Roman Baber, Conservative leadership candidate, compares Soviet-era indoctrination to Canada’s pandemic compliance army, citing 4,000+ delayed-surgery deaths and $1.3T debt growth without healthcare gains. He opposes Trudeau’s oil sands phase-out as ideological, blames unions for enforcing mandates, and links inflation to lockdowns while proposing $70K first-time homebuyer exemptions. Criticizing Charest’s mandates and Polyev’s Bill 21 stance, Baber warns of democratic erosion via the Emergencies Act and bank seizures, urging Conservatives to vote by June 3rd at joinroman.ca. The WEF’s elite hypocrisy on climate and surveillance reveals a trust crisis, exposing disconnects between globalist policies and public reality. [Automatically generated summary]
A very special show today, a one-hour-long sit-down with conservative leadership candidate Roman Babber.
But before I get to that, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
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It's important because we rely on that money because we don't take a dime from Trudeau.
All right.
Here's today's podcast.
Tonight, an exclusive interview with Roman Babber, the conservative party leadership candidate.
It's May 26, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
I'm excited by the Conservative Party of Canada's leadership contest, excited that it's happening at all.
Thanks to the truckers who set in motion a series of events that culminated in Aaron O'Toole being turfed by the Conservative Caucus.
Thank goodness.
And into that void have stepped some quality candidates.
It's not the B-list team.
These are people who can win, who want to win, who bring something to the table.
Whether you like each of them or not, the contest has a national class of candidates.
It's not a stretch to imagine most of them as prime minister and a better prime minister than Justin Trudeau.
That's for sure.
And what I like best of all is that they believe in things.
There's a real clash of ideas afoot, don't you think?
The mainstream media is appalled by this.
They don't know what to make of this.
I saw a headline just the other day that the party is having an identity crisis.
I laughed at first, but actually it's sort of true in that there are very strong differences of opinion about key issues, but that strong difference of opinion is about to be resolved by a vote of party members.
So yeah, there is an identity crisis that will figure itself out.
Identity Crisis Battle00:03:10
We'll know where the party stands soon.
There is a battle for the party's soul, but that battle will be lost and won in a few months, and then the party will definitely have a flavor.
It won't be all things to all people.
Maybe it'll actually be conservative.
Perhaps the media aren't used to such a battle of ideas.
Tell me the last time Justin Trudeau had an interesting or useful policy idea, other than just demonizing his critics and taking more power for the government and, frankly, global governments, whether the pandemic or the climate is the excuse.
Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to sit down with one of the candidates for the leadership, who happens to be my own local provincial legislator, the member of the provincial parliament for York Center, at least until the election was just called.
His name is Roman Babber.
He made a name for himself in January of 2021 by publicly opposing Doug Ford's lockdowns, but in a calm and researched and carefully argued way, which promptly saw him thrown out of the party for daring to dissent.
Well, now he's running for the federal conservatives, and here's what he told me.
Roman, you were born in the former Soviet Union in Leningrad, as it was called.
I mean, that was a communist regime.
How did that shape you as a person and as a politician?
I lived in the Communist Soviet Union until I was almost nine.
And something that always stays with you is the fear.
And you're taught very early as a child to be weary of the regime or of issues that may come up.
For instance, right before I started school, my family told me that I'm never allowed to use the word America.
Because if you use the word America, the teacher will tell the principal and the principal will tell the KGB.
And the KGB will wonder, who's this kid that talks about America and who's his parent?
And so you always got to watch what you say.
Freedom of religion.
As some of your viewers know, I'm Jewish.
And that is also something that factored significantly into life in the Communist Soviet Union.
One of my earliest memories is remembering grandpa reading the Siddur, the Jewish prayer book on Rosh Hashanah on the evening of the Jewish New Year.
And I asked what that was, and he said this was a Sidur, our prayer book.
And dad later told me that if the authorities, if the KGB found out that we had a prayer book of this sort in our home, that grandpa could go to labor camp for five years.
That is something that profoundly stays with a child.
And that fear of the regime and that yearning and love for democracy is something that has always stayed with me.
Fear of the KGB and fear of the labor camp, but also fear of other people who would tattle, who would snitch, who would try and force you to conform.
Is that right?
That's right.
That's one of the most common themes, one of the concerns and in fact of the fears that are reminiscent of the Soviet Union.
Fear Of Snitches00:02:14
In fact, during the first debate, the North True debate, I think Jean-Charé said that, you know, Canadians are upset by the fact that there was a snitch line on the barbaric practices line.
And I said, Canadians were very upset that last year neighbors were snitching on each other, snitching on churches or synagogues that were open.
For sure, you always have to be suspicious of your surroundings, whether it's the grocery clerk that might listen into your conversation or a teacher at school or a co-worker or even a neighbor.
The regime uses other people.
It uses citizens to enforce its own laws.
And when citizens are empowered to take the law into their hands, to police, I guess, state dicta, that's when trouble happens.
And we've seen some of that in the last year and a half to two years.
Well, I think that was part of one of the worst parts, is that it pitted shopkeepers against their own customers.
It pitted teachers against students.
People who were not involved in law enforcement at all were forced into it.
And just like, you know, your teacher would tattle on you if he used the word America, it was like every single person in authority was drafted, conscripted, into a compliance army about social distancing and masks and vaxes.
I really think we went far down that road.
Can we pull out of it?
Or are there too many people who enjoy being an enforcer?
Beyond the enjoyment of it, I think that it's fear.
It's this element of fear that was so prevalent in people's minds that often turned into aggression or even hate.
I'm a big proponent of Canadian kindness.
It's something that I talk about often.
I think it makes Canada one of the best countries in the world.
And I have hope that there's enough kindness in the DNA of Canadians to be able to snap out of this.
And that begins with reducing the fear.
Reducing Fear, Restoring Kindness00:15:13
That begins with allowing us to breathe easy, go back to normal, for government to leave us alone and extricate ourselves out of this remarkable involvement in our lives that will finally allow people to maybe breathe easy and treat each other a little better.
