Ezra Levant exposes David Skock’s hypocrisy after The Logic, a 2018 startup, accepted $370K in Trudeau’s QCJO grants despite earlier pledges of independence. Skock now backs government bailouts and aligns with Liberal policies like forcing tech giants to pay media, while Levant critiques Canada’s foreign policy—Trudeau’s rejected UN Security Council bid, delayed Ukraine aid (artillery pieces by May 2), and superficial global gestures—contrasting it with past leadership. Meanwhile, Conservative MP Melissa Lansman fights vaccine mandates for travel, calling them "punitive" and "cruel," as unvaccinated Air Canada workers face layoffs. The episode underscores how journalists and politicians alike prioritize funding over principles, while questioning the effectiveness of Western Ukraine support and vaccine policies. [Automatically generated summary]
I had a strange Twitter war with a rival publisher.
His name is David Skock.
He seems like a nice guy.
He runs something called The Logic, which has, you know, a couple dozen staff, good for him.
And a few years ago when he launched, he swore on a stack of Bibles he would never take a dime from Trudeau.
But I'm afraid to say that changed, and he's not handling it well.
I'll go through it with you.
And I'll give him fair hearing.
I'll show you what he said.
I'd like you to subscribe to Rebel News Plus.
That's our subscription.
You get the video version of this podcast.
You know, David Skock charges $300 a year for his subscription for The Logic.
I can't believe it.
Ours is $80 for the year.
And not only do you get my daily show, but you get four other shows a week.
Sheila Gunried, David Menzies, Andrew Chapatos, Kat and Nat.
So you're getting so much stuff, and it's what?
Barely a quarter of what he charges.
I'm just saying.
And I'm like, we don't take money from Trudeau.
Please go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe, help us out.
All right, here's today's show.
Tonight, a bailout journalist really, really wants me to think he's still independent and entrepreneurial.
I don't think I'm convinced, though.
It's May 9th, and this is the Azure Levant show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
I saw this little tweet yesterday.
I don't know how it came across my feed.
It said, Meet the Logic, an unashamedly wonkish Canadian news startup led by David Skock.
Founded in 2018, its staff has grown from three to 23, including 18 journalists.
The Logic publishes one or two impactful stories a day, giving reporters freedom to dig deep.
You've got 18 journalists and you only do one story a day, that seems weird to me.
I mean, I guess each of them works for a month on a story.
I don't know.
It seems a bit odd.
But I have heard of this startup.
It's been around for four years, so I'm not sure how long it gets to call itself a startup.
I remember when it was born, I was actually a little bit excited for them because I know it's tough to start something new in journalism.
And they were going with a very expensive paywall model right out of the gates.
$300 a year.
That seemed high to me, especially for something that hadn't really proven itself yet.
I remember that for the first six months or so, this show, the Answer Levant Show, we broadcast it for free to everyone.
The hope was that we would prove ourselves and people would be willing to pay 80 bucks a year for it after that.
But even then, we put chunks of the show on YouTube every day still for free.
So $300 a year paid in advance.
They don't let you have monthly subscriptions, I don't think.
It's a bit bold, but good for him for trying.
And here's what David Skock, its founder, said back in 2018.
He said in a letter from the editor, he said, seven ways to bail out the government's journalism bailout.
He was responding to Trudeau's $600 million journalism bailout announcement.
And I'll just read a little bit.
Necessity breeds innovation, and the government's intervention removes that necessity for Canadian journalism.
I founded this publication on the belief that journalistic independence comes from financial independence.
All right, good for him.
He's right, of course.
But even back then, you could see there were some cracks in his confidence.
He said, But while I'd love to stand on principle, if I don't apply for these grants, I will be putting the logic at a severe disadvantage in retaining talent and securing investment in a marketplace distorted by government intervention that rewards incumbent firms.
But at least he admits it's wrong, it's bad, it's unfair.
And at least for a while, he was willing to hold the line.
And I like this part.
He wasn't for official journalism or credentialism.
Here's what he said.
Freedom of the press is a fundamental right of our charter that is as essential to our democracy as the court system.
An elected office.
It's a craft that any citizen can do.
It is not and never should be considered an industry.
And so framing the analysis as the consequences of news media concentration and the erosion of local news reporting, as the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage did in his final report, leads to trying to solve the wrong problem.
