Ezra Levant critiques Justin Trudeau’s "just transition" policy, calling it a failure after Alberta’s coal towns suffered under Rachel Notley’s 2016 closures, while praising Danielle Smith for opposing it. He accuses Trudeau of prioritizing green energy slogans over economic reality—blocking Canadian LNG exports to Germany and Japan despite their pleas—and admiring China’s dictatorship for its environmental efficiency. Levant also highlights the CBC’s selective framing of an off-duty RCMP officer’s satirical Church of Trudeau site as evidence of bias, suggesting media suppression of dissent mirrors past controversies like the Jussie Smollett hoax. The episode underscores how Trudeau’s policies alienate conservatives and stifle debate, even amid global energy crises. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, an off-duty cop criticizes Trudeau, so the CBC knows what to do to him.
It's January 12th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Black Lives Matter is a U.S. corporation.
It's also a slogan.
It's a powerful and manipulative phrase.
What?
You don't think Black Lives Matter?
You're a racist for disagreeing with the tactics of a corporation by that same name.
But at the end of the day, Black Lives Matter is actually, it's a business.
And wow, what a business.
They made $90 million in a single year.
Isn't that incredible?
Oh, and their executives are accused of siphoning off millions of that for their personal use.
It's a little bit embarrassing.
They went on a real estate buying binge with the money, too.
I mean, if you ask questions about that, though, obviously you don't think Black Lives Matter.
So just shut up, you racist.
How dare you say buying a $6 million house isn't a charitable purpose that helps African Americans.
By the way, you'll note that the sources I was using there were liberals like the New York Times and National Public Radio and CNN.
That's where those headlines were from, at least in three cases.
So it's not just a corporation.
It's a United States corporation.
And even if you take it on its own terms, even if you are willfully blind to its financial corruption, you must acknowledge that it is an American phenomenon.
It's not a Canadian thing.
We actually didn't have slavery up here.
We were where black slaves ran away to to be free.
We were where the Underground Railroad ended.
When Canada banned the slave trade, it was so long ago, Canada wasn't even established as its own country yet.
We were a British colony.
There actually weren't really any black people in the country in any numbers.
A census at the time showed there were a grand total of 16, 1, 6, 16 black people in all of Toronto.
There were some slaves in Canada, and I don't mean to be politically incorrect about it, but when slavery was banned in Canada, most slaves and most slave holders were indigenous people.
It was a holdover from pre-colonial times.
Across the Americas, Indian tribes practiced slavery as a form of warfare and as a form of commerce.
I'm just telling you this, because the Black Lives Matter narrative of slavery and reparations and Jim Crow laws, that's all a U.S. thing.
They tried to make it a Canadian franchise, but other than the stupidest or more most manipulative people in the country, no one actually believes it's a Canadian story.
We're a story of harmony, actually.
Now, when I say stupid or manipulative people, obviously I mean people like Justin Trudeau, the whitest of the white, the most privileged of the privileged politicians in Canada.
But like recognizes like.
He can spot a great grift when he sees it.
So of course he went out during the lockdowns, during the six feet of separation hysteria.
And of course he broke all the public health rules to take a knee to show everyone how woke he was.
And of course the only people worse than Trudeau are the ones who violate their oaths and violate their professional obligations to please him and obey him, by which I mean, of course, every police force in Canada.
The most incompetent and most corrupt RCMP commissioner in history, Brenda Lucky, seen here hugging Trudeau when he was under ethics investigations.
Brenda Lucky was hired precisely because she was corrupt and incompetent.
She's the opposite of Jody Wilson-Raybold, the most ethical and principled justice minister in memory, who refused to go along with Trudeau's attempt to scuttle a criminal prosecution of his bribe-paying friends at SNC Labeland.
Remember, Jody Wilson-Raybold was fired by Trudeau as justice minister because she wouldn't allow him to corrupt a trial.
Brenda Lucky remains RCMP commissioner and will continue to be in that position forever, precisely because she will literally let Trudeau do anything and everything.
It is her utter moral void that makes her so valuable to Trudeau.
It's a feature, not a bug.
Of course, it wasn't just the RCMP.
Police across Canada took a knee.
And again, what does that mean?
That's not a Canadian thing.
It doesn't even make sense up here.
That was a thing started by professional athletes in the United States.
It was something they did in silent protest when before their NBA or NFL games, the start of the game, they would play the anthem and taking a knee was a silent rejection of the anthem, a kind of, I don't know, anti-patriotic, anti-Americanism to be done when the anthem was played or sung.