You know, I don't want to linger too much on the Soviet story, but I think there are some echoes.
The media, in the former Soviet Union, there was no free media.
The media were propagandists.
I feel like over the last two years, the media has not asked skeptical questions of authority.
In fact, they've fact-checked not the government, but skeptical voices.
They've propagated, they've egged on the government.
That's how it looks to me.
And even your recent appearance on the CBC, I felt like you were grilled in a way as an opposition politician in a way that we haven't seen politicians in the government grilled.
Here's a quick clip of that.
On the issue of public health, you said this week that you would fire Canada's chief public health officer, Dr. Tam, for her handling of the pandemic.
You obviously, it's widely known that you disagree with many of the measures that were put in place.
I wonder, though, whether Dr. Tam is the person to go after.
Dr. Tam provided advice to the government and evidence to the government, and the government made the decision.
So why would Dr. Tam be the target of your frustration?
Well, it's not frustration.
It's the object failure of our pandemic response, namely that it appears that the response itself may have been considerably worse than initially thought, and that was the prevalence of my argument.
COVID is a very serious infection, but that doesn't mean that we should not look at the collateral harm of lockdowns and other public health measures.
And look, the government has always been acting on advice from the chief medical officer.
That's what it's predicated its actions on.
And we're seeing the fruits to bear.
We're seeing a mental health catastrophe gripping our country.
We know that our children have regressed considerably.
We know that, according to the Canadian Medical Association, that already more than 4,000 Canadians lost their lives because of surgeries delayed.
We have an almost doubling in the rate of deaths from overdose.
In Ontario alone, we have more than a million cancers can be.
I don't think anyone is denying the side effects of lockdowns.
But I think you would agree, I would hope you would agree, that the tens of thousands of Canadians who died from COVID is also a tragedy and could have been worse if the lockdowns had not been in effect.
Well, no, I'm not, if we're here to relitigate lockdowns again, first of all, I welcome you acknowledging the collateral harm of lockdowns.
That is something that wasn't permissible to even discuss when I discussed it first in January 2021.
But the jury is still out on whether there's any efficacy to lockdown.
We're still seeing a lockdown in some parts of China, sixth or seventh or tenth lockdown.
What I suggest is that we should have focused our response on the vulnerable.
We know that 80% of the risk was in long-term care homes and congregate settings.
We know that the virus is very, very transmissible.
And I'm not sure that it made sense to lock up 37 million Canadians and make themselves sick.
There's nothing wrong with demanding accountability from our public health officials.
We're questioning them.
What has the role of the media been over the last two years?
And let me ask you a practical question.
How can you fight it if so much of politics is shaped by the media?
Well, you can't have free and independent media when it's not free and independent of government.
And you can't have free speech without a free and independent media.
And unfortunately, what we're seeing is a financial dependency on the media, on government by the media.
How can media cover the government objectively when the government signs its paycheck?
And look, as I mentioned in the past, there was a newspaper in the Soviet Union called Pravda, and Pravda meant truth.
And they would plaster it all over walls.
And it was also state funded with communist messaging in it.
And we saw in the last two years that media was essentially repeating government talking points every day.
And it divested itself out of its responsibility to question government.
And we saw this narrative as to not if what you're doing making sense, but are you doing enough?
That was the only line allowed.
It's regretful that media would not allow for dissenting voices.
I think good conversation is good not just for democracy but for public policy.
And I'm fairly convinced that if we had more voices in the conversation talking about our COVID response, then probably we would have been better off.
You know, I look at what Justin Trudeau's focus is, what his priorities are, and he has so many bills he's introduced that have to do with regulating the media, regulating the internet.
Bill C-11, Bill C-18, Bill C-36, another bill called the Online Harms Act.
So he's got four legal legislative projects to do with censorship.
I don't think he has four legislative projects to do with inflation or to deal with housing.
Like, he seems to be obsessed with it.
Why is Justin Trudeau so focused on regulating the media?
I think that he believes that he's in a communications and an information exercise.
I think he also lacks the confidence to deal with issues or his opponents head on because he knows he lost on the science and he's morally bankrupt.
And so it would be advantageous to the government to maintain a narrative that would not allow them to seed the events over the last couple of years, which is why I say it's very important that history regards what happened fairly.
Canadians were exposed to new tactics that we haven't seen before.
If the narrative survives and those are deemed to be justifiable, then we will never fully go back to normal and we'll never get our democracy back.
But this actually, this is a good point to go back to the point about the Soviet Union, is that it tried very hard to maintain a certain narrative, and it would do so using the news media.
And even though it was clear to everyone that what the news media is tendering is objectively false, it still stuck to the script to preserve the government's image.
This is very, very frightening.
But hopefully at the end, it collapses under the weight of its own falsehood.
There's a new term they're using, disinformation, misinformation.
So you don't debate the other side, you silence them, you cancel them.
I see just recently former CSIS personnel saying this is a national security issue.
It's not a difference of opinion.
It's a national security issue.
There's an implication that there's foreign meddlers.
There was even the CBC saying that the Trucker Convoy was organized by Vladimir Putin.
Here's a clip of that.
You know, given Canada's support of Ukraine in this current crisis with Russia, I don't know if it's far-fetched to ask, but there is concern that Russian actors could be continuing to fuel things as this protest grows, but perhaps even instigating it from the outset.
What about this tactic of labeling dissenters disinformation?
I feel like it's dangerous.
I feel like we're criminalizing a difference of opinion.
It's very threatening.
First of all, everything that Justin Trudeau said about the trucking convoy was false.
We know that there were no weapons found on site.
There was very little foreign funding.
The arson was not connected.
And there was no evidence of any foreign collusion.
I'm very saddened by the fact that the CBC allowed the story to run.
Thankfully, subsequently withdrew the story on foreign collusion.
But no one ever pays any attention to the retraction.
And so it's important to appreciate that the burden of proof has to be on government, not on the people.
If government is going to engage in this extraordinary action, where it abridges our liberties, where it invokes the Emergencies Act, where it potentially locks us down or fundamentally alters our way of life, then the burden of proof must rest on the government.
