the inquiry?
Someone with a journalistic background?
Someone from the media that has been cheerleaders and stenographers rather than curious skeptics?
Who would lead this inquiry?
And do you really think that such an inquiry would be started by the government that wasn't controlled by the government?
I mean, we're living in a country where every governing party and opposition party unanimously supported this.
I literally cannot name for you a single judge or ex-judge I would trust to lead such an inquiry in any means other than a whitewash.
I'm sorry, I can't.
It's just, it's so like we're expecting some higher power, some cosmic power that's above the fray to come in and tell us the truth when every single person in the fray was on the wrong side of history.
I don't know.
Larissa Herzog writes and says, looks like Kenny had a little Freudian slip there, guilty until proven innocent.
Yeah, I noticed that in his comment.
Listen, I generally agree that what the police do and what the courts do should not be something that politicians weigh in on, at least when they're in progress.
When a trial is over, when a sentence is issued and the appeals are exhausted, weigh in, especially if there's a strong public interest.
But to say, as Jason Kenney did, that the treatment of Arthur Pavlovsky was just normal rule of law stuff, it's so ridiculously absurd as if that El Chapo-style, SWAT team-style raid on a peaceful man.
Remember, nothing he is being charged with is in the criminal code.
Nothing he's being charged with is a violent offense of any sort.
So they're rolling out the riot squad, the SWAT teams, to go after a Christian pastor.
I'm sorry, that is not normal.
And maybe it helps Jason Kenney sleep at night to think it's just normal rule of law stuff.
But I don't buy it, and I hope you don't get gaslit either.
Lorraine Dubay says, Ezra, could you investigate the Senate Bill S-233, which is a bill for the basic income?
Vaccinated Workers Stress00:15:27
I am told that it will set up the ability for the government to take pensions from anyone who does not have vaccinations.
That would leave many of us without any income.
You know, I've started to look into this because I've heard the same thing you've just described.
And I don't want to give you my report right now off the cuff.
I've started to look at them and look at that bill and I want to understand it better.
Most bills are not introduced in the Senate.
They're from the House of Commons and they're from the government.
But sometimes private members' bills become law.
And instead of going any further with my answer, I'll just promise you that yes, I will look into that.
And I guess I'll do a show on it.
So thank you for the suggestion.
That's our show for today.
Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters to you at home, good night.
Keep fighting for freedom.
And let me leave you with our video of the day from our friend Drea Humphrey out west, where she talks to MP Mark Dalton, speaking out against British Columbia's healthcare workers vaccine mandate.
Here's Drea.
Bye-bye.
Drea Humphrey here with Rebel News, where we bring you the other side of the story and have been doing so with COVID-19 since early January 2020.
And while mandates are dropping, including Alberta's one for healthcare workers, it's not the case in BC.
Yes, the mask mandate has dropped and a projected date of April 8th for the vaccine passport is there.
But what seems very illogical and negligent to me is the fact that thousands of frontline health care workers are still stuck at home, struggling to provide food for their family and pay mortgages.
Well, meanwhile, we're seeing story after story about our hospitals being overwhelmed.
And this, mind you, is while the dominant strain of Omicron has been proven to be significantly less deadly.
Hospitalizations are going down.
So why on earth do we have an unelected public health lord who's allowing this to continue?
You can find my full report on her recent flip-floppy mandates when it comes to the regulated healthcare professionals who are still able to care for now for patients.
But in this interview, I sit down with one of the first federal politicians to say anything against the politically correct narrative when it comes to COVID-19.
His name is Mark Dalton.
He used to be a teacher, then he was an elected MLA politician, and now he is a twice-elected federal MP.
Back in 2020, Mark Dalton did a daring tweet.
You might not know this, but Dalton was one of the first politicians to speak out against the politically correct narrative when it comes to COVID-19.
After we had learned more of the virus in 2020, Dalton dared to suggest that perhaps since we are learning that those who are predominantly at risk from COVID are those who are elderly and in long-term care home, we open up the economy.
Well, of course, you say something logical like that, and you're going to have the Twitter trolls and the state-paid media coming after you hard.