It doesn't even make sense just to do it on the street in Canada.
What does that mean?
But again, for Trudeau, what even does it mean for the prime minister himself to take a knee?
Who is he protesting against?
Himself?
Whose government is he protesting?
His own?
What exactly is he saying unjust?
It's just so incoherent.
It's so perfectly Trudeau, isn't it?
And what are the cops doing?
Are they protesting against themselves?
Were they protesting against the killing of a U.S. man named George Floyd in Minnesota?
Is that what they were saying in Canada?
They were protesting against American police or were they protesting against their own police force here in Canada?
Who knows?
Did they know?
It was all for show.
And it was all to market this amazing corporation called Black Lives Matter, 90 million bucks.
But my point, which has taken me quite a while, is that Canadian police engaged in political protests in a very partisan way, not to mention in a very stupid way, in a very commercial way, but it was woke.
It was woke, so that's fine.
There's not a country in the West where the police don't have a major display of pride-themed police cars or pride marches, too, which is odd because some of the biggest pride parades in the West literally ban police from attending.
It's sort of become an annual thing in Canada, hasn't it?
Here's Vancouver.
Vancouver Pride apologizes for not banning police from its parades sooner.
Sorry, everybody.
We should have been more anti-police.
Sorry, it took us so long.
Can you believe that headline?
Here's another one from the CBC.
This is in Toronto.
Cops were banned from the Gay Pride Parade.
Here's from Calgary, too.
Same in Calgary.
But that doesn't stop the police from loving them anyways.
And my point is that the police are very political, aren't they?
It's official all the way up to the Chiefs.
Black Lives Matter, Pride Parades, whatever.
Police are doing political things in their uniforms.
We've talked before about Sir Robert Peel, the father of modern policing, and the reason why British cops are still called bobbies.
Robert Peel came up with nine rules of policing back in 1829.
I'll read the first part of Rule 5 to you.
The police seek and preserve public favor, not by catering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to the law in complete independence of policy and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws.
Isn't that interesting?
It's in the police are neutral.
They don't express an opinion.
They just enforce the law.
That's why people can trust them.
By the way, it's critically important that black people and gay people trust police.
It's extremely important that they do.
And the police are absolutely neutral in their conduct towards black people and gay people and everyone else, of course.
But as I've shown you, Black Lives Matter, the corporation is a political organization and a massive money-making franchise.
It's tantamount to a political party.
Same thing with those pride parades.
They're not just simply gatherings of gay people.
They are political clubs, lobby groups, political battering rams, often used against the police themselves.
Of course, I don't have a problem with police interacting with black people, gay people, people of every background, and police officers themselves being recruited from every group.
That makes sense.
That's the point of Robert Peel's laws.
It shouldn't matter the race or religion of either the police or the citizens because police ought to be completely neutral no matter what.
But by participating in overtly partisan politics like Black Lives Matter and like these pride lobby groups, the police are obviously taking political sides.
Which brings me at long last to the news of the day.
It is about a police officer who made a political statement.
But it was different from the political statements I've talked to you about so far today.
The first and most important thing, I think, is that the cop involved was not wearing his uniform.
He was not on duty.
He was not at work.
He wasn't doing anything with the authority or in the name of the government of the police.
He wasn't breaking rule number five because he was at home making a social media post in his own name.
Actually, not even his own name.
The second thing, of course, and this is much more important, is that the cop involved here was not woke.
He was the opposite of woke, which I'm calling awake.
Someone Made Fun of Trudeau00:10:31
In fact, he was criticizing Justin Trudeau.
I know it's shocking.
I'm literally shaking.
I need to go to my safe space.
I've been triggered.
Someone made fun of Dear Leader.
Someone mocked the precious.
Here's how the government journalists at the CBC State Broadcaster reported this crisis, this scandal.
BC Mounty's anti-Trudeau website raises concerns about discriminatory views within the RCMP.
I mean, right there, that's gorgeous already, isn't it?
They call him a BC Mountie, and he is.
But his comments were not made in that capacity.
But the headline leads you to think that they were.
They call the website anti-Trudeau, which is accurate, but then they call that discriminatory.
Because you see, if you disagree with Trudeau and his policies, you are obviously a bigoted extremist.
I'll get into the story in a moment, but who wrote this?
Was it that CBC conspiracy theorist?
