Ezra Levant’s lawsuit against Liberal Minister Steven Guilbeault for blocking him on Twitter—citing Charter violations and factual criticism—goes to trial in June, setting a precedent over government censorship. Guilbeault’s nod to Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s Sovereignty Act hints at federal concessions, yet polls show Justin Trudeau trailing Pierre Poilievre by 10 points, pressuring Liberals. Meanwhile, Smith’s firing of COVID critic Dina Hinshaw and her hiring in B.C. with a $228K bonus raises questions about accountability. Alberta’s May election could shift power, while U.S.-China tensions over intelligence and war’s role in preserving freedom underscore broader geopolitical risks. [Automatically generated summary]
A lengthy story in the National Post and other, actually a hundred other newspapers about our lawsuit against Liberal Cabinet Minister Stephen Gilbo.
I'll take you through the report as it was written in the National Post, correct some of their errors, and tell you why I'm hopeful about the case.
But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
Just go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe.
It's eight bucks a month.
It's a video version of this podcast.
And that $8, by the way, we rely on it because we obviously don't get any money from Stephen Gilbo, who we're suing.
I'll tell you more about that in today's show.
it is.
Tonight, our lawsuit against Stephen Gilboa makes the national news.
It's February 8th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Big story on page three in the National Post today, and apparently in a hundred other newspapers across Canada.
That's how it is in the news business these days.
They're really just wire services that repeat the same thing all across the country.
I couldn't find a hard copy of the National Post in Toronto.
That's where I drove up and down the street, went to so many convenience stores.
You really can't find a copy of it.
At least I couldn't.
I didn't go to a specialty store.
I would have liked to have seen it because the image I saw online looks sort of cool.
You can see the headline, the paper headline was, Levant argues minister violated charter rights.
Here's the website version with a different headline, which is liberal minister breached charter by blocking Rebel News Chief on Twitter.
Legal challenge.
The case is raising novel questions about government use of a social media platform, often called a digital public square.
Now, there's a lot of news in the article.
It's actually very long.
And as far as the news goes, it's pretty good.
But there's so much snark in there that's just so obviously gratuitous pot shots.
But it was the second most read newspaper, sorry, story in the National Post today, which makes me laugh sometimes.
I mean, we cover very interesting and we do very interesting things at Rebel News, and we are obviously watched obsessively by the media party.
But they either can't or won't talk about what we talk about.
They're simply not allowed to.
But when they do, like today, it goes viral.
I think that's a quirky thing.
So let me read to you the story from Tom Blackwell, who obviously doesn't like us, but can't stop watching us.
By the way, he never contacted me for the story, which is, I think, unprofessional.
I should tell you the text of the online version, I think it may have changed a little bit throughout the day.
I'm going to read to you the final version, which I think actually had some of the snark taken out of it.
It happens every day.
Someone on Twitter gets fed up with criticism or abuse from another user of the social media platform and blocks the person from their feed.
But what if the Twitter account belongs to a federal cabinet minister and jamming the other individual essentially cuts off access to a form of government communication?
It's a good question.
Actually, I think that's a pretty good summary of our lawsuit, isn't it?
That question is at the heart of an intriguing constitutional challenge by right-wing provocateur Ezra, who alleges that Environment Minister Stephen Gilbo violated his constitutional right to free expression when he Twitter blocked the Rebel News head.
Levant called Guibot a convicted criminal.
Yeah, he is.
Incompetent and stupid.
Yes, I did.
In responding to the minister's post on Twitter, no, that's actually not accurate, and I'll prove that in a minute.
But says he had a right to follow and comment on the minister.
His application to the federal court says Section 2B of the Charter, which guarantees free expression and freedom of the press, also protects access to government information in order that meaningful discussion about it is possible.
You know, there's a lot of reasons why we deserve access to Stephen Gilbo's Twitter account.
I want to make it crystal clear before I go on.
I'm not talking about any personal accounts like his personal family account or a private account for friends.
I'm not talking about that.
I'm talking about the government cabinet minister run by, you know, his office run by civil servants and political staff, all in the taxpayer dime, using that Twitter account as a official outlet of the government.
That's what I'm talking about, just to be clear.
I don't care about his personal life.
I care about the, in fact, I don't even care about him.
I care about him only in the fact that he occupies the office of a cabinet minister.
And especially when we launched the lawsuit, that cabinet minister was a minister of heritage who had power over media companies like ours and people like me.
I'll keep reading.