I think he's right.
He had some suggestions, some are better than others, but at least for a while, he was standing on principle.
So this tweet yesterday about the great success of Skock and The Logic, well, that was good news, right?
I mean, here's the story behind that tweet.
It was published in the UK.
CEO David Skock on the rise of his wonkish Canadian news startup, The Logic.
Well, that's good.
It's rising.
David Skock, a former newspaper and broadcast journalist, founded subscription news startup, The Logic in 2018 with $300,000 Canadian of investment and three employees four years on.
The Logic will soon have a staff of 23, and it's growing fast.
Okay, well, good for him.
But I thought the tweet said they already had 23 staff.
Minor point, I guess.
I'll read some more.
With a wonkish approach to journalism, The Logic has established itself as a widely respected tech and business news entity in Canada.
Skock, The Logic's chief executive and editor-in-chief, says subscription numbers have approximately doubled each year since launch.
Okay, be honest.
Have you ever heard of them?
Probably not, but it doesn't matter.
If only one in a thousand Canadians subscribe to them, they'd be a huge success, right?
And it sounds like they are a huge success.
Subscription numbers have doubled every year.
That's incredible.
Good for him.
The thing I think that was a shock was I had grand ambitions of raising millions of dollars to get the logic off the ground.
I realized very quickly when I was fundraising that this was going to be a lot harder than I thought.
And so all of my forecasting and operating models had to be revised dramatically downwards.
We ended up raising $300,000.
It wasn't a lot, and we had to stretch that.
The Logic was able to raise a further $1.8 million in 2019 from newspaper publisher Post Media, Relay Ventures, and Angel Investors.
Okay, so he's raised a couple million bucks now from private investors.
That's pretty good.
And he boasted that his subscriptions have doubled every year.
Now, theoretically, that could be one to two, two to four, four to eight, but I assume it's more than that.
So good for him.
Now, I'm not going to read the rest of the article, but it ends a bit vaguely.
Skock would like to expand his website more, including with foreign reporters.
Okay.
Now, almost everything in this article was positive.
The rise of the logic.
That sounds great.
Except the article didn't mention something really, really, really important.
At least I think it's important.
David Skock caved.
He abandoned his objection to taking Trudeau's bailout money.
Even though he said he didn't want to, that you just couldn't trust government media.
Even though he's raised more than 2 million bucks from the private sector, he still went to Trudeau for money.
I wonder why that glowing biography of him didn't mention that.
It's probably because he didn't mention it.
He was boasting of his success.
I wonder why he didn't mention the Trudeau money.
Well, because the secret to the logic's success, if indeed you could call it that, is that David Skock's best-laid plans just didn't work.
And then the investment from those corporate media giants just didn't work.
And David decided to go for the cash big time.
Personally, I would suggest that he brings down his $300 a year subscription, at least letting people pay monthly.
I mean, really, it's a bit presumptuous for just one story a day.
But Skock didn't just flip-flop, abandon his principles and take the government cash.
He went into full government journalist propaganda mode.
And he decided he was suddenly very much in favor of Trudeau's bailouts, not just for personal reasons of profit, but because suddenly he thought it was good for the country, you see.
Not just for him.
You see, he now deeply believed in it, so much so that he started attacking critics of it, like Michael Geist, the professor, so much so that he started joining the liberal team for liberal events.
Just for example, here's David Skock, the independent journalist, participating in a liberal party conference hosted by the Liberals Party think tank called Canada 2020, starring the liberal cabinet minister Pablo Rodriguez.
Now, you can see David Skock at the bottom right here, happy as a clam.
Now, I watched the video.
They all agree that the government should fund journalists.
They're all in agreement.
They've actually moved on from that.
Now they're debating how much Google and Facebook should be forced by the government to pay journalists too.
It makes me laugh because David Skock, who a couple years ago was boasting about how independent he was, he actually got into an argument on this liberal panel with the Toronto Star guy about how much a small outlet like him gets compared to the big guys when they're carving up the pie.
That's what they're fighting about now, which journalists get the jackpot.
That's who David Skock is now.
That's what the logic is now.
But Nate, make no mistake about it.
Everyone on that panel, even though they're bickering, they all want the government to bail them out.