You know the one.
I do ask that because, 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.
No, not her.
It was a left-wing activist named Brady Strachan, who spends his time heckling conservatives on Twitter, just in case you didn't know.
He was already a government journalist for the CBC.
He proves it every day.
Here he is on Jordan Peterson.
Peterson said, I'm at my daughter's wedding in California.
I will never forget Justin Trudeau that my father is not here because of your utterly unconscionable, unconstitutional, and vindictive travel ban.
And Brady knows his job is to defend Trudeau, especially against Jordan Peterson.
So he wrote right back, I thought you were stopping Twitter and giving the phone to your staff so you wouldn't say misleading things.
What happened to that?
Here's another one.
What was Trump's election slogan again?
Make America a great dictatorship again?
Seriously, this is the guy mad that someone else has an anti-Trudeau website.
I saw this story on Strachan's Twitter feed.
Drunk men screaming, Trump, attack young Muslim woman on New York subway, cops say.
Now, did that really happen?
Or is that one of those Jussie Smollett things?
You know, that black actor walking in Chicago late at night near his subway sandwiches who said some Trump guys jump out of the dark and say, this is MAGA country.
And they just happened to be carrying a noose at 3 a.m. in Chicago.
And they put it around his neck.
And he bravely fought them off without ever dropping his subway sandwich.
And for some reason, he left the noose around his neck until the police came.
Was it that kind of story?
You know, an obvious hoax that any journalist could see through in a second.
Why, yes, it was an obvious hoax.
Here's the truth of it.
Muslim college student made up Trump supporter subway attack story to avoid punishment for missing curfew.
Hmm.
So there goes Brady Strachan, Trudeau's journalist, spreading anti-Trump misinformation and hoaxes.
And that's fine.
Maybe he's not that smart to see through the scams.
But now that the scammer confessed, why hasn't Strachan tweeted an update or taken down the lie?
Well, because he's not really a journalist.
He's a Trudeau propagandist anyway.
Just a briefing on who he is.
Let's read the story now, or part of it.
It's a massive story.
It's a full-on character assassination piece.
I won't read it all.
But here's the headline again.
BC Mounty's anti-Trudeau website raises concerns about discriminatory views within the RCMP.
Police officers' satirical website pokes fun at Prime Minister LGBTQ plus issues and immigration policy.
Well, we can't have anyone poking fun at things, can we?
And then they have a picture which looks like it's poking fun.
That's the worst.
Here's the caption they put on the picture.
The RCMP are investigating after a police officer in Trail BC launched a satirical political website called The Church of Trudeau, mocking the prime minister and funding of indigenous and LGBTQ plus communities.
And then they have the website churchoftrudeau.org, which sounds funny, you got to admit.
But if you go to churchoftrudeau.org, which I did, you can see that it's being taken down.
Another great free speech moment brought to you by Trudeau's enforcers.
But there's something called the Wayback Machine, or the Internet Archive, takes snapshots of every page on the Internet and then archives them.
And here's what the site looked like before it was nuked, according to the web archive.
Liberal gospel and teachings for living your best socialist life.
The high prophet of the Church of Trudeau, Father B, shares with you his teachings on how to live your best socialist life in Canada through embracing left-wing liberal ideologies and best practices.
And it goes on like that.
It's not rude, actually.
I couldn't find any of those F Trudeau things.
It's a light satire.
I think, I mean, maybe he means it.
Brenda Lucky would say all of those same things with a straight face.
I mean, has the CBC ever thought of that, that this guy, like them, really does worship at the Church of Trudeau?
They think he's mocking them, but really, how could you tell?
So here's the story that they write.
A BC Mounty's anti-Trudeau website is causing waves in a small West Kootenai community and raising concerns about political bias among the ranks of the RCMP.
The Church of Trudeau website was online last November and early December and featured theatrical performances by a man dressed up as multiple characters in what appears to be a satirical political commentary about the prime minister and what the site referred to as left-wing liberal ideologies.
But was it really making waves?
Or did some left-wing loser send this to the CBC for them to stoke this up into a name and shame cancel culture moment to remind people not to dare challenge the precious one?
I mean, I know how hard it is to build up a following online.
Did this guy really go viral in the West Kootenays?
I don't believe it.
I believe the CBC concocted this whole story to please their master and to show how obedient they are.
And I bet Brady Strachan is going to get a promotion out of it.
Just like that Putin trucker Gal got a promotion.
