WestJet CEO Alexis von Hensbrick defied Canada’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, calling it illogical and operationally harmful until June 30th, while foreign tourists—especially Americans from unmandated states like Florida—face redirection to Mexico. Ezra Levante ties this to Trudeau’s broader agenda: a proposed $50K–$190K home equity tax (despite prior promises), Bill C-21’s handgun restrictions targeting legal shooters, and ideological crackdowns on dissent, including firearms suspensions without due process. Critics warn of bureaucratic overreach, economic strain, and misplaced safety priorities, as illegal guns dominate violent crime while self-defense rights erode under policies framed as "capping" freedoms. [Automatically generated summary]
Today I look at an astonishing comment by the new president, the new CEO of WestJet.
He came out against Trudeau's vaccine mandate.
I have never seen such courage in any Canadian CEO of two years of the lockdown.
It won't surprise you to hear he's foreign.
He just came to Canada to take the job.
I'll give you the scoop on it.
I'll tell you what he said and I'll show you what Trudeau said.
That's in a moment.
But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
That's the video version of this podcast.
Just go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe eight bucks a month.
You get my show every weeknight, plus four other shows on a weekly basis, including one from my good friend Sheila Gunn Reed.
David Menzies has a show, Andrew Chapados, Nat and Cat.
There's a lot to see.
36 different programs a month, just for eight bucks.
Go to rebelnewsplus.com.
And by the way, we need that though because we don't take any money from Trudeau, you know.
All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, an airline CEO comes out against the vaccine mandate.
It's June 1st, and this is the Ezra Levance 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 is government a lot of publisher is because it's my bloody right to do so.
I was very surprised to see this yesterday.
It's a public comment on Twitter by Alexis von Hensbrick.
I think I'm pronouncing that right.
He's the CEO of WestJet, Canada's second largest airline.
It's based in the West.
Maybe there's a tiny bit of a freedom spirit left out there.
Tiny Freedom Spirit?00:11:41
He said, vaccine mandate for all travelers and employees needs to be dropped.
As vaccines are not preventing the spreading of the virus since Omicron, there is no more logic to maintain it.
This will also relax some of the operational challenges at the airports.
Wow.
And in his tweet, he links to this CTV story.
Headline, federal COVID-19 border restrictions extended for another month.
Yeah, you think it's just another month?
How about just another two weeks to stop the spread?
Here's what the CTV story says.
The federal COVID-19 restrictions at the border are being extended until at least June 30th.
Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada announced on Tuesday, the federal government will continue to require foreign tourists to provide proof of being fully vaccinated.
Yeah, Canadians need to provide that too, don't they?
So I care about Canadians because I am a Canadian and because it's so evident to me that Trudeau is using the airline and railway vaccine mandates as a way to punish the opposition.
Here's what I mean.
Because if you're unvaccinated in 2022, if you manage to hold out this far, despite the bullying and threats and extortions, despite the punishments, I think the likelihood that you are anything but a Trudeau supporter is more than 90%.
And that's really all Trudeau cares about.
So of course he wants to punish and undermine and hurt and fatigue and demoralize that group of people who are against him politically.
I mean, he literally called them racists and Nazis.
And he went on TV saying that we shouldn't tolerate such people.
It's not so much that the unvaccinated are a public danger.
Many of them have recovered naturally from the virus and are naturally immune.
And as Bill Gates himself tells us, vaccines don't stop you from catching or spreading the virus.
They're not really vaccines in the traditional sense.
The idea of checking if people are vaccinated, you know, if you have breakthrough infections, what's the point?
Yeah, it's that Trudeau likes to punish his enemies, especially when they helpfully put themselves in a category like that.
He hates Alberta and Saskatchewan.
He hates the oil patch.
He hates our military.
He hates the unvaxed because each of these groups are his political opponents and they're easy to class, so he can target them.
That's why he wants to criminalize them where he can, merely ban and segregate them where that's the most he can do.
But the thing is, that isn't such a neat class.
Because if there are, say, 10 or 15% in the country that's unvaxed, I bet it's actually higher.
Well, that's just not it because they're very likely part of a family where some people are vaxed.
You might have a mom who stays at home with the kids, and so she's not vaxed because she's worried about her health.
But the dad had to get vaxed or he'd be fired from his job.
So there's a family, and Trudeau hates the mom because she's unvaxed, but the dad is no ally of Trudeau.