And now that they've had a taste of free money, they all want Google and Facebook to bail them out too.
That's what Trudeau's Bill C-18 does.
If you dump me, here's a quick clip of Big Boss at the Toronto Star telling you how it is.
First of all, let me just, for the audience, just step back for a second and explain that while we have all of us here as panelists, the vast majority of reporters are represented by the Canadian News Ministry, News Industry Association and Ethnic Media News Association as well.
Both of those associations with the vast majority, we're talking 90-something percent of the reporters in the marketplace, strongly support this deal.
There you have it.
What, 90-plus percent of journalists are piggies at the trough.
They're just fighting over who gets what share of the free cash.
And Skock is agitated as ever because it's clear that he's still not making a go of it.
Now, I find that sad, really.
Anyway, so I called out Skock yesterday on Twitter.
Or really, I called out the puff piece from the UK about him.
I use tough language, I admit, but I was sort of mad.
Here's a guy who broke his promise.
I said, hilarious that you praise these journalists as if they're an entrepreneurial success.
In fact, the logic was a failure.
So Skock turned to Trudeau for massive government subsidies.
Only then did he succeed.
And coincidentally, he has become a big booster of Trudeau.
And I use the word prestitute.
To my surprise, David Skock answered me and said, this guy is so brilliant that he knows more about my business model than I do.
Well, I know a bit of it, a $300 a year subscription.
And when that didn't work, investments from corporate media.
And when that didn't work, a Trudeau bailout.
And since that didn't work, demanding a government-induced bailout from Facebook and Google, did I get it right?
So I wrote back to him.
I'm happy to engage in banter.
I said, well, that's the thing, isn't it?
The amount of Trudeau's payments to you are a secret, and you sure won't tell.
But boy, are you ever a loyal soldier for him these days?
And he said to me, well, we are a private company, but you've also never asked.
I believe we received $47,000 in 2020 from QCJO, and we also received emergency periodical funding that has been reported and is disclosed on our site.
We have not received anything from 2019, 2021 that I know of yet.
Remember, QCJO stands for Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization.
That's Trudeau's journalism license that gets him the free money.
Okay, so 47 grand.
Now, that's not going to make or break a company, is it?
But I appreciate the answer.
Honestly, it was less than I thought it would be.
Imagine being able to buy a journalist, literally, to get him to change his mind on a major issue of public policy on press freedom and press independence, and not just that, to get him to come to Liberal Party events for $47,000.
It seems cheap.
I mean, yeah, $47,000 is a lot of money, but really, is that all it takes to turn a guy who leads, is it 23 journalists or almost 23 journalists?
Now, I argued back and forth, and I'm going to spare you most of it.
But he thought I was mean.
And maybe I was.
So he said, good to see how much respect you have for small business owners.
Well, what do you think I am, buddy?
So I replied, ha, you are now a crown agency, a bureaucrat.
You can't cash checks from Trudeau and pretend to be anything more than a grifter.
Just admit it.
You work for Trudeau.
Don't play pretend tycoon.
I mean, seriously, pick a lane.
You cannot pretend to be an entrepreneur, the hero of that puff piece written in the UK, while also pocketing cash from Trudeau.
So you cannot be both things.
You must pick Elaine.
But Holly Doan of Blacklocks, you know them.
Confronting Misinformation00:08:21
They're one of the few independent media.
She was watching our exchange.
And Hawley is a great researcher.
Remember, Skock said he didn't receive anything in 2019, 2020.
So he said, well, look what Hawley found.
In the past two years, Skock and the Logic have pocketed one check, you see that?
For $218,000 and another for $149,000.
What's that?
About $370,000, if my math's right.
Now, that is some serious money.
That's more money than Skock said he raised to start the whole thing.
Trudeau is his senior partner now, isn't he?
Now, I tell you, he wouldn't stop debating with me, which is unusual.
I mean, why was he doing that?
Why did he care so much about what I thought?
We've never really had any interactions that I can recall.
His audience is very different than ours.
His world is very different than ours.
Look at him now.
He's hanging out in the world of Liberal Party bailouts and big tech bailouts.
We're the world of trucker convoys and populists.
Why would he even waste time with me?
Most of these tweets were on the weekend, too.
Why?
I have a theory.
I think I know why.