CBC News has confirmed the identity of the man in photos and videos on the website as Trail BC RCMP officer Brent Lord through a source familiar with the website and its contents.
That's great investigative journalism.
Very important to investigate this cop instead of Sage Trudeau's corruption.
The CBC knows where the hot stories are.
RCMP says it's aware of the site and the matter is under review.
Real question, who asked the RCMP to put it under review?
I bet you a dollar the CBC did.
That's how they do journalism.
They're actually activists.
You saw Brady Strachan's activist.
I bet he complained.
And, you know, they typically complain and they write a story about their own complaint, but they style it as a wave of concern.
Let me keep reading.
In one of four videos CBC News has obtained, Lord plays the role of a character he calls Father B and professes to be the high prophet of the Church of Trudeau as he explains what the website is about, stating, our religion teaches the importance of socialism, of canceling everyone that offends anyone, of being woke and highly emotional.
Yeah, I think he nailed it.
And I think the CBC is too stupid to realize they are actually doing exactly what he said they would do trying to cancel him.
The thing is, though, they're late.
The website was taken down late last year.
The CBC just wants to make sure this cop gets punished, fired, whatever.
But most of all, that he's used as an example.
You can go to a pride parade in uniform.
You can go to a Black Lives Mallee matter rally in uniform.
You can take a knee in uniform.
But you'd bloody well better not criticize Trudeau, even gently, even in civilian clothes, even on your own time from your own home, or you will be smeared and destroyed by Trudeau's warroom.
By the way, there's nothing racist or bigoted about the comments that I could find.
He's just poking fun at Trudeau.
Here, take a look at one clip from the CBC.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Church of Trudeau.
If you haven't noticed, I'm excited because I want to share with you some information that was released not too long ago.
The Liberal government plans on bringing one here.
Wait a second, wait a second, 1.5 million new immigrants to Canada over the next three years.
That means we potentially could have 1.5 million new liberals.
I'm so excited.
Our church needs the support.
The liberal government needs the support.
Justin Trudeau needs and deserves, he deserves the support.
This is amazing.
It is our hope, the Church of Trudeau, we believe that all of the immigrants that come over will recognize that the one true political party in Canada to vote for is the liberal government, obviously.
Yeah, we'd better kill them off, eh?
I don't really like cops being political, but I'm talking about cops running political errands as cops, like being the mask police or health inspectors, something they're not trained for, something they weren't hired to do, something they were atrocious at doing.
The police murdered their own reputations during the lockdowns.
They're gross when they go to Black Lives Matter rallies, an American fundraising scam that is politically irrelevant up here.
And the fact that the police are banned from pride parades shows how political those parades are.
So don't kid yourself, cops in Canada are political.
I mean, a fish rots from the head down, and no one is more political than Brenda Lucky.
But if you make a joke in your private life about Justin Trudeau, get ready to be destroyed.
Canada's Role in Natural Gas Supply00:15:48
stay with us for more you know it was a few months ago when justin trudeau said he would do anything literally anything to stop vladimir putin's attack on ukraine and an invasion that was fueled by a very special weapon not any particular tank or helicopter or even drone.
It was fueled by the oil weapon, and actually, to be more precise, the natural gas weapon.
Did you know that about 30 or 40 percent of Germany's energy comes from Russia?
And the Baltics, it's closer to 100%.
Russia has Europe hostage for its energy.
And not only does that make them politically vulnerable to Russia, but it is a source of hard currency that goes into Putin's war machine.
Trudeau has given billions of dollars to Ukraine and has spoken very harshly about Russia, but he will not allow Canadian ethical energy to displace Russian conflict energy.
And in fact, when various European leaders asked Canada to export energy, especially in the form of natural gas through liquefied natural gas, LNG, Trudeau said, no, I'll give you some hydrogen.
I'll help you with an energy transition to green energy.
And by the way, there's no business case for Canadians to sell LNG.
Of course, they went ahead and did a deal with Qatar and the OPEC dictatorship.
Well, now comes Japan looking for the same relief.
And what will Trudeau say to the Japanese?
Joining us now from the capital city of Alberta, the oil and gas capital of the country, is our friend Lauren Guncher, senior columnist with the Eminent Son.
Lauren, great to see you again.
How are you doing?
I'm doing well.
And you?
I'm fine.
You know, the crazy thing about the world energy industry is that you actually can never do away with conflict oil.
