Ezra Levant’s absence leaves Sheila Gunnreid exposing Craig Kielburger—Justin Trudeau’s friend and We Charity founder—who allegedly billed taxpayers $432.48 for two hotel nights while only entitled to one, despite other advisory board members receiving lower reimbursements. The 2020 WE Charity scandal revealed Trudeau’s $1B COVID student bailout contract, sole-sourced to Kielburger’s group, and $481K in gifts to his family, including trips approved by Bill Morneau amid undisclosed conflicts. Coates from God versus Government argues churches bowed to lockdowns due to theological weakness, prioritizing neighborly protection over biblical defiance, despite legal precedents like California’s Grace Community Church. Listener comments critique human trafficking comparisons, Mexico’s political violence, and "Dr. Lockdown" Niles Ferguson’s hypocrisy, underscoring systemic failures in accountability and public trust. [Automatically generated summary]
I bet you were expecting Ezra Levant today, but once again, it's me, your guest host, Sheila Gunread.
You're listening to a free audio-only recording of Ezra's nightly, fully produced Ezra Levant show.
Tonight is a bit of a fun show because I got my hands on Craig Kielberger's expenses when he was with the Debates Commission and he tried to nickel and dime the Canadian taxpayer for hotel rooms when he wasn't even doing debates commission work because of course he did.
We gave him $43.5 million in grants, but yeah, he tried to stick us for an extra night in a three-star hotel room.
Just the gall of this guy.
Then we're talking to Pastor James Coates from Grayslave Church on his brand new book, God versus Government.
It was sure fun to catch up with him.
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So anyways, that's all the nuts and bolts.
enjoy the show.
Justin Trudeau's friend Craig Kielberger tried to nickel and dime the Canadian taxpayer during his time on the debates commission.
Then Grace Lafe pastor James Coates joins us on his new book, God vs. Government.
It's April 29th.
I'm Sheila Gunnreid, but you are 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 publisher is because it's my bloody right to sell.
You know the Kielberger scandal, the Wii Charity scandal, the We organization scandal?
You know that all seems so far away.
It feels like we've just bumped from scandal to scandal to scandal with Trudeau in power.
The latest scandal, of course, being Trudeau's treatment of peaceful protesters during the convoy to Ottawa and how I'm sure the Ottawa police will again overreact, enabled by Justin Trudeau's Emergencies Act to the Rolling Thunder bikers convoy to the nation's capital this weekend.
We've got three teams of Rebel News journalists on the ground there to capture it all and you can support their work at convoyreports.com.
Now, the bikers are set to start rolling in today.
Up to 1,000 bikes from all across the country are coming to protest not only remaining COVID measures, but the totalitarianism with which the last convoy to Ottawa was treated.
You see, after peacefully protesting for nearly four weeks, Trudeau invoked the Never Before Used Emergencies Act meant for Pearl Harbor-level events to dissipate the truckers and their supporters who had been organizing street concerts, planning community cleanups, feeding the homeless, playing street hockey, and erecting bouncy castles.
The truckers and their supporters basically created a community during their time in Ottawa while they protested the division of our communities under government COVID mandates.
That is, until Justin Trudeau sent in the cops, the horses, the pepper spray, the batons to arrest, detain, jail, seize bank accounts, seize trucks, seize Bitcoin wallets, euthanize opposition to his government.
But before this latest scandal, the biggest scandal Justin Trudeau was dealing with was the WE organization.
That unfolded April 2020.
He gave the We organization, headed by his friends, the Kielberger brothers, a sole source contract worth millions of dollars to administer a nearly $1 billion COVID student bailout program.
They were the only ones capable of administering this important program, but as it turns out, the program was specifically crafted for the Kielbergers to administer.
Oh, and then there's this extra layer of scandal in the middle of all this, because for years, the Kielbergers have been employing Justin Trudeau's family members to give speeches at their We Day events.
I bet those speeches were riveting.
But the relationship with the Kielbergers and specifically Craig Kielberger had yet another layer.
Kielberger was on the Debates Commission Advisory Board.
You know, the people tasked with keeping independent journalists out of the federal leaders' debates, the commission that Rebel News had to sue twice in court.
And at least the first time we sued them, Kielberger was on the board.
He left or rather was replaced in July 2021.
We sued them again in August.
Now, knowing what we know about the Kielbergers, we wanted to know more about his role on the Debate Commission and specifically his expenses.
I have 90 plus pages of documents about them.
Most of it is nothing, but it also in the middle shows you how little respect Kielberger had for the Canadian taxpayer.