The case has yet to get a full hearing in court, but already is raising novel questions about government use of a social media platform, often called a digital public square.
Fred Kozak, a leading Alberta media lawyer who has acted both for and against Levette, said he, I don't remember Fred acting against me, but I'll take the newspaper's word for it.
Said he doesn't always agree with rebels' opinions or tactics, but believes there's merit to the Twitter argument.
Thanks, Fred.
The courts have interpreted the free expression section as a bundle of rights that covers more than just actual expression, he said.
I don't think you can identify and use a communications and access mechanism and then deny access to someone who disagrees with your perspective, said Kozak.
That is not how democracies are supposed to operate.
Fred's pretty smart, by the way.
He represents so many media companies.
He was our lawyer, just to remind you, when the NDP government of Alberta banned Sheila Gunread from walking in the legislature.
I don't know if you remember that.
They literally sent a sheriff with a gun to keep Sheila out.
Fred was our lawyer who got us back in.
Here's that video clip if you've forgotten about it.
Can we give the presentation?
We already spoke to Darcy Henson.
He said there should be no problem.
Sorry, why is that?
Sorry, why?
Fred is a champion of the journalists.
It's just a fact.
Journalists across the spectrum, by the way.
In fact, I understand he represents the National Post sometimes.
Let me get back to the story.
But Levant's own behavior might pose some obstacles in the case, says the lawyer Kara Zweebel, director of the Fundamental Freedoms Program at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
Oh, really?
What behavior is that?
I've never been suspended or banned from Twitter.
I extremely rarely even swear on the platform.
I've never sworn at Stephen Gilbo.
I don't threaten to harass anyone.
What on earth are you talking about?
I'll keep reading.
On the face of it, what Gilbo did seems to violate freedom of expression, she said, noting that courts in the U.S. ruled President Donald Trump and other politicians had breached America's similar First Amendment by blocking certain Twitter users.
But the right in Canada is not as absolute, and courts here may rule that online abuse is a legitimate reason for a government representative to block someone, said Zwebo.
What are you talking about?
No one has literally no one has ever accused me of online abuse.
Criticizing a powerful government using peaceful language of protest is not abuse, you strange civil libertarian.
I'll keep reading.
The Charter allows some violations if they're deemed a reasonable limitation on the right.
There is a strong argument that public officials have an obligation to communicate in a way that is open to people to respond to, she said.
Elected officials have to have a bit of a thick skin and be prepared to deal with the criticism.
But there is a point where the line gets crossed and personal attacks and harassment.
What are you talking about?
I've never harassed anyone in my life.
It's just, it's pitiful.
She made that up.
I called him a convicted criminal.
I don't even know if that's an attack.
That's a description.
It's true.
He was convicted.
I don't know if you remember he was a Greenpeace criminal, convicted in court.
Is mentioning that a cabinet minister is a criminal?
I think that's very newsworthy.
In fact, not only do I think it's not abuse, I think I have a duty as a journalist to mention that.
Now, here's another thing I said about him.
I'm just showing you the toughest things I said about him.
For a convicted criminal, the only criminal I'm aware of who has ever been appointed to federal cabinet, Guilbot is a terribly bad liar.
Here, watch for yourself.
And then I played this video.
The bill is about ensuring that these platforms that act like broadcasters pay their fair share when it comes to Canadian culture.
So it's about spending obligations, spending requirements.
It's not about content moderation.
So I'm going to flip the question for a moment here, Minister, because it was important enough to put that exclusion there in the first place.
Now it's gone.
Why was it important in the first place to put it there?
We're not interested.
I mean, it's not what the bill is about.
I mean, I hear you saying you're not interested, but there literally was an exclusion that was put in the original iteration of that bill, the thing that was reviewed, and then it got to committee, and bingo, bang-o-bongo, the exclusion is gone.
So why was it important to put it there in the first place such that now the committee has removed it?
Well, I mean, the committee decides what they want.
First of all, the committee hasn't even finished doing its work in terms of the amendments.
So we don't have a full picture of what the bill will look like when it comes back to the House of Commons for third reading.
Would you like to see the exclusion back in there?
It's not necessary.
I mean, so.
So if it's not necessary, why was it there in the first place?
Well, you know, we've worked on this for many months.
We came up with what we thought would be the best possible bill.
But bill can always be perfected.
They will be amended.
And it's not the purpose of the bill.
So it's not required to be there.
Because, I mean, again, this idea that the CRTC would start looking, would start doing content moderation has no basis in reality.
In its 40 years of existence, it has never done that.