He was forced to be vaxed, and of course he loves his wife.
But my point here is that the entire family can't really go on a family vacation on WestJet now, can they?
They can't go to a cycle of life event like a wedding or a funeral on a WestJet flight, can they?
Because mom isn't vaxed, even though dad was forced to be vaxed.
So if you're WestJet or Canada, you didn't just lose mom as a customer, you lost the family unit as a customer.
But it's worse than that.
The second part of that CTV, the second sentence I read from that CTV story, foreign tourists have to show they're vaxed to come to Canada.
Many foreigners are not vaxed.
And many Americans, which is by far the biggest source of tourists and business travelers to Canada, some of them are vaxed, but some aren't.
But it's been ages since they had to widespread vaccine mandates down there.
And some places like Florida, being an obvious example, never did.
So some people are vaccinated and some aren't.
But really, is everyone holding onto their vaccine certificates and carrying around them in their wallets anywhere?
I mean, maybe, maybe that's something you do, you say very carefully.
But you're an American and you want to go on a trip, you want to come to Canada, and you've got to go through this whole thing again.
Yeah, you might want to go to Mexico instead.
Better beaches, less corrupt than Trudeau.
In Mexico, they don't censor you or seize your bank accounts, Trudeau style, and they don't require that you're jabbed.
So if you're WestJet, you've been a good corporate citizen this whole time, which these days unfortunately means not being a good citizen to your fellow man, but being obedient to the government, forcing your own staff to be vaccinated under pain of being terminated, forcing your own customers to be vaccinated, and denying the vast majority of requests for religious or medical exemptions.
So let's not pretend that WestJet hasn't been a complicit collaborator all along.
They shut up and obeyed.
The complete opposite of the boss of Cathay Pacific, who stood up to the Chinese dictatorship.
Remember that story?
Cathay Pacific, one of the world's great airlines, based in Hong Kong.
And look at this story.
I've told it to you before.
The Chinese government demanded that the airline boss hand over the names of any staff who were engaged in pro-democracy protests, according to this report.
And I've seen this report in four different news sources.
The CEO gave the Chinese a piece of paper with a list of all the names of the protesters on it, but there's only one name on the list, his own name.
Can you imagine that?
He was soon drummed out as CEO.
I don't know if this is a legend or a fact.
I have read it in places like Newsweek and a Taiwanese newspaper.
I would like to think that there are some Hong Kongers who believe that much in freedom.
I don't know if Alexis von Hensbrück is such a man.
I don't know.
WestJet spent two years complying with Trudeau's mandates, not just complying, but enforcing the rules against their own people, their own staff, their own customers.
But you can't put all that on Van Hensbruck because, according to this press release, I had never heard of Von Hensbrück before.
He actually only joined WestJeff as their WestJet as their boss in February, just a few months ago, March, April, May, June, just four months ago.
He's from Europe.
I think he might be German.
I'm not sure.
And Europe, there's slightly more sane than Canada on the lockdowns these days.
So maybe Von Hensbruck is our version of the Cafe Pacific boss.
He's not dulled and succumbed and obedient and submissive like 100% of the rest of the CEO class in this country.
I cannot think of one company, one publicly traded company, one prestigious company, one stock market company, one company that you know the brand that spoke out against the vaccine mandates, let alone the lockdown orders, the distancing orders, the mask insanity.
Not one.
Can you name one?
Maybe it took a European to care.
Maybe this is just a case of his personal and his business interests correlating with civil liberties.
I mean, it's late, but it's bold.
And it's directly in the face of Trudeau.
Here's what he said.
The travel restrictions.
The tourism groups want them lifted.
And there has been some criticism that the communication around the reasoning hasn't been transparent.
Well, the reality is, as much as people would like to pretend we're not, we're still in a pandemic.
There are Canadians who die every single day because of COVID-19 in our hospitals.
We are still at risk, we're particularly at risk as fall approaches of new variants.
We need to make sure we're doing everything we can to keep Canadians safe.
And I know people are eager to get back to things we love.
But what will also further damage our tourism industry is if we get another wave, if we get more serious impacts from COVID.
That's why every single time we have been anchored in science, we're reflecting on what the best way to do to make sure that we can get back to the things we love as quickly as possible without putting ourselves at risk for further health crises, for further economic shutdowns, for further hardship that COVID has.