Let's take a look at some of these expenses.
It's odd that Kielberger's role in the Debate Commission Advisory Board was run through the We Charity.
You can see that on pages 87 through 92, because the WE charity was not on the Debates Commission.
Kielberger was.
On page one, you can see that Craig Kielberger's expenses are almost higher than that of any other advisory committee member.
I think he's generally number two in every category.
And funny enough, we're going to take a little side trip here in the story back to our lawsuits with the Debates Commission.
The bureaucrats who sent me this document also include some legal fees here.
BLG Legal Services, look at this.
BLG Legal Services, $32,551 in change.
July 2019.
That was the first time we had to drag these people to court.
Now, are those expenses all for us?
No, they probably involve True North too.
BLG Legal, another $160,897 in change.
This coincides with the next legal battle they lost.
So Trudeau spent five times more money on lawyers at the Debates Commission in the lead up to the next election.
Let's just pause on this for a second.
Trudeau lost in court once, and instead of backing off and doing the right thing and just respecting journalistic freedom, he instead spent two years trying to rig the rules and ramped up his legal attacks fivefold, at least according to these expense reports.
And then he was still handed his own rear end in a sack by a judge.
I think if my math is correct, that's $193,000, much of it, to fight independent journalists in court over two years.
And that $12,000 you see there, well, that was to us to cover some of our legal costs after being forced to sue these gatekeeping expense account junkies for the charter right to do our job.
This is ironic considering these are the same sorts of legal expenses that they considered a state secret when we asked for them specifically.
Don't take my word for it.
Here's a prior access to information request we filed looking for legal expenses associated with fighting rebel news and True North in court when they blocked us from the federal leaders' debate.
And you see that there?
It's all redacted.
In the end, Trudeau didn't respect that a judge just a few hours earlier had wrapped his knuckles.
He still acted like a spoiled brat thinking he can control who is media in this country either through bailout bribes or tantrums.
My question is the following.
Israel is one of the most vaccinated countries in the world.
They are now turned to their fourth vaccine report.
They do not consider that those who received two doses of vaccine are fully vaccinated.
My question is, many Canadians do not want to have a vaccine report.
Do you want to remove their privileges related to the vaccine?
And obligations of Prime Minister or abolition.
I start perspective on the organization and Craig Kielberger was so petty that he was trying to nickel and dime his expense account with the debate commission, though he is a wealthy man in his own right with the we organization.
Once upon a time, owning about $40 million in real estate and Craig bragging once in an MTV Cribs episode about his Kenyan house and his oversized cars and teams of donkeys.
Look at this.
That aged like a banana, didn't it?
Now back to these documents.
It's interesting to note that other members of the debate commission refused to accept any payment for their role, but not Craig Kielberger.
See this?
Two names are blacked out as refusing payment, but not Kielberger.
This is an email that is discussing paying his professional fees at the Debates Commission.
Page 79 is where the petty nonsense really starts.
Kielberger is trying to bill for an extra hotel room for a meeting of the Debates Commission.
I think he thought he could get away with this because, you know, he's the boss's buddy and he employs the boss's mom.
Look at this.
Please find attached to the travel expense claims for the advisory board meeting that took place on March 25th, 2019.
And somebody's actually providing some appropriate scrutiny here because then they ask, Do you have proof for taxis for Craig Kielberger?
The amount for the room is $432.48 for two nights.
You're only allowed one night.
Do I reimburse at $216.42 or two nights at $432.48?
When you're Justin Trudeau's friend, why not try to bill another hotel room to the taxpayer?
Shoot for the stars, Craig Kielberger.
Page 80, someone responds that he was here for other business.
I guess, and he still tried to bill it to the Debates Commission and therefore the taxpayers, but okay.
$40 million in real estate holdings, and this guy's trying to wring another $216 from the taxpayer.
Just wow.
Now, according to the Trudeau 3 ethics report, that's right, there are so many ethics violations with Justin Trudeau that they've started giving the reports Roman numerals.
The WE organization paid the Trudeau family a total of $481,000 in gifts, fees, and expense-paid trips to London and New York.
The Mourneau 2 ethics report, that's right, former finance minister Bill Mourneau also had so many ethics violations that they started Roman numeraling his reports too.
in that report it was concluded that Craig Kielberger had a friendship with former finance minister Bill Morneau and Morneau approved a $43.5 million grant to the We organization without disclosing the Kielbergers had hired his daughter out of college and covered $41,000 in Morneau family expenses at resorts in Ecuador and Kenya.