You can't do away with Iranian oil or Russian oil or gas, because even if you buy from a different source, the world demand is such that those other suppliers have to stay online.
But at least in terms of no one shutting off the taps for you, at least in terms of you know that your dollars are going to the good guys, not the bad guys, I think it is morally and security-wise and economically a better thing for the world to buy from Canada than from a military authoritarian regime.
Maybe I'm saying the obvious.
Well, you are saying the obvious, but it's not obvious to the people who need to be hearing it, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
And it's not just an economic or national security argument that can be made for this.
Our natural gas is cleaner than, for instance, other countries' natural gas, and particularly China's coal.
So if we could export our natural gas to China or to India, India uses a lot of coal in its power generation as well.
If we could displace some of that coal in their power grid with natural gas from Western Canada, then we would be improving the world's environment as well.
And I'm not, you know, I am not a big believer in the climate change hysteria.
I don't think that the climate is changing outrageously differently than it always has.
I don't think human beings are behind it.
But if you accept that that's the case, if you are going to buy into the global warming theory, then buying natural gas from democracies where they value the environment and they work hard to reduce the number of emissions created when they pump the gas out of the ground, then it's an environmental argument too.
I mean, for instance, Norwegians, the Norwegians, we're going to get them shoved in our faces for the next five or six years because they are well ahead of us in going into electrical vehicles, EVs.
It's so much so that the Norwegian government, Norway is very long and narrow, and there are long stretches, hundreds of kilometers where there's very little population.
And the Norwegian government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars putting rapid charging stations in the middle of nowhere so that you can drive from the south end of Norway to the north end of Norway in your electric vehicle, and there are always convenient charging stations.
We're going to be told we need to do that too.
Ottawa has said it's going to build about 85,000 rapid charging stations at taxpayers' expense to fund its or to fuel its EV mania.
Probably the best way to describe it is a mania.
And where am I going with EVs?
How do you think the Norwegians are paying for this?
They're pumping oil and gas out of the North Sea.
And when they sell that abroad, they say, well, our oil and gas is cleaner than the oil and gas that you can get from Venezuela or from Saudi Arabia or from any of the dictatorships that have gas and oil.
So therefore, we get credit.
We give ourselves credit for having sold oil and gas to these countries.
And we say we're helping the world's environment.
The Trudeau government are such cultivates that they simply cannot allow themselves to do that.
It's wrong to sell any kind of fossil fuel.
It's terrible that we should be using carbon-based fuel of any sort.
We shouldn't be selling it to anyone.
It should be kept in the ground.
My goodness, we're just destroying the planet.
And that's the kind of hysteria that we're dealing with.
Well, let's talk about those two things.
Tell me what the deal is with Japan.
So what's the forum?
What's the request?
And give me a little more detail on the Japan aspect because Japan are the good guys.
They're our friends.
They're our allies.
Give us some background there.
I mean, they're our friends and our allies the way the Germans were after the war.
Well, I mean, yeah, 75 years ago, they certainly weren't, but I think they're… We're good with them now.
Yeah.
They're chums.
They're chums.
They're pals.
But the thing with Japan is you notice that recently, too, within the last couple of weeks, they signed a new defense pact with the Americans and with the Brits.
It was very surprising that they went, the Americans, they've always had defense pacts with, but they have a new one now with the Brits, too, because they're looking at China and they're saying China is going to be a growing threat.
It's a big threat now, but it's going to get worse over the next couple of decades.
And so we need to be able to be self-contained.
We're bringing back manufacturing that might have gone to China.
We're signing these new defense pacts.
And we want to be energy self-sufficient, at least from the Chinese.
Like they're not going to be self-sufficient with resources they have in Japan, but they can be no longer dependent on China in any way that way.
And so they want natural gas from friends.
And that prime minister of Japan has come to Canada.
Here's a little aside, using two large jets so that the bad guys don't know which one he's flying in, but putting out all those emissions.
Anyway, he's come to Canada looking the way that the Chancellor of Germany had come before the end of last year, looking for us to sell them liquefied natural gas.
We've got a lot of it.
If we would just build a few more terminals, it's good, it's clean, it's easy to get out of the ground, we have lots of it.
But I can't see that the Trudeau government's going to say to Japan, yes, we'll sign a deal on LNG with you when they wouldn't sign one with Germany.
And because Germany is really under the screws of Putin and the Russians, and we still wouldn't even bail them up.
That's how bad we are as Fred.