And that is what the media is failing to do.
They are being used by government to come down on dissent, to shelter diverse opinion.
And instead, they're being used as a tool by government to propagate its message when it's really the government that should be held to the burden of proof.
The Emergencies Act has a provision where the invocation of that act has to be reviewed afterwards.
I think the liberals are trying to hide from that.
But the last two years of lockdowns, there's no requirement to review them, to review what the public health officers ordered, to review the ever-changing advice, to review the side effects of the lockdown.
Should we have some sort of truth and reconciliation commission where we review maybe a judicial review of what happened?
How can we just not let it slide?
Because if we don't explore what went wrong, we're going to make those mistakes again.
In fact, the other side doesn't even think it was a mistake.
Ezra, every room I go to, people ask me about accountability.
Can we hold the government accountable?
And my answer always is, you're not going to hold the government accountable for as long as the government remains in power, because they get to devise and construct the process.
And this is a very good example of that is the review of the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
What really is supposed to happen is the government needs to review the propriety, or an independent body needs to review the propriety of the invocation.
Instead, what Justin Trudeau has done is he set up a process with leading questions whereby he continues the prosecution of ordinary Canadians.
And this is very regretful and dangerous.
So I think that the best thing we can do right now is to try and unite politically, where we end Justin Trudeau's tenure the next time we get an opportunity.
And then we'll have access to information, to records, to emails, to subpoena power, where we can actually review what transpired in the last couple of years and potentially hold the government, the former government, accountable.
But we can't do that for as long as the government controls the legislative process and in fact uses the legislative process and government resources to come down or potentially thwart its political opponents.
Most of the lockdowns have been lifted, but one very important piece remains in place, and that's the no-fly list for unvaccinated people, the fact that they're banned from taking trains.
I'm unaware of any other country in the world that still segregates people politically and there's no, I don't believe this is a scientific basis.
But I don't sense a feeling of crisis in the media, in the establishment, amongst the medical community.
I think this is an international, it's shocking.
It's a civil rights blemish.
But I don't see a sense of urgency out there about this civil liberties crisis and Trudeau doesn't seem like he wants to change.
Ezra, I think this is one of the most shameful episodes in Canada's history.
The fact that we have discriminated and segregated people that, Canadians that made a different medical choice.
It's something that saddens me immensely.
To go back to my point about the Soviet Union and Soviet Union, you could also not board a plane to exit beyond communist walls.
To know that there are more than three and a half million Canadians that can't board a plane, I think should upset 35 million Canadians.
Add to that the fact that they see their liberties eroding and they feel that they're landlocked.
And that must create a lot of fear in their hearts.
And to know that there are Canadians that are afraid of their own federal government, in my view, is reason enough to rid ourselves of Justin Trudeau.
There is no sense of urgency because the media, the medical community, they will not want to own up to the fact that they have propagated an unprecedented event of discrimination and segregation against Canadians.
They know that the science does not bear their case, but why would they retreat?
Because that would mean that they would have to own up to what transpired in last year, year and a half, and they wouldn't want to do it.
And look, I think that we have to communicate a sensible proposition that they have lost on the science.
We know from the chief medical officer, we know even from the manufacturer, that two shots offer minimum protection against infection.
And that means that any suggestion that anyone's risk of infection, transmission is lower because the risk of infection is lower is completely false.
It's out the window.
No one's putting anyone at risk.
No one's putting others at risk.
It's a false proposition that we have to oppose.
What you just said there could probably cause a video to be deleted on YouTube or other social media on Facebook or Instagram.
And if you were a medical doctor or a nurse practitioner who took that point of view, you would have a real risk of being investigated by the College of Physicians and Surgeons or other regulators.
I think that doctors and nurses are still being pressured and silenced.
What do you say about that profession?
I feel like the profession has failed, but anyone who's tried to push back has been silenced.
How do you fix that?
I speak to a lot of doctors that are very concerned about what's transpiring in their profession.
We have never seen such government intervention into our nation's medical offices.
And I don't understand why government needs to be in the business of medicine to begin with.
Those are personal decisions between ourselves and our doctors.
Regulated professionals were gagged and threatened into submission.
I'm of the view that especially if regulated health professionals were able to speak freely, we would have been out of this mess probably as early as June 2020 when we could have reassessed and rebalanced the risk, understood where the risk is, acknowledged how transmissible the virus is and potentially arresting it through lockdowns probably not going to work.
Government Interventions in Medicine00:15:21
And then not questioning basic propositions with respect to vaccination.
We know that it potentially reduces risk, but it doesn't reduce transmission or infection.
And we know that it wanes over time.
So why subject someone to something that potentially may not yield efficacy towards them not spreading the virus elsewhere?
Look, I think that regulated professionals, and this is common in all regimes, you often see demonstrations overseas.
It's typically the lawyers, the students, the judges, the doctors.
Governments, authoritarian governments have a habit of doing this because I think for as long as there is credible opposition to government, it is unable to engage in the remarkable activities that we've seen in the last couple of years.
So it starts with credible voices on the other side.
Well, let's touch on that because in the United States you had 50 states with different approaches.
You had some real heavy lockdowns in New York and California, but you had sort of experiments in South Dakota, in Florida, in Texas.
So you had a variety of approaches, even within a particular party.
There were lockdown Republicans and anti-lockdown Republicans like Rhonda Sanders in Florida.
But in Canada, every provincial government was for lockdowns, no matter what stripe they were.
New Democrat, PC, Liberal.
But even more strangely, every opposition was also in favor of lockdowns.
And federally, Trudeau was for lockdowns.
But until Aaron O'Toole was ousted, so was that party.
I mean, in the last couple months, you've seen the party criticize the no-fly list.
Melissa Lanceman has been doing a good job on that.
But what happened to the Conservative Party or any other purportedly opposition party?
Why didn't the opposition parties oppose?
They felt that there's too much political risk to oppose.
This was a remarkable event in modern history.