The Canadian public gave the Kielbergers $43.5 million to his organization.
Challenges of Civil Disobedience00:15:45
And how did he thank us?
He tried to stick us with a three-star hotel bill.
Wow.
Stay with us.
Our guest joins us up after the break.
So my monologue today focused on how so much of the regulations around masking were purely political.
But those weren't the only purely political decisions made during the pandemic.
For example, why could Walmart and Costco see a steady stream of shoppers, but churches, sometimes churches right across the street, were severely limited, sometimes to just 10 people in the case of a funeral.
Scientifically, of course, we know that doesn't make any sense.
But neither do those rules respect the fundamental values our Western civilization was founded upon.
Religious freedom, the ability to gather together for people to make their own health care decisions and to be dictated by their own conscience.
Joining me now is someone I haven't seen in quite some time, and that's my fault.
It's Pastor James Coates from Grace Life Church, one of the few churches in all of the country that followed the biblical directives of choosing God's law over an unjust government edict.
Pastor James Coates, thanks for joining me.
It's so great to see you.
It's great to see you too, Sheila.
Thank you for having me.
Now, we're having you on the show today because you've written a brand new book.
Tell us about it.
Well, I've co-authored a book with Nathan Buznitz.
Nathan Buznitz is one of the pastors at Grace Community Church with John MacArthur.
And in that book, we are both telling the story of what happened at each respective church in our battle with the governing authorities as we decided to keep our church open in the face of these government edicts.
And then we even provide a framework.
We see that in this season, the church has been exposed as weak on both its ecclesiology as it relates to the doctrines of the church, as well as our relationship as churches to the governing authorities.
And so we wanted to provide a framework for the believer, the Christian, the church to be able to understand when it's necessary to practice civil disobedience and when that threshold is breached, where we must obey God, not men.
And so we're telling the story because we think the story provides a really wonderful illustration of the kind of gospel courage we're talking about and calling for.
And then we have a framework to equip the church to be able to know when it's time to obey God, not men.
You know, for those people who are watching who don't know, and I don't know how they could possibly not know, but Pastor James, you spent 35 days in jail because you refused to force the government rules on the congregation at Grace Life Church.
And just wonderful people.
They welcomed me there.
I made so many friends that are still my friends now during my time there reporting on that.
But it went further than that.
They also seized your church for almost three months.
The building itself forced your congregation underground, basically having to hold services in secret like the early Christians to prevent the government from ticketing you, fining you, breaking up the congregation.
And it was in stark contrast.
And I think that's why this book is so important.
You're telling the story of two churches, Grace Life and Grace Community, and the very different outcomes when you stood up to the government.
Why don't you tell us a little bit?
Canadians may not be as familiar with Grace Community, but I am because Devin from Grace Life, thank you very much, gave me my John MacArthur study Bible that stays on the desk here.
But why don't you tell us a little bit about what happened at Grace Community?
Well, they refused to comply with the government edicts that were being levied against them with respect to their gatherings and the health orders.
And that ended up into the court system.
And in their court system, with their constitution being what it is, the courts ruled in their favor that the governing authorities did not have the ability to prevent Grace Community Church from gathering.
And so in their court system, they were able to actually get support for religious liberty and freedom.
Now, in reality, their stance as ours was not a political stand.
It wasn't primarily about religious liberty per se.
It was a theological stand where we were taking a stand on the headship of Christ over his church, in effect saying to the governing authorities, you don't have the authority to dictate to the church the terms of worship.
And so that was fundamentally what the stand was, but their court system did support them in that stand.
And that's vastly different than what we experienced here in our country.
Yeah, I think I remember reading about the decision when it came down against the state of California.
And it basically said, you cannot ask churches to do something that you are not asking Walmart to do.
It came down to basically treat the church fairly.
But as you say, you go one step further.
The government is not in charge of the church.
The church dictates your behavior as a Christian.
Tell us a little bit about what you're still going through.
You're still involved in legal troubles, I guess, with the province of Alberta.
Yeah, as it stands right now, we currently have a court summons that's against the church.
And I still have a $1,200 ticket that is against me.
That's obviously not very much.
And so we're not concerned about the dollar figure on that $1,200 ticket.
It's more symbolic of the issue at play.
Does the governing authorities, does our government have the authority to infringe on religious liberty?
And did the COVID pandemic provide justification for doing that in light of the charter, which does allow for infringement on our charter rights and freedoms?
Should it be justified?
And to this point in time, at least from my perspective, the government has not been required to, nor have they attempted to justify that their health orders were in fact justifiable.