So Trudeau says the risk, well, it might in the future, sometime, maybe in the fall, maybe another wave.
So he's banning people now because maybe something, something about the future, even though the vaccine doesn't stop transmission, even though the unvaccinated are put on buses, there's no sense to it other than punishment.
There's no science here, only vengeance.
The truckers were against the mandates, so this is part of his punishment to them, which is why I'm worried for Alexis von Hensbruck.
You simply don't speak out against Trudeau in Canada.
Von Hensbrook might not know that part either.
When I think of hyper-regulated businesses in Canada, I think of the firearms industry, if there's any left.
I think of tobacco, if there's any left.
I think of the banks and I think of airlines.
A malicious government could kill an airline with the flick of its tail.
Look what they're doing in the Toronto Pearson airport, making passengers come at 3:30 in the morning.
The government did that.
And that's just incompetence and abuse.
That's not targeted vengeance.
Von Hensbrook is daring Trudeau, challenging him.
I noticed that Air Canada and Flair Air or whatever the other small airlines are trying to, I notice that they are staying very, very silent.
They are hiding very quietly right now.
They are not coming forward to show unity and say, yeah, me too.
They're not doing that.
That would not only save WestJet, it would likely tip the scales and help push to freedom.
If every airline said this is nuts, I think it would make a dent, but they would rather see their competitor WestJet, their rival, massacred by Trudeau than risk them standing in the breach, even if that would save the problem, solve the problem.
They're happy for this European tourist to be mugged by a thug.
But it's all a reminder of how our national temperament, our national conscience has been warped.
The way we look at the world and what we have accepted, it's not normal what we have accepted here.
We're outliers in the world.
We're weird in the world.
Trudeau is making us a worse version of ourselves than we used to be on censorship, on accepting poverty, on civil liberties, on pandemic response.
You know, Von Hensbrook isn't the strange one.
The rest of the cowards are Canadians as a whole.
Equity Tax and Housing Crisis00:12:01
Still, I saw news that the fertility rate in Canada has hit an all-time low.
Fertility rate is a pretty simple measurement.
It's how many babies does the average woman have?
And for a society to replace itself, the number is just over 2.0.
It's around 2.1 for various reasons.
Anything less than that, the society is shrinking, shrinking, shrinking, like Italy or Japan.
Well, last year, Canada's fertility rate was around 1.4.
Part of it obviously was the pandemic, but I think another part of it is it's just so expensive to start a family, to get married and get your own house.
And the longer you delay that, the less likely you are to have kids or more than one kid.
I think the cost of forming a family is probably the number one factor in a society's health and happiness.
The government makes things harder by ramping up demand for housing, in my opinion, by having 1% of the population come to Canada every year in the form of immigration.
350,000 people a year all needing new homes.
That pushes up the housing price.
And of course, supply is limited by various regulations, including so-called green belts and other reasons to not build.
It's a disaster for those squeezed in the middle.
As Roman Babber said to me the other day, there is an upside to skyrocketing property values in that for many Canadians, that's their only form of savings.
Their house, it's what they're counting on to retire.
Okay, that is part of the equation.
What about young people trying to start a family?
There's a lobby group called Generation Squeeze.
I never actually heard of it before, but they're worried about the squeeze.
And they had a meeting with the government, and it turns out Trudeau was lying.
He actually is considering a tax on your household equity.
Here to join us to talk about it is our friend Franco Terrazano, the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
And he has a new essay on the website called Documents Show Prime Minister's Office Staff Held Meetings on Home Equity Taxes.
Franco, great to see you.
Thanks for joining us.
Tell us a little bit about what happened when Generation Squeeze went to talk to the Prime Minister's office.
Well, Ezra, let me take your audience back just one step here.
So the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, a federal crown corporation, gave $250,000 of our hard-earned taxpayers' money to this group to study a home equity tax.
The report was released with a recommendation of a form of a home equity tax.
Now, we've been sounding the alarm over this, and we heard from a bunch of liberal MPs, you know, essentially dismissing these concerns, saying the government isn't considering a home equity tax.
We also heard from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during the last election that the Liberals would not bring in a home equity tax, but we just dug up some documents showing that staff within Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's office has, in fact, met with this group that is recommending a home equity tax, not once, but twice.