He's a sensitive man.
99% of government journalists just take the money and shut up about it, right?
Because there's a bit of shame there, I think.
They just ignore their critics.
You just hang out with other grifters and no one makes you feel uncomfortable.
That video conference I showed you the other day, they had some disagreements amongst themselves, that liberal group of journalists, but it was just really how to carve up the pie they were about to eat.
But they all agreed to the basics.
They want bailouts from Trudeau and Mark Zuckerberg.
Those folks would never engage with me because they're interested in backing up the Brinkstruck, not debating philosophical points about press freedom.
But this David Skock, this is my theory.
He hasn't completely sold out in his heart.
Under all that government money, what, half a billion, half a million that we know about, wasn't up to now a million, there's still a little grain of the old David Skock who knew the value and the moral worth of independence and freedom and nonpartisanship.
And that little grain hasn't yet, you know, managed to be silenced.
His conscience hasn't been killed off.
He was fighting me not to convince me, but to convince himself.
He was trying to maintain the illusion for himself that he is independent because the truth is too uncomfortable to him.
The truth is he sold out.
I think maybe he's a good man doing bad things, using his clever mind to come up with complicated justifications for reneging on his very public promise not to take Trudeau's money.
He was still at it again this morning.
This is what he said to me this morning.
He said, you're putting words in my mouth.
I'm not sensitive.
Just trying to engage in a good faith dialogue with you to combat misinformation.
Oh, yeah, no, no.
There's no misinformation, buddy.
We saw that tweet from Holly Doan that was taken straight from the government's website.
Skock has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from Trudeau.
It's probably up to millions now.
He swore he wouldn't.
Misinformation.
He's starting to sound like his patron Trudeau, calling dissenting opinions misinformation.
So he doesn't have to deal with other points of view.
He can just put them in an enemies list.
Oh, don't worry.
His enemies will be censored soon enough.
That's part of Trudeau's plan, too.
The whole thing makes me a little bit sad.
I have to say, I like David Skock, even though I had hard words for him.
I like him because he seems like someone who is pouring his whole heart into things, into his creation, the logic.
He's failing as a businessman, and that hurts.
Oh, I know.
But he loves his project so much, he's willing to sell out to Trudeau and to Zuckerberg, too.
I like that he's a conscience that bothers him.
I like that about him.
I like that he wants to be thought of as an honest journalist, unlike 99% of them.
You heard that man from the Toronto Star.
99% of journalists are now fully embedded into Trudeau's government.
You've just met David Skock, the one journalist who is still publicly uncomfortable with it, enough to pretend that he's not actually who he has become.
Stay with us for more.
On this anniversary of Victory Day in Europe, standing strong against Putin's illegal war and in defense of democracy, human rights...
and international law is as important as it ever has been.
We will continue together to impose severe sanctions, eliminate the dependency on Russian energy, and fight disinformation.
Well, there you have it, Justin Trudeau with a surprise visit to Kiev.
The same day Jill Biden, the First Lady of the United States, attended.
Joe Biden did not.
But I think that the security situation in Kiev is a little more relaxed than it has been in the past because you too, the rock band, was there too.
Wouldn't surprise me if that's why Trudeau chose to make his visit.
In fact, they gave a concert, I understand, in the Kiev subway, which says that perhaps things in the capital city, at least, are not in crisis as sometimes you might expect in a war.
I think that what Trudeau said, there's some truth to it.
I think that Russia is to be condemned for their invasion of their sovereign country.
I think the invocation of the Second World War might be a bit dramatic, given some of the affiliations of, for example, the Azov Battalion, which is given credentials and status in Ukraine, even though they are neo-Nazis, actual Nazis.
I think when Trudeau says that he is concerned about Russian energy dominance, it rings a little hollow given that Trudeau has ruled out, has specifically refused building pipelines to send oil or gas to Europe.
And the part that irked me the most, I think, was his call that this was a battle against disinformation.
It's not disinformation that's killing people in Ukraine.
Disinformation is what Trudeau calls critics and dissidents he doesn't like.
And the fact that he would roll that in to his laundry list of things he hates about Russia is troubling given that Trudeau himself is cracking down on free speech and calling anyone he doesn't like disinformers.
I find that troubling.