We saw a virus that we haven't seen before, potentially very transmissible, with what was thought to be a high fatality rate until we understood how transmissible it is, thereby making the metrics lower.
So this narrative formed that we have to do everything possible to protect each other.
That was the political correct thing of the day to do.
And that political correctness, as it typically does, was fortified by cancel culture.
And so any suggestion that someone should not go along with what would be politically correct would be answered with a very aggressive backlash or, as we deem it now, cancellation.
Well, that's what happened to you.
Well, I was asked to leave the Conservative caucus.
So you were a member of the provincial parliament in Doug Ford's government.
When did you start to say, I'm not going along with the mob here?
How early was it that you started to say things aren't right?
I first started questioning the lockdown within my own government around the middle of May 2020, because I understood two things.
Number one, public health told us that almost 80% of everyone that passed away were in a long-term care home.
And that, of course, is regretful, but that means that we need to increase our staffing and increase our effort to protect those in long-term care homes.
So I asked, why don't we actually focus on long-term care homes instead of locking everyone down?
And the answer was, well, the higher the rate of transmission in the community, the higher the rate of transmission inside the long-term care home, which I thought was absolutely ridiculous.
All it takes is one agency worker to come into a home, bring COVID, and God forbid half of them will die.
And the other thing that happened was we started seeing all sorts of serological studies from around the world that concluded that the infection rate is significantly higher than we thought.
There were studies out of Spain, out of France, out of California saying for every person that we actually test positive for COVID, there's another 20 out there walking with COVID.
I think Stanford came up with something as high as between 20 and 50.
That I believe to be very, very good news, because that meant that all the metrics that we're worried about were actually 20 to 50 times lower, hospitalizations and deaths.
And so at that point, I asked that we reassess the risk and at the same time consider the collateral harm of lockdowns.
So when you say you asked that, I know there was a point where you started to ask that publicly.
You wrote a public letter, very meticulously footnoted, to the Premier.
But how did you, did you start by asking questions in caucus or did you try and express things and work within the system?
And if you did, what happened to you?
I have to respect caucus confidentiality and I have, in fact, since I was asked to leave government in early January 2021.
But you can say if you brought it up.
Absolutely.
It's well known that I was opposing our public health measures as early as May 2020.
And were there others, and again, you don't have to identify them, but I mean, I know there were others.
I know there were others who were upset about things, were concerned about things, but didn't have the courage to really say it publicly.
It was widely known that there was some opposition within the conservative, progressive conservative government to our public health exercise.
I think that Doug Ford enjoyed the success, the perceived success he had after June 2020.
Cases went down, well, because it's summer, and you remember that they've enjoyed record popularity.
And so he thought, well, why would he retreat from this narrative?
If cases go back up, which is something that I've suggested in early June, that we're going to be back at the same point because cases are going to go up at some point in the fall.
Their thinking was that since we've done this before, we probably have to do this again.
Or else, how are we going to explain locking down healthy people for about two to two and a half months?
And so they stuck to the script without being willing to admit an error.
And that's the thing.
No one would fault them for the first lockdown.
No one knew what we're up against.
No one knew what was happening until at least April or May 2020.
And so it's regretful that I think the entire exercise was mainly political in that doing something different the subsequent time around would lead people to say, well, why did you do this last time?
And especially during the third lockdown, when we went again into lockdown in spring 2021, having completely understood what the risk is and having also vaccinated more than 80 to 90% of the population after we were told that we're going to go back to normal subsequent to vaccination.
It's very, very important that history regards all of this fairly, Ezra.
And I'm concerned that it might not, because if the narrative survives, then they will justify the methods that were used on Canadians, and that cannot happen.
Well, I watched the provincial election debate, Doug Ford and his Democrat and liberal opposition, and they had very gentle and very brief criticism of him, but how could they?
If anything, they wanted him to go further.
I think that's the problem, is there is no party running provincially that is in a meaningful way challenging what Doug Ford did.
And his answer was very flippant.
Said, well, I made the tough decisions and you had the easiest job in the world is watching.
I think Doug Ford's going to get away with it.
I don't think there's been any scrutiny in the media by the opposition party, by the courts, by the colleges of physicians and surgeons, by really any other entity.
I think the official view is it worked.
But I don't know if Canadians believe that.
I think if they had a choice, they might be able to express themselves differently.
What do you think?
I just regret that there's no political option for real dissenters on this stuff.
I think that it's important that Canadians appreciate the full effect, the toll, and the resulting consequences of what transpired in the last couple of years.
The premise behind my argument in January 2021, that while COVID is a serious infection and may be risky to certain demographics, we must consider the collateral harm of lockdowns and re-evaluate our public health response accordingly.
And now, unfortunately, we're seeing the collateral harm manifest itself very, very clearly.
For instance, the Canadian Mental Health Association came out as early as last April and said that already more than 4,000 Canadians passed away as a result of their surgeries being delayed.
Ontario cancelled or delayed more than 350,000 surgeries.
We know from, for instance, Dr. Singh in McMasters, who said that she would have been able to save many kids whose tumors were diagnosed too late.
If they were just diagnosed six months earlier, she said, I would have been able to save them.
And Ontario missed more than a million cancer screenings.
And of course, we know that cancer screenings are not random.
It's something that people that are looking for cancer are doing or certain predisposition.
We have a mental health pandemic that's gripping our country.
I think generally ask any employer in the country and they'll tell you that their employees are suffering from some sort of a post-trauma.
And I see that in my everyday life with pretty much everyone I interact with.
Our kids have regressed considerably.
I speak to a teacher who is a grade three teacher and she tells me that her kids read at a grade one level.
We have done colossal harm to our health and mental health.
We have an almost doubling rate of deaths from overdose.
This is a catastrophe that has been perpetuated by government.
And I think that part of the reason why you're not seeing this willingness to come out and acknowledge that is because so many of the actors that have been involved in this exercise bear responsibility, whether it's medical regulators, the media, social media, and censoring dissent, and they're not going to come around and own up to it.
So I'm going to continue to try and speak about this.
It's important for those, it's not just important for public policy going forward.