So you have these liberal politicians essentially pinky promising taxpayers that they're not going to put in a home equity tax.
Well, then why is Trudeau's staff meeting with these home equity tax pushers?
Got it.
So Generation Squeeze, they are the recommenders of the tax.
They say that's going to form, that's going to be a solution.
I mean, we, of course, you and I disagree with the idea of this tax.
We could talk more about that.
But just if they were here, how would they argue that taxing homes makes homes more affordable?
Like, how do they square that circle?
They must have some intricate argument.
Do you know how they put it?
Well, it more so seems if you read their news release around this report, it's almost like they're trying to punish the homeowners for getting these so-called windfall gains on their home prices.
But let's remember for so many Canadians, for our parents and our grandparents, their homes are their nest eggs.
They rely on the sale of their homes to be able to afford to fund their own golden years.
Now, we have a home equity tax calculator at taxpayer.com.
And let me just give you a startling number of how much a home equity tax could cost.
Let's say your parents or grandparents bought their home for about $250,000 back in 1980.
Let's say they sell it today for about $1.2 million.
A home equity tax could cost them anywhere between $50,000 all the way up to $190,000.
That would be so much pain for so many people who rely on that nest egg.
Right.
And I know some folks, if you're living in a smaller town or a rural place, you're probably saying $1.2 million.
That's a dream.
Well, actually, in Toronto, in Vancouver, even in Calgary and Edmonton, like I should say, in this city of Toronto, where I happen to live, the average cost of a house is well over a million dollars.
And, you know, this reminds me, I think this is the issue that propelled Ronald Reagan into high office.
In California, people bought houses, like you say, in the olden times when people could afford them.
And just, you know, the bubble or inflation or whatever, their home value went up, but that is a very illiquid asset.
You don't get that money until you sell it.
I think one of the things in Reagan's California is that your property taxes were based on its value.
So the property taxes were pushing often grandparents out of their homes simply because the market value of their homes had increased, but they were on a flat pension.
That was one of the things that Reagan, if my history is right, wrote into office.
I think they had a proposition, like a referendum.
I think it was called Prop 13.
I'll have to check my history.
But when you say, I'm going to take your money, I'm going to wring it out of your house, even though you don't have that income.
I think that that's a devastating thing to a lot of people.
Tell me a little bit more about what the PMO said or did when they met with Generation Squeeze.
I know you're trying to read the tea leaves from the access to information documents, but is there anything else in there?
Well, we do know that Generation Squeeze did talk about the tax policy recommendation, right?
Their form of home equity tax.
We tried to reach out to get further comment, but we were not able to do so.
But, Ezra, let's just go back to this home equity tax recommendation.
Remember, this report was funded with our own taxpayers' money through the CMHC.
Let's remember that.
Very important.
And the whole report was supposed to talk about how to improve sky-high housing prices because, look, that is a real problem.
But trying to improve affordability with a new tax would be like trying to put out a fire with gasoline.
It's just going to make things worse.
And here's the thing: buried within that report, 50 pages in, they finally acknowledge that surprise, surprise, a new tax could increase the cost of homes because you could have would-be sellers adding on the tax to the price.
Or you could just have sellers decide to keep their house off the market, which would again reduce supply and increase prices.
So what we need to see in Canada is we need to see governments allow people to actually build homes.
And you build homes with hammers and nails, not with tax hikes.
Yeah.
You know, in Ontario, there's a land transfer tax.
It's tens of thousands of dollars.
It's an enormous burden, but I guess the reason I mention it is they're getting away with it.
So Justin Trudeau and the feds must be looking at what is done in Ontario and says, oh, we can get a piece of that action too.
I don't know.
I'm glad you helped explain for me who Generation Squeezed is.
They're funded by the government to lobby the government to do that which the government wants to do, which is to tax.
It's a typical Ottawa story, and they're getting rich off it too.
I just don't know who would support this.
If you currently own a home, obviously you wouldn't support it because it's being taken by the government.
If you're trying to get into a home and buy a home, this doesn't help you for the reasons you just said.
Literally the only people who benefit here are the tax collectors.
This is such bad public policy, which is why I'm certain Justin Trudeau is going to do it.
Ezra, but here's the thing, you nailed it, right?
Who benefits from it?
Well, the politicians in Ottawa that are tripping over themselves trying to figure out how in the world they're going to pay down their $1 trillion plus debt.