But what do you make of Trudeau rushing over there for yet another photo op joining us now to talk about this?
Is our friend Lee Humphrey, the president of James International Security and a military veteran?
It's great to see you again, Lee.
I know you have a lot of thoughts when it comes to war and conflict, and I yield to you in those matters.
What's your take on things?
Well, you know, I think right now the idea of Trudeau, our deputy prime minister, and our foreign minister all showing up in Kiev at the exact same time, but bringing nothing other than more rhetoric, is very telling about where we are in this conflict, where Canada stands, and what we're actually doing to assist the Ukraine in their fight against Russia.
I think it's a pretty sad testament to our legacy, especially when he made that announcement on VE Day and the sacrifices that so many made and how far above the bar Canada punched during World War II that he shows up empty-handed and delivers absolutely nothing other than words.
I understand that Canada had made a promise a few weeks ago to deliver four pieces of artillery.
Worries About Western Weapons00:08:09
And please correct me if I'm wrong on that.
So it was a very tangible promise of some military hardware.
I understand that those have not yet been delivered.
Can you correct me if I'm wrong on that?
So I understand I saw them being prepared, crated up, put on boats, a couple put on planes.
I've yet to been able to verify that they are operational in any sense of the matter, either in Poland or in Ukraine.
I understand the United States has begun a train the trainer program on the exact same piece of artillery.
And maybe that's what they're waiting for.
But even more importantly, you know, there was very little ammunition shipped with those four guns with a promise that more would come.
Ammunition is pretty heavy, and so it's going to have to go on a boat.
And I mean, it took them over 40 days to get our own artillery in place after they canceled it a couple of years ago and took it out of the battle group.
So, you know, I wouldn't count on this arriving and getting the training done and being operational in the fight for some time still.
Well, and that's the thing is you can't just give a weapons system, especially a modern high-tech weapon system to an army that is unfamiliar with it.
I mean, Ukraine still uses a lot of former Soviet-made weapons.
So to give them Western weapons and training, it just doesn't happen overnight.
I'm a little worried.
I'll tell you this very candidly, Lee.
I mean, I'm worried that some of the bellicose statements made by the West are too provocative.
And I'm not just talking about the political statements like we want to have regime change or we want to destroy the Russian army.
I mean, some of that talk, you could just say is puffery.
But when the U.S. Pentagon takes credit for helping to sink that mighty Russian naval ship, the Moskva, or when the U.S. intelligence community takes credit for targeted killings of Russian generals in Ukraine, you know, that bragging that it feels like the proxy war that Russia says it is.
And I'm nervous that one day Russia might retaliate in kind.
Hopefully not against Canada, but I don't know.
I'm just worried that this really is becoming the West jubilantly trapping Russia's military and killing it in Ukraine.
And I suppose I can understand the strategic value of that, but I'm worried that strategically it'll get out of hand and Russia might strike us.
Am I being too afraid?
I think Russia is going to limit their attacks on the West.
But over the last month, I've seen a dramatic change in the Russian approach to this conflict.
They've begun strategically striking railroads, arms depots, NATO equipment warehouses and things of that nature.
And so they're clearly saying that NATO equipment and if NATO trainers are silly enough to move into Western Ukraine and the Liev area and become targets, then it's going to be very difficult for NATO to claim that this is anything other than Russian self-defense attempting to keep these weapons out of the hands of their enemy.
Honestly, I'm more concerned, I think, about over the last two months, we've seen a dramatic change in the way military pundits, the media are analyzing and are portraying this conflict.
You know, for going on 50 years now, ever since the Pentagon papers, the media and punditry on television have been very questioning, to be polite about it, about what official military press flaks like at the Pentagon or at the White House are putting forward.
In this case, you know, it seems like there's a lot of cheerleading going on as opposed to accurate analysis.
And I'm no fan of Russia.
I'm no fan of Putin.
I think what he's doing was inevitable, but it's horrific nonetheless.
But at the same time, I don't quite understand what the West's goals are in this by continuing to antagonize and to act like this is the greatest defeat of the Russian army in the history of the world.
When, in fact, over the last month, the Russians have made pretty significant gains in the Donblask area along the south, and they've consolidated their lines and set more realistic military targets and goals that I think they will achieve.
You know, I'm not equating on a moral level Russia with America.