Now, I remember one of the things that you said that struck me the most, and you said it to me in an interview, but you also said it to your congregation, I think, in one of the most shared and most viewed sermons that you gave.
And it was that it didn't matter if what was happening to Grace Life and to you was persecution, because whether or not it's persecution, it doesn't change your behavior.
You're still commanded by God to honor his laws above that of the state.
Yeah, that's absolutely right.
So a lot of folks approach this as though you have to basically reach the point where the church is clearly being persecuted.
And if it is at that point, then the church must be civilly disobedient.
And that's just a faulty rubric for even discerning when it's time to obey God, not men.
We just always obey God.
And obedience to God at times and usually requires submission to the governing authorities.
When the governing authorities step outside their lane and outside their God-given purpose and begin to infringe on other spheres of authority, like the home or the church, and act as though they have total authority over every other human institution, at that particular point, especially when there are issues that are being breached as far as obedience to God are concerned, it's necessary at that point in time to obey God, not men.
And so it's not necessary to figure out, well, is this persecution or is it not persecution?
The issue is, what does it look like to obey God in the context that we're in?
And that's what we determined.
We determined that to comply with the public health orders would have been disobedience to Christ.
Now, I want to talk about the second part of your book because the first part tells the story, and the second part is, you know, sort of the tools and framework for Christians, but hopefully for churches and pastors too, to sort of navigate when it's time to be civilly disobedient.
And for me, I think churches all across the world failed their congregations when they shuttered churches when people needed the comfort of the church the most.
Funerals, my own personal example of this, my mom's funeral was limited to 10 people.
We felt like Roman soldiers casting lots to see who could go to the funeral.
And that's the time when Christians need the comfort of community the most.
What do you think caused the church to capitulate and fold so fast?
Well, I think, number one, the church in general is weak.
It's weak theologically, and it's weak because we've moved away from a sound preaching of the word of God.
So, number one, the church is weak.
Number two, I think we've enjoyed in our part of the world a healthy relationship between the governing authorities and the church, whereby the church has been able to function apart from any real government overreach into matters pertaining to the church.
And so, there's that piece.
We've come almost in some senses to be too trusting of the governing authorities.
And so, you've got the weakness of the church.
You've got just the relationship that we've enjoyed with the governing authorities to this point in time in our church's history.
And so, with those two pieces in place, plus you go and then add the unique context of a health issue where now this seems to be about health and a protecting of people's lives.
You're adding a level of complexity that I think most Christians just aren't prepared to think through, and even most pastors aren't prepared to think through.
And so, I think those features being what they are, that really set the table for the church to miss this so significantly.
And even to this point in time, I mean, I think that there are churches that still believe that their approach to the pandemic and complying with the public health orders was the right approach.
And yet, as more information rolls in and the picture becomes clear, not just theologically, but practically, as far as the way the governing authorities handled this virus, it should be evident that they took the wrong approach.
Yeah, you know, it's funny to hear the argument: well, my church complied.
Why couldn't Grace Life?
Well, your church let you down.
Why does Grace Life have to let down their congregants?
But I think it also has something to do with people not being Christians, not being properly evangelized or not great, strong on apologetics.
And I saw this in real time when I saw a Calgary City police officer while arresting Pastor Tim Stevens in front of his screaming children, I'll never forget that, quote Matthew 22, 21 as a reason to arrest Pastor Tim, basically telling this pastor to render unto Caesar, but forgetting the second part of the context of that,
which actually goes on to limit what is Caesar's and what is God's.
Yeah, there's no question.
I think you've seen in this season across the board a lack of biblical, robust thinking as it relates to how we relate to governing the governing authorities, how we relate to government overreach and just the responsibility that we have.
I mean, even the whole command to love your neighbor as yourself.
I mean, that command was being used to basically justify complying with all these public health orders because you're protecting the lives of your neighbors.
Well, that's the second commandment.
The greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your mind, soul, and strength.
And it's actually the command to love God that's going to shape your love for neighbors, not vice versa.
And so to elevate the second commandment to really effectively be the greatest commandment is to turn the whole thing upside down and to fail to realize that God is the one that instructs us on what love is, how we love our neighbors and what that looks like.
And really, people need to realize, even going beyond just the significance of this for the church, that by complying with the public health orders that were in place, they were essentially participating in an approach to managing this virus that had a lot of harmful impact on lives outside of the virus itself.
The lockdowns were incredibly harmful.
There were suicides and lives lost to drug overdose and many issues that stemmed from the lockdowns themselves that people participated in.