And look, we have to hold the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation to account here as well, because this is a crown corporation.
And on their website, their number one objective is housing affordability.
Well, let's look at the numbers here.
In 2020, the average home price up 13%.
2021, up again 21%.
So we are facing a housing affordability crisis.
And what does the CMHC do?
They turn around, pat themselves on the back, and give their employees $48 million in bonuses in 2020 and 2021.
They give themselves bonuses when they fail to meet their own objectives and when Canadians can't afford to get into a home.
You know, I think about this all the time.
I'm lucky enough to be a homeowner myself, but if you're a young person trying to get into your first house in Toronto or Vancouver or another big city, I don't know what the national housing average price is, but I get realtors dropping their flyers in my mailbox and they all boast that this house sold for 300,000 more than list price.
That house sold for half a million more.
You're literally having houses that are listed for 1.5 million, which is beyond the reach of many people, selling for 2 million.
That's the madness.
I don't know if that bubble can continue to grow, but we're in very strange days.
I think it has in part to do with inflation and the government just printing money.
Am I accurate on that?
Well, of course.
I mean, this is what's ballooning the price of so many goods and services, but of course, hard assets as well.
I mean, one of the big problems here is that we've seen the central bank, the Bank of Canada, print hundreds of billions of dollars right out of thin air over the last two years.
But of course, you can't just print new homes out of thin air, right?
So we're over-stimulating demand with all the new dollars that is chasing too few goods.
But then on the supply side, you have many of the regulations that we've already been talking about that are reducing our ability to actually build homes.
And look, you know what's also so damaging about this home equity tax?
If you look at younger couples who are trying to save up for their first home by selling their starter home, well, this is going to make them, it's going to make it even harder for them to do that.
So not only does it harm people who are looking to retire, but it can also harm that younger couple looking to move into their first family home.
You know, you said that housing is up 21%.
I know here in Toronto, it's up 29% in one year.
If you're a young person trying to scrape together a little pile of savings to make a down payment, you can't keep up.
Like, as fast as you're saving, the price is going up faster.
You're literally falling further behind.
I find this very stressful because I don't know.
I just think it would be very difficult to be a young person in Toronto.
Forming Families in Cities Stressfully00:04:00
And it comes back to how I started this conversation.
I think forming a family in Canada and in the big cities in particular has never been more difficult.
And I really don't think the government gives a damn.
I find this a very stressful thing, but I appreciate the research you've done here, Franco.
And I appreciate that you guys at the Taxpayers Federation keep fighting for the little guys.
So thanks for doing that.
Hey, it was my pleasure.
Thanks so much for having me on.
All right.
Anytime, there's our friend Franco Terenzano.
He's the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, one of the good guys.
That's for sure.
Stay with us.
Hey, welcome back.
Your viewer mail.
Frank DeVries says rural citizens think for themselves and are capable and willing to survive without being manipulated and told what to do.
There's some truth there.
I mean, I grew up semi-country.
I mean, we went to school in the city for most of our childhood, but we did grow up in the country.
And country folk just have to know how to do stuff because they're in the country and they have to be more independent.
They have to learn how to fix stuff.
They have to learn how to make do.
And the country, many folks have their own well, their own septic tank, their own everything.
And sometimes they're snowed in.
They have to have their own plow.
You just have to do stuff.
And I'm not even talking about farmers and ranchers.
I think that's one reason why rural parts are more conservative.
There is an individualism.
There is a self-reliance.
There's a personal responsibility.
You can't just, I mean, there's no such thing as a beggar on the street in the country parts because there's no one passing by to throw you a quarter, but there is plenty of work to do out there.
I'm glad I grew up west of Calgary, sort of country style.
I think it influenced my politics.
You know, Bill Whittle, very thoughtful guy, had this idea that once a year, people would have to go into the wild for three and a half days.
And his idea being it would be 1% of your year.
And you would live without the modern miracles of capitalism, without electricity, without refrigerators, without running water.
1% of your year.
Just so that when you came back to society and civilization, you'd be grateful for what you had become so accustomed to and numb to.
Obviously, I don't think he meant that as anything more than a thought exercise.
He would certainly not send people out into the wild for three and a half days, but it is a good thought exercise.
And I think that's one reason why Trudeau hates rural people.
And the only meaningful changes to his gun laws will punish legal farmers and hunters and really leave urban criminal gangsters alone.