I'm not.
I believe America is a great force for freedom and democracy, and I think Russia is not.
I think Russia, and Vladimir Putin, he's a former KGB agent.
I believe he's a dark and evil man.
I think he's an imperialist.
I think he's authoritarian.
That said, I can understand why Russia would want its own version of the Monroe Doctrine, which from America's point of view is no enemies' bases in our hemisphere.
That's why Kennedy was so concerned about Russian missiles in Cuba.
Cuba was a sovereign country.
Cuba was Russia's ally.
Well, they were too close to America.
And Ukraine abuts Russia, and there's territories that have gone back and forth between the two countries.
And now Finland says they want in.
And all these NATO right abutting Russia.
I'm not saying there's a moral equivalence, but there is sort of a strategic symmetry I can understand.
And I think that there's sort of a I find some credibility to the argument that Western military adventurism is using Ukraine as sort of a battering ram to wear down the Russian military.
Look, they sunk a major capital ship.
And I believe it was with American help.
That's what the Americans said.
So yeah, I get it.
You're wearing down Russia the same way Afghanistan wore down Russia.
And maybe that's a strategic objective.
Frankly, I think China is the bigger threat.
But I'm worried you're still poking the bear with a country that has nukes.
I don't want to say I'm afraid of a nuclear war, but I'm more afraid than I have been at any time in the last 30 years.
I just don't, I find it baffling whatever the West's goals are and the way they're going about it and the promises they've been making to the public about Putin will be on his knees, his economy will be decimated.
They may even trigger a coup within Russia.
But when you look at the reality, a couple of months later, the Ruble's doing just fine.
Putin is more popular at home than he's been in probably five or six years.
There is no internal threats against him that are at least obvious.
And I don't get what the West is trying to achieve here.
I don't get what the media and the pundits are trying to achieve by convincing everyday Canadians and Americans that somehow Russia is being destroyed and embarrassed and they'll eventually pull back and Ukraine will win.
Blame Game Over Ukraine00:06:01
I also don't understand turning Zelensky into Churchill when you consider before the war, no EU leader would take his call.
He was massively unpopular at home for his inability to end corruption.
And he's become an ogliarch himself.
So, I mean, I really just, I'm finding this entire thing, you know, I guess mentally, I'm finding it fascinating, but in such a horrible way that average Ukrainians are dying every day.
And it just, I can't figure out what the goal, the end state is or what the end goals are for the West.
Yeah.
Well, let me wrap it up by referring back to Trudeau.
And we started off with his visit there, which he's had several visits to the region, but this is his first to Kiev.
Always a photo op.
I mean, that's Trudeau's style.
That's really what he focuses on.
I don't think he's a deep expert on policy.
But let me show you a clip, and we'll just play it in the background here.
It's not really important to sound.
It's Trudeau raising the flag at the Canadian embassy in Kiev, which I think is a good thing to do.
I think it's good to open the embassy there.
I think that is a good symbol.
By nature, an embassy is there for good reasons to help Canadians on the ground to be a diplomatic liaison.
I think that's good to reopen the embassy if it's the judgment that it's safe to do so.
And if it's safe to do so, that's a good sign too.
But here's my comment from a photo op point of view.
Trudeau fumbled with that flag for two minutes.
He couldn't get it.
He couldn't get it up.
Now, I'm not blaming him.
It wasn't his job to set it up.
I don't think that there's a special trick to it that he failed to know.
I think it was just, you know, there's a lot going on there.
And maybe they just didn't check in advance that this flag was ready to raise.
Here's my point, Lee.
This is a photo op trip.
It's all for the photos.
It's all for the media.
And the Canadian media was there en masse.
And we're letting this video run so you can see just how painful it was for so long.
I haven't seen this video clip anywhere other than on little Twitter accounts.
I haven't seen it on the CBC or CTV.
Now, maybe I missed it.
I could be wrong.
But here's my point.
If it were Stephen Harper who couldn't raise a flag or Jason Kenny, Jason Kenney the other day had trouble getting the gas nozzle out of the gas tank of his pickup truck.
Every TV station and newspaper ran that because it was sort of funny.
And Kenny sort of looked goofy for a minute.
It wasn't a moral failing.