And they didn't seem to apply the command to love neighbor as themselves in that context, recognizing that this isn't just about a virus and you can't just simply try and shut down society to address one aspect of harm in a virus that could come upon a person without recognizing that there are side effects that go along with that.
So it's just not thinking clearly and robustly about anything, really, as it relates to this whole pandemic.
Now, Pastor Coates, how do people get your book?
Well, they can order it in all the normal ways that you could.
I mean, it's available on Amazon, ChristianBooks.com, Barnes ⁇ Noble, Indigo.
It's online anywhere that you can purchase a book.
You should be able to get your hands on it.
I don't know that it's in a lot of actual stores, bookstores, because it's a controversial book.
And so I guess a bookstore wouldn't necessarily want to be seen as endorsing the book itself, but it's available online pretty much anywhere you can purchase a book.
That is sort of a shocking statement, but also the state of society these days that your book about Christian obedience to the Bible is somehow controversial, but you can have, you know, stories about kids who want to change their gender.
And that's fine.
That's right up front in the store.
One last question before I let you go.
Have you yet created a Ezra-Levant tier of membership at Grace Life Church?
For example, the Jewish but curious membership.
I remember we joked that he wanted to buy a membership.
Do you have one of those yet?
Yeah, no, not yet.
You know, still in discussion on that and how we would be able to do that biblically.
But no, we have not made that provision as yet, but we welcome Ezra to our church anytime he's in the area.
We'd love to have him.
Well, thank you so much, Pastor James, for taking the time.
I'll see you soon at church.
Stay with us more up next after the break.
We've come to the portion of the show where it's your chance to have your say.
This is where you let Ezra know exactly what you think.
He reads his fan mail, he reads his hate mail, he reads his comments.
So these have been selected for me to read by Ms. Producer.
I haven't looked at them yet.
So we're going to react together.
God help all of us.
Good luck to us.
Let's take a look.
Border Crossings Risk00:03:13
Cam Sonnenberg writes, isn't human trafficking equivalent to slavery with a modern twist and less judgment?
I think you're referring to the work that our newest reporter, Juan Mendoza Diaz, is doing at the southern border between the United States and Mexico.
Eagle Pass, Texas, actually.
You know, some of the images that came from his report, they're pretty haunting, including the trees where the women are basically chained to and sexually assaulted.
An open border is truly an inhumane border.
People are risking their life to come across that border, putting their lives in the hands of human traffickers, sex traffickers, coyotes, cartels, to come into the United States only because they know they can, because that border is open.
The fact that Biden leaves the border open is part of the business model for the cartels.
They're getting rich because Biden won't close that border, and women and children are suffering along the way.
And drugs are being trafficked into American communities.
It's a humanitarian crisis unfolding not only at the border in those border communities, but all across the United States and eventually Canada too.
Let's keep going.
H1R 086 writes to us, this is what happens when terrorists, users of politically motivated threats, violence, murder, take over a country and there's no accountability.
I think you're referring to Mexico.
You know, Mexico has its own problems, but Mexico's problems, I think, are Mexico's.
And I don't think they need to pour into the United States.
Now, I have a lot of empathy for the people that Juan Mendoza Diaz encountered at the border, particularly those Venezuelan migrants.
Those are legitimate refugees.
But maybe the problem is that refugees from Venezuela would put their lives in the hands of human traffickers and walk for a month to illegally enter into the United States.
I think the problem is the process for legitimate refugees to get into the United States is unnecessarily difficult.
Maybe if they made that process easier, it would take away some of the incentive to rely on a cartel.
Again, this comes with the process of separating economic migrants from legitimate refugees like those fleeing the tyranny of Venezuela.
Let's keep going.
Bob Battigly writes, it was known early on the social distancing rule was created by Niles Ferguson.
Niles Ferguson's Fall00:01:16
Niles Ferguson, you say, I haven't heard that name in a while because he sort of flamed out in embarrassment and went away.
He was known as Dr. Lockdown.
He was a failed COVID computer modeler who advocated lockdowns.
And then he was caught in a bit of a tryst breaking the lockdown rules that he would impose on everybody else.
I think he was groping his girlfriend in an elevator or a hallway or something.
Definitely not social distancing.
So, I mean, if the six-foot rule did come from him, boy, he sure didn't follow it.
Thanks for reminding me of one of those rules for thee and not for me guys that burned out like a dying star.
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thanks so much for tuning in.
Thank you to everybody in not only Toronto HQ, but behind the scenes in our respective locales all across the country for putting the show together.