You came here looking, I'm sure, for commitments from Canada for more LNG export.
I know it is central to the expansion of your economy.
I'm wondering, Prime Minister Trudeau, what commitments you made to the Japanese in regards to that and whether or not you're looking at easing regulatory hurdles so a project like the phase two expansion of LNG Canada can get approved and start shipping natural gas.
Obviously, we talked a lot about how Canada can be a reliable supplier, not just of energy, but of critical minerals, of commodities and resources, including agricultural resources, that the world is going to need as we move towards a net zero economy around the world.
We're very excited about the LNG Canada project, which was the largest private investment in Canada, a project led by Shell on the West Coast, in which a Japanese company Mitsubishi is a significant partner, because we know that being a reliable supplier of energy is important, and we're going to continue to look for ways to be that reliable supplier of energy.
But even as we do talk about things like LNG and other traditional sources of energy, we know the world is moving aggressively and meaningfully towards decarbonizing, towards diversifying, towards more renewables.
That's where the agreements that we've already seen develop between Japanese and Canadian companies on hydrogen, on ammonia, on various new technologies are really exciting.
As I mentioned, there's going to be a number of Japanese CEOs coming to Canada in the coming months from the Battery Association, an industry association around batteries in Japan, very interested in becoming part of our battery supply chain, which was recently recognized as the second most important in the world.
We're also going to be going to Japan with a trade mission in the fall that will continue to deepen those things.
So there's a lot of conversations we've had, and Canada is going to continue to make sure we're doing what creates good jobs in Canada and more sustainable, reliable futures for people around.
You know, I remember when I wrote a book, I wrote Ethical Oil, and then I wrote a sequel called Groundswell About Fracking.
And I'm not going to go so far as to do to Trudeau what he said to the truckers.
The state broadcaster claimed that the truckers were being organized by Vladimir Putin.
I don't know if you ever saw that clip.
It was just quite something.
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.
I'm not going to say that Trudeau is in Putin's pocket, because I don't believe that.
But what would he be doing any differently if he were, If the Germans and the Japanese said, please send us your ethical energy, send us your LNG, send us your clean energy from Canada to displace, in Germany's case, Russian imports, and in Japan's case, Chinese, Qatari, Saudi, Iranian imports.
If Trudeau was a Putin agent, which he's not, he would be doing nothing any differently, saying no, we're not going to be competitors to OPEC and Russia.
I find it staggering.
And I'm embarrassed that Eastern Canada is fine with that.
Well, I would call Trudeau what Vladimir Lenin used to call people who helped out the communist cause without really realizing it.
He used to call them useful idiots.
And I think Justin Trudeau is simply a useful idiot.
I don't think he's very bright.
I think he's caught up with sort of sophomore workshop class mentality about fashions on environment and reconciliation and social programs and government spending.
And he's prepared to do whatever the Twitter level of intelligence is on any of that.
And that's not very deep.
And so, yeah, he's not that clever on energy.
He doesn't want to be seen as coming to Germany's rescue.
I think he really doesn't want to be seen as coming to Japan's rescue because while he may not be in Putin's pocket, he is still too cozy with the Chinese communists.
Like he's still, I don't say he's in their pocket either, but he's a useful idiot.
He's somebody who does things that helps their regime stay in power without really understanding that that's what he's doing.
And he doesn't want to upset China.
He still doesn't want to upset China.
Well, and he did say, unprompted, when he was running for liberal leader, China was the country he most admires.
And he expanded on that, saying, because of its basic dictatorship, they can move quickly on environmentalism.
That's actually the extended version of that quote.
What level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say, we need to go green as fast as we need to start investing in solar.
I mean, there is a flexibility that I know Stephen Harper must dream about of having a dictatorship that he could do everything he wanted that I find quite interesting.
Trudeau's rivals pounced on that.
Let me ask you one last thing, because Trudeau has talked about leaving it in the ground, phasing out the energy sector.
And they're using the phrase just transition, as in, we'll shut down these six-figure jobs and we'll find you something in coding or whatever.
We'll take 45-year-old guys who have been working in the oil patch for 20 years and we'll just come up with a $100,000 job.
I don't know, installing solar panels or something.
Danielle Smith is really digging in on this.
And I think it looks good on her.
And I think it's what an Alberta premier needs to do, battle Ottawa.
I wish Jason Kenney did it more.
And I think it's doing really good for her.
It's proving implicitly the need for a sovereignty act to stand up for Trudeau.