But I think that the media that accompanies Trudeau, not only do they love him and they are disinformationers for him, but look at them covering up this little gaffe for him.
I can't trust the media at all.
And I think I learned this even more during the lockdowns.
What do you make?
I don't blame Trudeau for the fact he couldn't raise a flag, but I blame the media for covering up this little photo op blemish because they're clearly just propagandists for him.
Yeah, like to your point, on one hand, our ambassador cut and run so early in Afghanistan and fled and left his staff behind.
That was a terrible embarrassment.
He hasn't been held to account for that.
So it was good to see them go back to Kiev because I think many nations left far too early and re-establish our official embassy and raise our flag because we are part of the Ukrainian allies that are doing something, if not much, but something to support them.
His failure to launch on the flag, well, you know, we used to have a saying in the military called time spent on recy is seldom wasted.
In other words, rehearsals, practice, making sure you get something right before you do it in front of the public is kind of important.
I don't blame him either.
He just, you know, bore the brunt of it.
And he's a photo op king and they blew it for him.
So yeah, it's goofy for a minute.
But I think it encapsulates our foreign policy in a broader picture that our foreign policy is just so lost that it's like that little flag that just couldn't go up, that flagpole that just wouldn't work.
It just flounders in the water with no direction, no anchors.
And Melanie Jolie just can't seem to articulate what we believe in as a country and how we're going to apply that around the world.
And I think that little flag was just that goofy little demonstration that sort of wraps it all up.
Yeah.
You know, a few years ago, Justin Trudeau pulled out all the stops in the campaign for Canada to get elected by the countries of the world to the UN Security Council for the temporary positions.
There's the permanent members and then there's the temporary ones.
And I got to say, as much as it pains me as a Canadian, I think that the countries of the world used good judgment in denying Trudeau a seat on the Security Council.
And I don't think in the years that have followed, he has shown any reason that he should be taken seriously on the global stage.
And maybe it's a good thing because I just don't think we've, like you said, punched above our weight like we used to do.
I just don't think we're doing that anymore.
Last word to you, my friend.
Yeah, it's sad to see.
I mean, I love this country greatly, and I personally sacrificed a lot for it.
And my friends have sacrificed even more.
And I don't like seeing this happen at all, but I think you nailed it.
You know, Trudeau was a hero at the very beginning.
He was, you know, mobbed by fans.
And then the other world leaders discovered that he's a lightweight, all about the socks and the hair.
And that was that.
And they're not having, wasting their time.
Melissa On The Petition00:06:41
Yeah.
Well, great to catch up with you, my friend.
And we'll hope to talk to you again on this war, which I hope ends quickly.
We're talking with T. Lee Humphrey from James International Security out of Calgary.
Take care, my friend.
Thank you, Ezra.
All right.
Stay with us.
Your letters to me next.
Hey, welcome back.
Your viewer feedback.
Debo Shea says that David Menzies interview with Patrick Brown about hockey reading is a classic.
It will definitely go down in history.
We laugh every time we watch it.
Can't make this stuff up.
No matter how hard we try, the situation rights itself.
Oh, that was unbelievable.
And you know, you could say it was luck or you could say it was coincidence.
Now, David Menzies works hard.
He's always a great shoe leather journalist.
So he acted on a tip.
He was in the right place at the right time.
And by the way, David goes on, we call him mission specialist.
That's his title around here.
It's sort of fun.
And sometimes what he does doesn't pan out.
So that's just wonderful.
And David was classic.
And that look on Patrick Brown's face was just, oh, I won't forget that either.
Vezo Sobot writes, David Menzies is one of the best commentators in the media in Canada today, delivering outrage with a wonderful teaspoon of humor.
Go, Rebel, Go.
Thank you, Vezzo.
And David is one of my favorite guys.
And he's a happy warrior, isn't he?
And he's very effective.
I mean, anyway, I'm grateful for him for his help.
Hey, I want to leave you with our video today from Alexa Lavoie.
And Conservative MP Melissa Lansman takes on the federal vaccine mandate for travel.
And I'm glad she is because it really is punitive.
It really is punitive.
I'll leave you with that video until tomorrow on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters to you at home.
Good night.
Keep fighting for freedom.
So, hey, Alexandro Reniers, and I'm still at the Sean Center.