And after that, whether it was related or not, Dalton did apologize for the statement.
And more recently, we've seen him speak out in parliament about whom I refer to the most stigmatized people in our country, and that is those who have suffered an injury after taking the COVID-19 vaccines.
I'm doubly vaccinated.
But guess what?
I had COVID.
I wasn't here past couple weeks.
I had COVID, my wife and I. You know, being doubly vaccinated, having COVID.
A person that is vaccinated can carry just as much as the person that doesn't.
I'd like to read this one little letter here before closing.
This is from a lawyer, a female lawyer, 35 years old, says this, I am an ultra-marathon runner, spent eight, nine hours, probably 10 hours a day running.
Before that, I was a varsity athlete at a university here in Ontario.
She's from, this is my riding now, and has always been fit would be an understatement.
I have no pre-existing conditions.
When I got the vaccine and started having chest pains and operating at a max threshold, even on walks, doubling, tripling her heart rate.
She says, as it stands, I'm a 30-year-old with chronic heart pains.
And she's feeling it constantly.
Even on a slow walk, she goes out of breath.
Please, she says, I'm not a conspiracy theorist.
I actually make a lot of money defending the largest pharmaceutical companies.
But with that comes the knowledge that sometimes mistakes are made.
But you might be asking, why on earth is a federal politician troubling himself with provincial laws that are resulting in thousands of frontline health care workers not working?
Or maybe you wouldn't ask that question.
Well, I asked Dalton that question in this interview and more about why he wrote a letter to Premier John Horgan asking him to reconsider Dr. Bonnie Henry's recent threat to regulated health care workers that said that come the 24th of March, if they had not received two vaccines for COVID-19, they would not be able to care for their patients.
You're not going to want to miss a second of this report, but before we jump to that, if you share these concerns, please open up another screen on your device and head to letthemcare.com.
There you can find a petition that you can sign and share in seconds that is going to be delivered to the provincial government and also all of the licensing colleges over some of these medical health professionals asking for them to let our frontline health care workers care for us.
I sent a letter to the Premier and when I wrote the letter I thought, you know, I'm a politician.
Do you want to take a shot or do you want to just really try to influence?
And that really was the issue as I try to just appeal to the government on behalf of the many health care workers that I'm hearing from, those that are registered in the medical field that were losing their jobs.
And it's imminent.
It was March the 24th.
And so I know that this is a provincial domain.
I'm a federal politician, but at the same time, these are still my constituents.
And not just those that are the healthcare providers, but they're also the patients that are calling out to me.
And I thought, you know what?
I need to use my voice and to appeal to the government.
And so I'm quite pleased that within hours of me sending the letter to the Premier, actually that evening, they made that change whereby they have now made some other provisions so that people are not going to be losing their jobs right away.
So that's great.
I mean, I'm happy about that.
Now, there are certain some questions going forward.
What exactly does this mean?
But they're not going to be getting the pink slips.
And honestly, a big concern for me is the health care of British Columbians.
This impacts all of us.
There is already a shortage of medical workers and providers.
So I felt that I needed to do that.
Also for those that had received a layoff notices, healthcare workers, there were a number that received layoff notices that they were going to be terminated at the end of this month also.
Now, I'm not exactly sure where that is.
I know that in places like Alberta, they're asking people to come back to work.
I'm quite sad that there are so many that have been fired.
As far as many nurses, many other people have lost their ability to earn income and to provide the critical care services that we need in this province.
And that is a shame.
There's a letter from the Coastal Health Authority talking about how whether you are vaccinated or you're not vaccinated doesn't make any difference as far as you getting COVID.
It might impact the severity.
Or whether you transmit it.
So whether you have it or don't have it, that's your choice.
And people are fearful of whether a person is going to be vaccinated or not vaccinated.
Well, it doesn't really matter because they can equally get it from either.
So that's something that I feel is sometimes lost in the conversation.
And I think it's important.
And finally, I'll say this, that for the longest time, we celebrated these health care workers in our hospitals for what they were doing.
I remember for the first number of months, banging at 7 o'clock, banging the drums and just celebrating.
They weren't vaccinated, many of them.