In fact, as I showed you, Bill C5 will reduce the punishment for gang criminals.
Jimmy Canuck says the cops on site didn't need extra help, extra armaments, etc.
What they needed was someone who had the guts to do the job, probably a parent, but they kept them out or arrested them.
You're talking about the massacre at Uvalde.
And of course, the criminal deserves the odium and the hatred and the moral punishment.
But what about the people who swore an oath to protect, to serve and protect, and those cowards who wouldn't go in for fear of being shot?
So I do not say that the police are worse than the murderer.
Of course they're not.
But they're in second place.
BreadFan978 says, I like how Trudeau's lackeys don't even wait to start applauding until his statement was completed.
Firearms Ownership Logistics00:09:09
How many times did they rehearse that?
Yeah, and to me, I just can't get over the sight of them all wearing their masks.
You know, they're all double-vaxed and boosted and all that.
They're still wearing their masks performatively, but you'll notice Trudeau didn't wear a mask when he visited Queen Elizabeth, who's like in her 90s.
He didn't wear a mask when he went to Ukraine.
That would get in the way of all the shots.
By the way, most Ukrainians are not vaccinated.
He only wears a mask when he's trying to be just so woke.
And it's a bit, I think people see through it.
Well, that's our show for today until tomorrow on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters.
Good night.
Keep fighting for freedom and have that WestJet CEO in your prayers too.
I think he needs it.
Adam Sows here for Red Bolt News and I'm with J.R., the owner of the Shooting Edge here in Calgary, a great club, a club I myself come to frequently.
Obviously, with Bill C-21, Justin Trudeau making further advances on the sort of rights of legal gun owners in this country.
I thought I'd swing by.
Obviously, you work in the industry, but you're also something of an expert in this field.
So just maybe for folks out there who aren't familiar with firearms, for folks out there who don't know the sort of logistics that someone goes through to own a firearm, many people maybe get the sentiment you walk in, you get when that's the end of the story.
How many sort of loopholes and rings and rules and red tape are people jumping through just to legally target shoot as it is?
Well, I think that's a good point, Adam, is that you don't just get to come in and buy a firearm.
This is not the States.
And the problem is the left or the antis always tried to equate Canada to the U.S.
But we have very different laws and very different cultures.
So in Canada, before you can even buy a firearm, you have to take a firearm safety course.
And that's eight hours of training.
And then you have to, once you finish that and you're tested, then you have to apply for the license.
And in that application, two people are used as guarantors that they know you and that they think that you're okay with firearms.
But also, if you're in a relationship, then you have to, or even out of one for up to two years, disclose that because then they go and they check with that person to see whether or not they ever felt uncomfortable with you owning firearms.
So there's all these checks and balances along the way.
And then eventually you get a firearms license.
So that process takes generally 60 to 90 days.
So it's not a quick process.
It's not like you say, oh my God, I want to get a gun and then go get one.
You've got to go through all of that.
Once you have that, then you still have to, if it's a restricted firearm, a handgun, when you go to buy it, we still have to go through another check and that we have to submit the transfer to the RCMP again.
So then they get a chance at that point saying, we don't think so, or there's other questions.
So there's all of these things along the way.
And then there's ancillary things like you have to be a member of a gun club because there's really only a couple of ways to own a handgun in the country.
And that is either to be a target shooter or to be a collector.
And if you're a collector, then you have to actually express why you're collecting.
And if you're a target shooter, you're supposed to express where you go to shoot.
And that's generally with a membership at a gun club.
Prime Minister, any plans to monitor how many handguns are purchased between now and when the legislation is passed?
We're going to continue to collect data and monitor as we always do.
We are hopeful that this legislation is going to pass quickly so we can move forward with freezing the market on handguns.
What do you think of Justin Trudeau's gun grab?
There's no point to it in the sense of like for legal gun owners to practice the sport and the hobbies that they enjoy.
It's like if you like a fast car but you're in a 50 kilometer zone, does that mean you shouldn't have that car because it's unnecessarily powerful and too fast?
You know?
So yeah, it's just, there's no point to it.
It's an ideology.
It has nothing to do with safety.
It's just no one should have guns but the government and liberals are big government so they want you to rely on them and not yourself.
I think the biggest problem honestly is still the illegal guns coming across.