The event is wrapping up and so I had the opportunity to see Melissa Lensman and I went to see her to ask her a couple of questions about a petition that she's endorsed recently.
Canada is currently one of the few countries that still prohibit their own citizens from leaving their country based on their vaccination status.
As if that wasn't enough, Air Canada employees who are currently not fully immunized against COVID-19 have received a letter informing them that they will be permanently laid off on May 2.
Following my report on Air Canada, Serge Elina, president of the Air Canada-Quebec Employee Union, contacted me to inform me of a petition he has submitted to Parliament in Ottawa.
The petition E3934 has been endorsed by Melissa Lensman.
For the people who don't know Melissa Lensman, she's the Conservative MP for Torn Ill.
Let's check my interview with her.
Recently, I talked with Serge and you're the one from the Conservative Party who take the petition against the vaccine mandate and the people who lose their job in the Aeronautic.
Can you explain why you take the decision to put the petition at the Ottawa Parliament?
Yeah, look, I think, first of all, one of our jobs is to represent those who don't feel represented and those whose voices aren't being heard.
And I think in the case of these mandates, I think they're outdated.
I think they're ineffective.
And at this point, I think they're vindictive.
And I wanted to give Serge a voice.
And I have the opportunity to do that.
And I wanted to make sure that nobody would lose their job in this country because of a decision they made.
The government can't do that.
And what are you going to do with the petition afterwards?
Because I think it's just done, it's closed.
So I'm going to present the petition in the House of Commons.
I've presented some around this issue before.
As you know, you might know I'm the transport critic, so it falls within my portfolio.
It falls within something that I'm interested in.
And I've stood up in the House of Commons on an almost daily basis trying to understand what evidence the government's looking at, when they got that evidence, and whether they'd table that evidence.
Because right now, it's all one big secret about why this country is so far behind other countries.
It's been 48 hours that the government went from doing nothing to a national emergency.
48 hours into using the measures, 48 hours without providing parliament with a justification.
So my question is simple.
When will the Prime Minister admit that he's lost control of the situation, that he's lost control of his country, that he's lost control of his caucus, and that he's lost control of his leadership?
Some people are losing already their job, not for Air Canada, but some other company.
Do you have any plan or any action that you want to do for the next couple of months?
Yeah, look, I think we need a plan from this government.
We need a date from this government about when these mandates end.
And what we don't want to do, we don't want to rise from the House of Commons where we have the opportunity to hold them to account and go into a long summer where Canada is such an outlier in this.
We have four or five, potentially six million Canadians because of little kids who can't travel.
That's unacceptable.
We have lots of people who have lost their jobs.
We have people that can't be reunited with their families, sick relatives, wanting to see somebody at the end of their life.
What is happening in this country right now is cruel, it's unusual, it's vindictive, and it needs to end.
This party in the federal parliament has been fighting vaccine mandates.
We've been fighting the ridiculous rules around travel.
Melissa Lanceman sitting in the audience here has been an amazing member of parliament fighting this every step of the way.
And she does it with respect.
She does it with respect.
She's effective.
And she eviscerates the Liberals every day.
And she does it with grace and style.
We can do that.
We can do it.
Melissa Lanceman's the example.
And what is your thought about the Freedom Convoy who came to Ottawa?
Look, in terms of, you know, it's very hard to ignore the frustration of individuals who feel like they've had their livelihoods taken out.
Fighting Ridiculous Rules00:01:19
And we want to know that we are listening.
That said, you know, in terms of those who break laws, we're the party of law and order and rules.
So you can't block critical infrastructure and you can't commit things that are against the law.
But in terms of the Freedom Convoy, I want them to know that there is one party in that House of Commons who hears them, who will continue to fight for their rights.
And just for finishing, for already the leader that are putting their candidate for the leadership race, do you have one favorite or are you all more on their side?
Look, I have the benefit of sitting on our interim leaders leadership team.
As a result, we're staying neutral.
But in the past, I've had a long time relationship with Pierre, and I think everybody has done a good service for our party.
We're growing our memberships.
We're sending our message.
Our numbers are going up.
And I love to see a good race where we talk about ideas.
So it will be interesting to see how the race will play out.
And especially for the two other debates that's coming up, the French one and the English one.
As Rebecca News, we will try to be there to cover it for you guys.