I think it's important for foreclosure and justice for a lot of Canadians that were very affected by this.
I think it's the issue of our age.
I can't think of anything more important from a health point of view, from an economic point of view, from a civil liberties point of view.
There are other things that I want to talk to you about, but let me ask you just one last partisan question.
I've seen in the anti-lockdown movement a coalition that I couldn't have imagined two years ago.
I see former Green Party members who can't believe that their party is now the party of big pharma.
I see former liberals who can't believe that their party used to be my body, my choice, keep your hands off my body, and is now for mandatory injections.
I see foreigner New Democrats wondering why collective bargaining was thrown out the window and unions just agreed to fire workers who weren't jabbed.
I feel like if you add up this new coalition, even people who took the vaccine against their choice.
They weren't necessarily forced, but they did it because they would have lost their job.
I think that there's a large coalition that has emerged.
What do you think of that?
Is it possible to cobble together something bigger than the old Conservative Party if you reach out to these different parts of society that were disenfranchised?
Absolutely.
Just very quickly on the jobs part, I think making someone choose between their personal health choice and their ability to put food on the table is inhumane, which is why I brought the Jobs and Jobs bill last year and shame on the Doug Ford government for voting it down.
But, you know, Ezra, I think we're seeing a political realignment of party loyalty.
And that is because I think COVID and COVID response has turned everything on its head.
I have a lot of friends that formerly identify themselves as Green Party supporters.
And they joke with me.
Roman, I used to not take Advil.
And now I have to vaccinate in order to lead a normal life.
I speak to a lot of what I refer to as classical liberals, the Paul Martin types, that believe in the soundness and the necessity of our democracy.
And they cannot believe the censorship and the government overreach they're seeing.
And they're rightfully very concerned about that.
But I think the greatest category of disenfranchised voters are former New Democrats.
The labor movement, many in the labor movement feel that the New Democrats have abandoned them, that they refuse to stand up for their jobs.
Shame on Jagmeep Singh.
Shame on Andrea Horvath for not standing up for the very people that they always claim to have championed.
And I think a lot of workers now feel that the New Democrats refuse to stand up for them and union bosses also refuse to stand up for their jobs.
I have some faith that as we approach the next federal election, we're going to be able to build, and I certainly intend to build, a very large voting coalition that includes many voters that previously voted for another party.
Yeah, I can't stop thinking about that Unifor member who said if the company and the union are saying the same thing, one of them is not necessary.
And he was talking about Unifor just agreeing to all these new demands that weren't in their collective agreements.
We're seeing really unprecedented response by unions to this remarkable policy that essentially changes your underlying contract of employment.
Unions are vested with legal requirement to protect their membership.
And yet in many cases, we're now seeing that they abdicate that requirement.
Many Canadians know that I have good relationships with first responders.
I love the police.
I love our EMS and our firefighters.
Prices in Toronto Rising?00:15:10
You know, I speak to police officers who are suspended without pay, and they say, I could have been accused of criminal conduct, and I would have been suspended with pay pending the investigation until I'm convicted.
And even then, in many cases, until the appeal is usurped, I still get my pay sitting at home.
And here, I'm making a medical choice, and I'm being made to sit at home without pay while our streets are less safe.
It's a bizarre world, Ezra.
We're seeing not just a bizarre world, but we're also seeing COVID paralysis resulting from the fact that we've engaged in so many remarkable decisions that nothing works anymore, whether it's our lineups at the airport, right?
You can't get through anywhere, or the fact that everything seems to be slower.
It's hard to get a cup of coffee at Timorn's because there's a major lager shortage.
I'm very concerned about the welfare of our country.
Well, let's talk about an issue that, on the face of it, is not about COVID and lockdowns, but I think it started because of the government reaction.
Let's talk about inflation, the price of gasoline, the price of everything, even food shortages incredibly.
Try buying a used car in this country.
I mean, there's so many things that, like you say, feel broken.
What's your theory on where this inflation came from?
And what are your thoughts on how to stop it?
Yeah, so the reason for our inflation is not just that we printed half a trillion dollars for which we essentially yielded no benefit, but also I think lockdowns and the stoppage of the global economy is very much to blame for it.
We essentially stopped the global supply chain three or four times and then restarted it, causing supply not to catch up with demand.
We're in a disequilibrium.
I had to have some car repair down and I dropped my car off at the garage and there were no parts.
They told me we're going to wait for three to four weeks for parts.
That's another very common theme in a socialist country where there is a shortage of basically everything because there's so much less production.
And so that's why you're seeing this rapid inflation.
We have an insatiable demand with supply not catching up.
The best thing we can do is we can provide the market with some certainty that we're not going to close down again, that we're not going to stop the global economy.
That would go a very, very long way to start.
And of course, we're spending way beyond our means.
We went from a $700 billion debt to a $1.3 trillion debt in a span of two years.
We didn't hire a single nurse or built a single hospital for that.
And the best thing we can do to catch up with the amount of money in the economy right now is to increase productivity.
But we're seeing moves by the federal government to discourage work, whether it's universal basic income or continuation of benefits to those that don't need the benefits or continuing this fear-mongering.
We need to encourage people to go back to work, increase productivity, so the supply of goods and services can catch up with the amount of money in the economy.
Is there a special answer on oil prices?
I know that Trudeau refuses to build pipelines.
He said we should phase out the oil sands.
He specifically rejected the requests from Ukraine and other Europeans to replace Russian conflict energy with Canadian ethical energy.
What's the right answer on oil and gas and pipelines?
With respect to Justin Trudeau, this reminds me of firing healthy nurses when we have a supply of, we have an unprecedented demand for healthcare workers within the system.
It's an ideological exercise.
And the same thing that's happening with oil and gas right now.
I think that Canada's natural resources are a blessing.
I'm not going to let oil and gas be cancelled.
It's good for our strategic interest, for our economic bottom line.
And it's also good for the planet, because Canadians can drive energy cleaner and safer than any other nation in the world.
And it's not just oil and gas that we need to be talking about.