But it's not just talking in the abstract.
People know.
And Rachel Notley, I think, is missing out.
She has not challenged the just transition.
I hate that phrase.
I hate using it because it's a pack of lies.
It is an unjust transition.
You're destroying prosperity for a slogan.
But tell me how that whole just transition debate is going down in Alberta.
Well, not well.
There are an awful lot of people who probably were not impressed with Smith before the just transition came out, who were worried that her sovereignty act was over the top, who thought that she wasn't being serious enough in governing, that she was focusing too much on anti-vaxxers.
And I'm not talking about people with political agendas.
I'm just talking about ordinary voters who are a little bit squiffy about it, who I think this is just a gift for her from Trudeau that you're not going to get Rachel Notley standing up to Trudeau on a just transition.
A, because they were way too cozy when she was premier.
They were on, they were together a lot talking about the environment.
Trudeau's Labor Alliance00:05:54
They had very similar policies.
There's lots and lots and lots of video and still footage or still photos of the two of them together, Notley and Trudeau, smiling, laughing, shaking hands.
If I were the UCP campaign office, I would simply run an ad with pictures of Notley and Trudeau over and over and over again because the number one bumper sticker in Alberta is F. Trudeau.
You can go out a highway one in five vehicle has a bumper sticker or a decal, it says.
And my column tomorrow in the Alberta Sons, Edmonton and Calgary, is about the fact that Notley herself had a just transition.
When they decided in 2016 that they were going to close the six remaining coal-fired power plants in Alberta, they came up with money and a plan endorsed by the Alberta Federation of Labor to transition coal workers out of the coal business and into other businesses.
Well, the number one grant that they gave away was relocation benefits.
They paid people to move away.
Well, how does that help in the transition from coal to non-coal for all the communities that are based on coal?
And then they had tuition grants, early retirement grants.
If you were within three years of retirement, they'd pay you to leave early.
And it didn't work.
The biggest thing out of their just transition on coal was unemployment and then the closing of small businesses in coal towns and then the depopulation of the coal town.
And I think she's been silent on just transition because she doesn't want people remembering that she did exactly the same thing.
And if she were still the premier, I think she'd be on board with Trudeau talking up just, oh, yes, we'll negotiate with Ottawa to get a fair deal for Alberta's oil workers who are going to be thrown out of business.
Well, you know, how many times have you, in dealing with the patch, come across a welder who made $150,000 a year because worked long hours, worked extra hard, and could get that kind of money in pipelines or in refineries or in doing the work on service of rigs in the field.
You cannot find those jobs in green energy.
And the other thing about green energy jobs is oil and gas jobs, the best paying jobs, are closest to where the resource is extracted.
In green energy, the best paying jobs are closest to where the energy is consumed.
And where is the energy going to be consumed disproportionately?
Ontario and Quebec, which happen to be two areas which vote heavily liberal.
So it is ridiculous.
And I think Smith has done herself a great favor.
She said the other day and got into a little bit of trouble that she wasn't going to invoke her sovereignty act, but there isn't a federal act to invoke it against just yet.
I think she's done very well by saying the right thing.
She was much harder on Trudeau than Jason Kenney.
Unfortunately, Jason Kenney was never that harsh with Trudeau.
Smith has been firm.
She has been in favor of Alberta.
She has defended the oil and gas industry.
And I think when the time comes, if she needs to, she'll bring in aspects of the Sovereignty Act.
I've always maintained you really didn't need the Sovereignty Act.
There's lots of constitutional room that Alberta hasn't used for years that we could start taking up space within the Constitution.
But nonetheless, I think she's done herself a great service.
And I think she's done well for the week and a half now that just transition has been around.
Well, that's good to hear.
You know, I remember Stalinist or communist art, which has a certain style to it.
And, you know, it's that revolutionary propaganda style.
But there was something common.
Yeah, that's right.
And a star and a sun and angular.
But there was a theme usually, which is the glory of labor.
Yes.
You know, the communists were not against factories.
They were not against coal, steel, ships, industry.
They just believed that the workers should control the means of production.
That's communism, is that the proletariat owns the factory.
They don't just work there.
But the new socialists don't believe in the factory.
They want to shut down the factory.
They want to shut down the coal.
They want to transition away from work.
That's not labor.
I mean, I think of the old Tory slogan in the UK: labor isn't working.
You know, I think a true socialist of 50 years ago would look at Rachel Notley and say, you're shutting down the coal plant?