The vast, vast majority of people that are getting guns legally are using them for sports shooting and that's who it hurts the most.
As a community, it's really hurting us.
Like with the OIC, you saw a big decrease in three gun, which was a huge shooting sport before that went.
So now I think we're going to start seeing stuff like Steel Challenge and other shooting events kind of go the way of the dodo because people just won't be able to get pistols.
So as far as the community effect on the community, it's really, really bad.
I love the training that they gave us.
I love the restrictions of how careful you have to be with locking down your weapons and when you transport them they have to be locked and you keep your ammunition safe.
All those laws are already on the books here and in the States about things like that.
So I don't see that what Trudeau is doing is democratic or Canadian.
It's unfair that Justin Trudeau is doing this to everybody.
I mean, I think if crime's going to happen, it's going to happen anyways.
With this, is that the first thing they do is they come and they take all your guns away.
So you know, depending on your jurisdiction, there's going to be doors kicked in.
It's not going to be pleasant.
It's not going to be, hey, you know, JR, you know, there's been a complaint by somebody.
You know, we're going to suspend your license just while you're working.
So, you know, you can't handle firearms.
Are we going to come and get your firearms from you?
Or, you know, like that.
It's going to be a door kick in.
So that's what I was going to get to and ask was they have tweaked it.
So it's not the current like a spouse's concern.
So they contact and they investigate.
They have amended it so that it is more aggressive and people could theoretically politically target people, report them, and see people's fundamental rights taken away.
Oh, 100%.
And you know this is gonna, like, like I'm waiting.
I wonder how many days after this is enacted that there'll be some complaint about me.
Like every gun shop owner will have a complaint against them.
Like it's just gonna be one of those things because the left plays dirty.
Like they play so dirty that there's no honor amongst those thieves.
Yeah.
Right?
And so it'll just be, they'll just start targeting anybody who owns firearms.
It'll just be one of those things.
It's gonna be the brown shirts.
They're gonna be making these complaints and all of a sudden, you know, anybody who has collections, oh, you know, he waved a gun around.
Like, no, he didn't.
But they're gonna come take the guns away.
And then you can spend the $20,000, $30,000 to fight it, win, and get your guns back, but you're screwed.
Just like they now with the they automatically make registration certificates expire when they change a classification, which takes away your ability to have a Section 71 referral.
Like you can't fight these things.
Like they're taking it, so you can't go to the courts for remedies now.
So that's the thing is that's very undemocratic.
You should always have a remedy through the courts if you've been wronged.
How can I safely, effectively defend myself against somebody bigger than me that is intending to hurt myself, my family, come into my home?
We're not big ladies.
We need something sometimes if it comes to that, I think.
Yeah, well, I wouldn't say it's a direct attack on legal gun owners, but I think it's just more of like a ploy to pretend he's doing something about people's safety rather than actually doing something about safety.
Like instead of cracking down on illegal guns coming over the border, which are the majority of the ones used in violent crimes, he's, yeah, basically attacking legal gun owners instead of cracking down on illegal gun owners and illegal importation of firearms.
We promised to go even further to protect our communities.
Taxpayers are going to be in for a sticker shock on how much they're going to pay for this that does nothing for public safety.
Like if it did, if this honestly, if I honestly believe this had a chance of doing anything for, like, of a sizable measure for public safety, not onesie twosie, but sizable measure, I'd probably be more behind it.
But I know it's not.
Other jurisdictions have shown that.
People tout Australia.
Okay, they got rid of, so the gun mass murders have gone away.
They've had 18 or 19 mass killings using knives and arrows, bow and arrows, like guys using crossbows since they banned guns.
So nobody's talking about it, but they've had more since.
What this means is that it will no longer be possible to buy, sell, transfer, or import handguns anywhere in Canada.
In other words, we're capping the market for handguns.
Well, I want to thank JR and the shooting edge so much for having us out today.
I think it's important to get a perspective from inside the industry, from someone who really knows this stuff.
So many people out there really don't know much about the industry, don't know much about the sports surrounding firearms, target shooting, hunting, all of that good stuff, and the extent to which these restrictions will affect them.
So once again, grateful to have JR sort of breaking this down for us and giving us some practical outlooks on what may result as a result of Justin Trudeau's latest attack on illegal firearm owners in Canada.
As always, I want to thank you all so much for tuning in for Rebel News.