We need to be talking about mining.
We have an insatiable appetite right now around the world for precious minerals and metals that Canada is blessed with.
And it's great for our northern communities, for our remote communities, for our Indigenous communities.
I'm very much looking forward to unleashing Canada's economic opportunity.
That's probably the best thing we can do to help our bottom line.
And to do that, I'd like to propose that we should be a natural resources superpower.
We're in Toronto, and the housing prices here, the average home in Toronto proper, average, is more than $1 million.
If I'm not mistaken, prices have gone up 29% in the last year.
Vancouver, it's just as crazy.
Most cities, it's going up.
Young people can't save fast enough to get a day.
Like, every minute you wait, you're further behind.
Young people can't move out of their parents' home to start a life.
And I mean, maybe it's going to slow down, but it doesn't seem like it.
How do you deal with the skyrocketing housing prices?
It's not this way in America.
I mean, they have some prices going up, but there's something particular to Canada that's just atrocious.
What's going on?
Supply.
Lack of supply is probably the predominant reason.
But before I make some proposals with respect to how we can increase affordability, I'd like to suggest that we should also remember that we have a lot of homeowners.
And for many Canadians, their home is the only asset.
And when we hear media fear-mongering about the real estate market, and when we have government intervention that artificially seeks to undercut the housing market, compounded with rising interest rates, I think we have to be very, very careful not to have a government-induced correction that will potentially hurt a lot of Canadians.
So we've got to be measured.
And for those who have the home, they're lucky enough to have one or in.
But I just see for anyone under 30, I don't know how you're buying a house in Toronto unless you're a doctor or a lawyer.
So there are some concrete steps we can take to increase affordability.
For instance, I would like to double the first-time home buyers' exemption.
Right now it's $35,000.
With a $35,000 down payment, you're not going to get much in the GTA.
I will propose to double it to $70,000, maybe index it to inflation after that.
I would also propose that we need to increase the supply of land.
And for that, we need to divest ourselves of all federal land that is not protected or not environmentally sensitive.
Increasing the supply of land will decrease home prices.
But most importantly, the best thing we can do for housing is to start investing in transportation and highways again.
Building means to get from one place to another is the best way to encourage the construction of new and affordable communities.
We built this country on a train, but we don't have the political stomach to build anything anymore.
So I will propose that we start building transit and highways again.
That will stimulate the construction of new and affordable communities and bring prices towards a more affordable level.
Well, you talk about supply, but there's the other side too, which is demand.
I want to ask you about two prickly questions about the demand for housing.
One is foreign buyers who are just looking for a safe place to put their money, whether they're, I think it used to be Russia, a lot of people in China, they want to get their money out of their country lest their own government sees it.
There's a lot of property in Vancouver being bought by foreign buyers, probably Toronto too.
And I don't think that's as big as the second factor, which is immigration.
If you have 400,000, 300, 400,000 people a year coming to Canada, which is higher than almost any other country in the G20, and half of them are going to Toronto or Vancouver, there's no way you're going to keep up.
I mean, just adding that many people to the biggest cities, it's going to jam them up.
And it's going to, if it doesn't push down wages, it'll certainly push up housing.
Do you have anything to say about immigration levels?
Or is that something that is off the political table?
I think that Canada's multiculturalism and pluralism is a beautiful thing.
I'm an immigrant to Canada.
I came here when I was 15, and I've had every blessing our country had to offer.
And my family and myself were able to contribute positively to our country.
And I still hope to continue to do that.
I think that Canadian values are not just welcoming, but why do immigrants come to Canada?
They come here for democracy and economic opportunity.
Those are conservative values.
And I think that it's important for the Conservative Party to dispel any history of being anti-immigration and embrace lawful, legal immigration.
At the same time, I think it's a necessary thing for Canada because we have an aging demographic and we have a shrinking labor force.
One of the greatest challenges we're experiencing today is the size of the labor force.
Thankfully, everyone's hiring.
And that is because a lot of folks left or retired from the labor force.
So we need to encourage more entry into the market.
And skilled labor, immigrants, young people, is something that we need to be looking at.
It's the only way we can catch up with demand in the labor market.
I hear what you're saying about the quality of immigration.
You're talking about multicultural and welcoming.
And I accept that, by the way.
But there's also the quantitative side.
I mean, over the past few years, Justin Trudeau has set a number, and it feels arbitrary.
And every conservative leader, Aaron O'Toole, Andrew Scheer, says, okay, I agree with that number, instead of coming up with our own number.
And the number is very high, and it's growing, and it's higher than our competitors.
And the only reason I raise it is that, you know, when you add 300, 400,000 people a year to the country and they mainly go to Vancouver and Toronto, I don't know if you're going to, you know, you can try and fix supply all you like, but there's a demand issue too, and it's a traffic issue, and it's a hospitals issue.
So do we have to always say yes to Trudeau's number?
How do we come up with the number ourselves?
And I'm not saying change the ethnic mix.
I'm just saying, is there a number that's too high?
If Trudeau said half a million a year, if Trudeau said a million a year, do we always have to say yes to Trudeau?
But Ezra, it's the shortage of the labor force that also creates inflation.
A couple of days ago, I went into one of my favorite restaurants, Bagel Plus, at Shepherd and Bathurst, for an afternoon lunch.
And at 2 o'clock, they told me they were closing down because they don't have labor.
And what that means is, in order to attract more people to work, because there's a shortage of labor, businesses have to increase their prices.
Shortage of labor is now causing massive inflation all over Canada.
So instead of thinking just on the demand side, we should be thinking on the supply side of housing.
We keep finding ways not to build in our country.
We know that municipal issues, provincial governments, generally left-of-center governments always get in the way of development.
And I think we don't have an immigration issue.
We have a political and ideological issue whereby we are precluded from allowing supply to catch up with demand.
But I'd like to stress again, I speak to a lot of small business owners. who tell me that their greatest challenge right now is staffing.
And this is not just bad for our economy.
It's very bad for cost of living.
And so I'm of view that we need to encourage lawful immigration, but that supply of housing needs to start catching up with demand.