Are you Margaret Thatcher?
You know, shutting down the coal?
You're shutting down oil and gas, this heavy industry.
All these men with tools, you're shutting that down.
Who do you represent?
You're not labor.
You're something, but you're not labor.
No, that's right.
They have become the party.
NDP, provincially and federally, and the liberals, certainly federally, have become the party of the public sector, is who they are.
They're the party of the faculty club, the teacher's lounge, the staff room at the bureaucratic tower.
As they have increased the number of the percentage of Canadians who are working in the public sector, which is hospitals, schools, municipalities, universities, and federal and provincial government, that's now about a quarter of the workforce.
And that is who the NDP are the party of.
They are the party of public sector work.
And it means they forgot the union guy, but they're not a union hall party anymore.
Go Beyond Search 1000:04:22
They're a faculty club party.
Yeah, it's incredible.
Well, Lauren, it's great to catch up with you.
And I'm so glad you're on top of these issues.
We'll keep in touch and keep fighting for freedom out west there, my friend.
We'll do.
All right.
There you have it.
Lauren Gunter, senior columnist for the Sun newspapers in Calgary and Empton.
Stay with us.
Your letters to me.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me.
Tyson Schowner says, Hey, Ezra, I don't blame you being cautious, but I highly doubt any amount of search tampering is going to break you.
It will slow down new viewers discovering you, sure.
But your existing viewer won't just forget about you randomly one day.
We have your site bookmarked in our browsers.
We receive your regular news articles.
You are a recurring charge on my credit card.
Come hell or high water.
If your website is functioning, I will find you and support you.
Don't blame you for being cautious, but it's maybe a little overdramatic.
P.S.
No one trusts the search algorithms anymore, anyways.
Even the dumb people are starting to notice.
Listen, I appreciate your loyalty and the energy and the effort you go to to stay informed.
But most people do not put that kind of effort into it.
You know, sometimes I'm in elevators in skyscrapers and there's a little screen in the corner.
Do you ever see this when typically a downtown office building?
They have a little screen with little news headlines.
I kid you not.
For some people, that is their sole source of news.
Or the quick bite between songs on the radio.
Most people don't read a newspaper.
Most people, fewer than 1% of Canadians watch CBC's The National.
It used to be four times that.
So you have your intensity really turned up.
Most people are not that intense.
And so when we are not on the first page of search results, when we are not allowed to trend, we do not reach the casual viewer.
Intense viewers like you will find us.
It's true.
But I want to go beyond just intense people.
I want casual news viewers to hear what we have to say.
And let me put it to you this way.
I use Google probably 10 times a day, maybe more.
How often do I click past the first page of 10 results?
Not that often.
How often do I go beyond the second page?
How often do I go beyond the 10th page?
I don't know if I've done that in over a year.
And so if the government can push Rebel News out of the top page, and by the way, the search companies are already doing that sort of thing to us.
Sure, we'll have good loyal friends like you, but we will never be able to grow, will we?
Joe Boudreaux writes, as your interview tonight, reaffirm why I will fully support Max Bernier and the PPC.
His comments about immigration and even more about bad conservatives' policies are enlightening.
I just wish you would be much briefer with your questions and allow your guests to explain.
You take too long to ask a question.
Guilty is charged, and it has ever been that way.
And I've been doing this show now for almost eight years.
And I was at the Sun News Network for a few years before that.
And I have to tell you, that criticism has been with me for more than a decade.
And I just get so excited.
I want to have a real conversation like I'm out for drinks with them, out for coffee or a beer or something, or over at their place.
So I don't want to just ask questions.
I thought I was okay at listening.
There were some questions I really let him give her without interrupting.
I confess.
I mean, listen, if you were sitting down with Maxime Bernier or any of the other interesting guests we've had lately, wouldn't you want to talk a lot too?
I take your point, Joe.
I take your point, and I'll try and be better behaved.
I think, though, I think he had a chance to really say his piece.
The beauty of the long form interview, it's not just a 30-second or even a two-minute soundbite.
I think we gave him more than half an hour.
So when he left here, we had a good hello and a good catch-up.
I think he really felt like he had a chance to talk about what he wanted to talk about.
Now, of course, we're interested in others too.
Maxime Bernier is part of the political firmament.
We're always interested in what the Conservative Party of Canada has to say.
We're interested in what provincial political leaders have to say.
And, of course, I think that non-politicians are very important today, too.