And so it is, so they've gone through all this, and what's happened has been, it's concerning.
And we need these workers.
We need these healthcare workers.
And so many other provinces, the rest of the world is opening up.
And we're going to be not only losing these people, but maybe they move to other jurisdictions.
And that puts an extra stress on health care in our province.
Now, absolutely.
You hit so much on the nail there.
We could probably end right there.
But I guess my question is, since BC did lay off or mandate the laying off without pay of thousands of health care workers last year, more than any other province due to COVID-19 mandates, why speak out now?
Why is it an important issue this year for you to speak out?
Well, I've been speaking, again, I'm a federal employee and I have, I'm an employee of the people, right?
As a member of parliament.
So my focus has been primarily on the federal side of things, the federal restrictions.
And so it is, that has been my first responsibility.
And also these letters I'm getting has been more recent.
So that's, I, people sometimes wonder, does emailing, does calling, contacting, does advocating make a difference?
It does make a difference.
For me, when I hear people, I act upon that.
And it gives me actually the authority to speak on their behalf.
Because I know, maybe this is a, you know, maybe I'm a federal politician speaking provincially, but I'm representing my people and I will use my voice to speak up on their behalf.
But I needed that information.
And so as I've been getting more information just recently, I've been able to speak forward on this.
And so this is something that's been on my heart for some time to go forward and to speak on this.
So I'm glad to see that the opposition has also, the provincial opposition has also brought it forward and that the provincial government is making these changes today.
The mask mandates have been lifted.
So there's some good things happening.
People are thinking, wow, that's great.
So, I mean, there's some caveats there.
I just don't want to go that direction again.
Yes, well, Dr. Bonnie Henry did mention in her update on March 10th that although at the moment they're focused on giving informed consent, which is going to require these regulated health care workers to tell their vaccination status to patients, what do you have to say?
Are you concerned at all about the government mandating so much private information?
For example, in this order that just came out, she's not just mandating that the unvaccinated people give the government private medical health information.
It's also the people who are fully vaccinated, every single regulated healthcare worker.
So that's a good question.
And when I was a provincial MLA, I was an MLA for eight years, and I was on the FOIPA, the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act, or the Committee.
So I think that needs to go there.
I think that there is the freedom of information, but there's also your privacy.
So I really hope that my provincial colleagues will take that question and really go to bat on that one.
Absolutely.
And can you give us one sort of story maybe that's really resonated with you about this issue that one of your constituents sent to you?
Oh my goodness.
There's, you know, just the pain that I'm hearing, even from the providers, and even those that have, that are clients are losing their doctors.
They were losing their doctors and others that were closing their, going to close their practices.
So, I mean, it's just a cumulative pain that I'm hearing.
And then I talked about, you know, one story here of a gentleman came up to me and says, you know, we're losing our house.
My wife is a nurse and has lost her position.
And so that's sad.
That's sad when we need them.
People that are so experienced.
If anybody knows about health, they know about health.
And so, you know, stories like that are very painful, not only for their stories, which is bad, but also the impact, again, it's having just across the province.
Well, at Rebel News, we promise to the public to give you the other side of the story.
And for the last two years, we've been doing that with COVID-19, including giving a voice to people who have been affected by mandates or people who have been injured after taking the vaccine.
I commend you for speaking out.
You're right.
You have influence and it makes a difference.
Is there anything else you wanted to add?
Well, I'm just hoping that we've seen the back side of this and need to move forward because honestly, there's been so many other repercussions, negative repercussions that you have to consider.
I've talked to so many people, professionals, psychologists, psychiatrists, the mental health piece of it, and the loneliness, the isolation.
And I'm getting these emails.
People are actually, they're actually on the breaking point or they're phoning.
They're at the breaking point.
There's so many.
And so this has been a very tough time.
And so I think that we really have to look at things holistically in the sense that we need to, yes, there's a COVID, there's the virus.
And I've had COVID twice, okay, even doubly vaccinated.
I've had it twice.
So it's like, but what are the other impacts upon our youth upon society, upon everything, upon the division?
And I just think it's so sad.
And I just feel we're going to have to move on recognizing this is endemic and moving forward as a society.