Let's switch gears a bit and talk about the conservative leadership race.
There's been some interesting debates.
The True North debate, I thought, was very lively.
Jamil Giovanni and Candace Malcolm did a great job hosting that.
The second one wasn't as instructive, but I think there's some real differences amongst the candidates.
I think that's a great thing, that party members have a real choice.
You've run a pretty positive campaign because I think you have a lot to say that's unique because of your role in fighting the lockdowns.
But I would like to ask you for your thoughts on the other candidates.
I think that's fair.
I'm not looking for you to trash them.
I'm looking for you to distinguish yourself from them.
For example, if there was someone contemplating voting for Jean Charrain, what would you say to them to make them vote for you instead?
Jean Charé seems to think that if we have better health care, then we wouldn't need lockdowns or mandates.
And that is where I strongly disagree with Jean.
We do not need mandates.
We do not need to force anyone to do anything against their will.
Sure, we need to build up our healthcare system.
We have one of the most efficient health care systems in the world, one of the lowest amounts of bed in the OECD.
But that doesn't mean that we should take extraordinary steps, such as locking down healthy people or making Canadians receive treatment that they don't want to otherwise receive.
Jean-Charé has been in favor of the carbon tax.
In fact, I believe passed one in Quebec.
I think that increasing the cost of gas will not discourage people from driving.
It will just make it more expensive to drive.
So I appreciate his traditional role in our country as someone that try to keep our country together.
I think there's quite a lot to distinguish.
How about Lesland Lewis?
Very interesting candidate.
Patrick Brown's Political Role00:10:16
Her second time running for leader.
She's had some experience in parliaments and so what would you say to a Lesland Lewis supporter about why they should vote for you?
I frankly like Lesland.
I think she's very intelligent and very capable.
I do see an issue with her housing proposal.
She proposes, much like I do, to divest herselves of federal lands, but she proposes that we should do it for free.
And I don't agree with that.
I don't think that we should be giving up taxpayer-funded or taxpayer-owned land to developers for free.
I think that we should look at market or something close to market.
But generally speaking, look, I bring a unique perspective to government.
I have now demonstrated proven courage and leadership in standing up for Canadians when they didn't have a voice.
And so I trust Conservative members to view the field and say We know we might not always agree with Roman, but we'll always know where Roman stands, and we can count on him to make a difficult decision, even when it's unpopular.
Patrick Brown is a good organizer in politics.
I think he surprised people when he won the PC Party of Ontario leadership a few years back.
He managed to make himself mayor of Brampton, a city with which he had very little connection.
I don't think he should be underestimated in terms of his skill of organizing.
What would you say about Patrick Brown?
And I don't know if you could convince a Patrick Brown voter to vote for you because I don't know if they're motivated by ideas or if it's more a personal connection.
What do you think of him as a candidate?
And do you have criticisms of him?
So look, first of all, I will, and I've made this point before, I think that it's important that we emerge out of this race united and that we don't disparage anyone or reparably harm one candidate or another so we cannot go out and contest a general election.
Can you imagine another Justin Trudeau or even worse, a Christian Freeland government?
And so this scorched earth approach that some of my fellow candidates have been taking is, in my view, something that they should probably rethink.
But look, Patrick is a very good organizer.
I certainly appreciate the fact that he has gone to great lengths to invite more communities into the conservative tent.
I think it's a good thing.
And it's certainly something that I would want to do myself as well.
As I said earlier, I think that immigrant values are conservative values.
Immigrants come here for opportunity, for freedom, and so we should welcome them into the Conservative Party.
At the same time, I watched Patrick Brown change his approach, to put it lightly, to certain files.
He was in favor of, he was against the carbon tax and then he was in favor of it.
He was against the Kathleen Wynne sex ed curriculum and subsequently changed his mind on that.
I would certainly appreciate, and I respect the fact sometimes people evolve and views evolve, but at the same time, I think that it's very, very important to remain consistent for the benefit of our voters.
And we see this happening often during leaderships where a candidate runs to the right during the leadership and then pivots to the left during the general election.
And that's certainly not something that I intend to do.
I think that voters want to understand who they're dealing with.
I think authenticity is very, very important.
And you're not going to hear me say anything today that I'm not going to be willing to say during the general election.
Pierre Polyev seems to have the momentum in terms of large crowds, media attention.
He has some ideas that sound similar to yours.
How would you distinguish between yourself and Pierre Polyev?
And what would you say to someone who says, well, Pierre Polyev has the momentum, he's a winner.
He's got the, I'm going to go with him because he seems to be the head of the pack.
What would you say to that prospective Polyev voter to win him over to you?
So look, I think that Pierre is very intelligent and very articulate.
I think he's done a very effective job in the opposition of holding the Justin Trudeau government to account on economic issues.
Pierre and I disagree on some issues.
I am against supply management.
I don't think that we should centrally control how much dairy we should be able to produce or cap the ability or prevent a Canadian's ability to enter into a market and start doing business.
It's Soviet style.
It's central planning Soviet style.
And so when we talk about gatekeepers, there's no greater gatekeepers than supply management.
I am prepared to end equalization by the end of my first term.
I look forward to my friends commenting on this issue.
I'm also not that...
Equalization amongst the provinces?
Correct.
Correct.
Equalization payments.
I also am not sure how, and in fairness, Mr. Polyev made his views on Bill 21 more clear last time around.
I think I'm going to distinguish myself by saying that I'm going to avail ourselves of whatever means necessary. to defend the freedom of all Canadians, and that includes all Quebecers.
That's the Quebec bill against religious attire for the civil service.
Absolutely.
Just like I don't think that anyone should make a choice between their ability to put food on the table and the medical procedure, I don't think that we should make anyone choose between their ability to put food on the table and their personal faith.
To suggest that you can't be a Jewish observant high school math teacher in Quebec because you wear a kipah, or you can't be a police officer in Montreal because you're Sikh and you wear a turban, that's un-Canadian to me.
And now we see the Lago government going further with Bill 96, where it will now compel doctors to communicate in French only under threat of seizing their medical records or demand that companies with over 25 employees communicate and do business in French with the ability to seize their cell phones and then put the onus on the company to justify why they have to speak in English.
I think that's un-Canadian as well.
And I think that the Conservative Party needs to demonstrate courage and stand up for all Canadians.
I have a history of doing that for the last two years.
I'm prepared to say what many Canadians or many politicians are afraid to say when it's politically risky.
And that's what the voters will always be able to count with me.
One last question for you.
We talked about some of the differences amongst the candidates.
There's been some real brawling, especially between Shere, Brown, and Polyev, I think, on the truckers, things like that.
I don't think it's possible for Sheree or Brown to run as candidates if Polyev wins.
I think there's just too much, as you said, too much harsh words.
I could be wrong.
If you do not win the leadership, will you run as an MP if it's Pierre Polyev or if it's Sheree or if it's Brown as a leader?
Could you be a candidate for either of those three leaders?
I don't know.
And it's not necessarily dependent on the outcome of the race.
First of all, we're in it to win it.
We are a truly grassroots movement.
We have the lowest average size donation of all campaigns.
And we keep exceeding expectations.
My application was approved.
We raised the $300,000 plus the administrative fee required to enter the race.
I think we've surprised some folks in the debate, in both debates.
And I'm going to continue to look to exceed expectations and hopefully win this race.
I don't want to speculate about the future.
I think that it would be important for me to know that I can trust the leader of the party to do what's right by Canadians.
I watched my former government, the Doug Ford government, make decisions that were not in the best interest of Ontarians.
And especially when lives are on the line, that is something that I was unwilling to digest.
And I don't want to be in that position again where I'm forced to potentially go along with something that my conscience would not permit me to do.
At the same time, Ezra, this is a unique time in our nation's history.
I'm genuinely concerned for the erosion of our democracy.
I can't believe what's happening in our country, right?
Between the Emergencies Act, the 20% of Canadians being treated like second-class citizens, seizing bank accounts without a court order.
I just can't understand how any sensible politician that can potentially help this situation would be sitting on the sidelines.
This is why I'm very committed to this race.
I'm very committed to this country and to Canadians.
I look forward to competing.
I look forward to winning.
Well, it's been a pleasure talking with you, and I wish you good luck in the campaign.
And these are indeed serious times, and I believe you have some serious ideas.
So thank you for being with us.
I'm very grateful to Canadians Coast to Coast that have been supporting our campaign.
I invite them to register.
The deadline for memberships is next Friday to be eligible to vote as June 3rd.
And they're welcome to do so at joinroman.ca.
JoinRoman.com.
We'll put that under the video on the website.
Thanks very much for being with us.
Thank you, Ezra.
Elites' Safe Space Revealed00:04:22
Well, that's our show for today.
What do you think of Roman Babber?
I enjoyed the interview, and I think he thinks very carefully about things.
I think he's a smart cookie.
To be candid, I don't know if he's got the national profile in the organization to beat some of the other candidates, but I have to be candid with you.
I really hope that he continues on in the party, if he doesn't make it.
And I hope that whoever does win, if Roman Babber doesn't, appoints Babber to the cabinet.
I think he brings a lot to the table.
That's my view.
That's the show for today.
Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night.
And keep fighting for freedom.
And let me leave you with another great video from the World Economic Forum, where our team of six journalists have wrapped up a great week.
I'll leave you with that.
See you later.
G'day, Rebels.
I'm here with the entire team walking back to the car after what I would call a long three days of chasing down elites at the World Economic Forum here in Davos.
Mate, Lewis, last three days, what have you learned?
Well, I think I've learned a massive positive, okay?
And that's this year's narrative or theme is all about regaining trust, which paints the picture that people don't trust them.
So I take that as a big positive.
Beautiful.
I can't say I disagree.
I think God's saying that too.
Savs, come on in.
Tell the people three long days.
What have you taken away?
I think my biggest takeaway, Avi, is that we're essentially living in the globalist ideal world, right?
They're far away from the people.
They are pushing all of this digital central banking metaverse on us.
But are they taking part in that?
Are they a part of that in their every single day of lives?
On top of that, they have approved press here, which is why, again, go to WEFReports.com because we're some of the only journalists that are actually on the ground confronting these elites, these globalists that are trying to push these bad ideologies on us, these bad policies on us.
So, you know, I've just really learned the importance of, one, independent media, and two, that if the World Economic Forum had their way, this is what our world would look like.
They would be somewhere remote, far away from the people.
We would be suffering from their bad policy, and they would be sipping champagne on the streets.
I'm sorry, Savior, you're going to have to follow that one.
What have you learned in the last three days here?
Well, if I had to sum up the last three days, it would be hypocrisy, hypocrisy, and a bit more hypocrisy.
We've had lecturing us on climate change while flying in by private jets and having cars after cars after cars.
We've had wanting to implement digital ID and more surveillance while hiding behind their little sheltered area back there.
So, you know, the rich get private lives, but the poor don't.
There's guards here armed to the teeth, but they don't like gun control.
So they've really reflected the annual WF motto, which is rules for thee, but not for me.
Another thing is that there's almost no world leaders here, so they must know that we're on to them.
All right, well said there, too.
So certainly we've learned a lot here, Jeremy.
What about you?
Yeah, I would like to follow up with Lewis said.
The theme is working together to regain trust and what have they done to lose our trust?
They locked us in our house for two years, they took away our jobs, they mandated dubious medical interventions.
And after speaking to them, I learned how ignorant they are of this fact of why trust was lost.
Not one time from speaking to all of these attendees that I spoke to did any of those things come up.
They're clueless why trust was lost.
They don't know.
So the clueless of the elites is definitely on display here at the World Economic Forum.
Well they have it and I guess what I learned most from being here is that the elites consider this a safe space for them and they are absolutely shocked when independent journalists hit them with the tough questions.
Now all of this is only possible with your support at WEFreports.com.
Watch the reports, share them all and help fund our independent journalism here in Davos.