It doesn't have the power to do that.
Bill C-10 doesn't grant the CRTC the power to do that.
So this whole conversation makes no sense.
But a former CRTC chair, Peter Menzies, has said, I'll quote here, granting a government agency authority over legal user-generated content doesn't just infringe on free expression.
It constitutes a full-blown assault on it.
That is from a former CRTC chair.
Yeah, I think that's the toughest thing I've said about him.
By the way, calling someone a bad liar is kind of a compliment.
That's not abuse.
And I'll just show you one more.
Reminder, Gilbo is a convicted criminal that Trudeau put in cabinet over police objections.
He's the perfect thug to be in charge of silencing Trudeau's opponents.
Those are the two toughest things I've ever said about him.
Government Twitter Ban Controversy00:13:47
I didn't swear.
I didn't threaten.
And if you understand Twitter, you'll have noticed that I didn't tag him or name him.
I didn't swarm him.
didn't have any pathway to him.
This would not have come up in his Twitter feed, I'm saying, unless he or his staff were positively searching for people chit-chatting about him.
I wish Kara's Weebel and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association cared more about civil liberties.
I mean, it's nice to hear from her after her three-year vacation during the civil liberties bonfire of the pandemic and the lockdowns.
I guess there was nothing important for her or the Canadian Civil Liberties Association to do during that time, but she's alive and that's good to have some proof of life over there.
I'll read some more.
Gilbo's office and his personal lawyer declined to comment while the case is before the courts.
Rebel lawyer Chad Williamson was not available.
The action originally also targeted former environment minister Catherine McKinna and her own blocking of Levant.
That's not true.
That's just a factual error.
McKenna blocked Sheila Gunn Reed.
She's never blocked me.
You know, you'd think that Tom Blackwell would get his facts right, but he never bothered to call me anyways.
So that's an error here.
But her name was removed from the case after she quit politics in 2021.
Calgary-based Rebel News has long been a controversial loudspeaker for Canada's hard right.
Oh, really?
Is it hard right to care about personal privacy and not being forced to comply with a vaccine mandate or not being banned from it?
Is it hard right to be worried about civil liberties?
What a loser Tom Blackwell is.
Can't even get his facts straight either.
As well as being a resolute doubter of climate change and critic of COVID vaccines, the online outlet once promoted a conspiracy theory that a Muslim had perpetrated the 2017 Quebec City mosque murder, reported sympathetically from 2020's racist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, VA, before firing its correspondent there, faced boycotts by conservatives and other politicians, and hosted Gavin McInnes, founder of the alt-right Proud Boys.
Again, Tom Blackwell is just sloppy.
We don't deny climate change.
Climate changes all the time.
If you've ever heard of the ice ages and know that we're not now under a kilometer of ice in Canada, you know the climate changes.
What a weird lie.
We're not against COVID vaccines.
If you want to take them, fill your boots.
We're just against COVID mandates.
And on the Quebec City mosque arrest, I don't know if you remember, but police originally arrested more than one person.
They arrested two people, one of whom went on to be convicted.
The other person who was arrested and held overnight was a young Muslim man.
That's not a conspiracy theory.
The police arrested him and then only later said he had nothing to do with it.
In terms of the Charlottesville event, again, Tom just has basic facts wrong.
That was in 2017, not 2020.
And the reporter who went there did not go with Rebel News.
She was a rebel reporter, Faith Goldie, who went on her own accord, contrary to my direction.
And when I saw that she had participated with one of the alt-right groups that fired her.
So just weird gossip, mishmash, factual errors from Tom Blackwell, sort of embarrassing.
I'll keep reading, though.
Gilbo, who was heritage minister at the time and introducing a bill on online hate speech, blocked Levant in early 2020.
Rebel lawyers note the liberal could have just instead muted Levant, which would have prevented the rebel tweets from appearing on his timeline, but wouldn't block the commentator from seeing the minister's posts.
Again, Tom Blackwell gets his basic facts wrong.
Muting someone doesn't prevent my posts from appearing on his timeline.
It just prevents Stephen Gilbo himself from seeing it.
I don't know how you get to be a newspaper reporter for such a senior newspaper as the National Post, and in every paragraph you get facts wrong.
I'm sort of embarrassed for him, but maybe it's because he never bothered to call me for his story.
Could have helped him get his facts straight, but I guess he's with the media party and he doesn't really believe in calling the other side.
Kozak noted that Levant could still get access to the minister's tweets from someone who had not been blocked, but said the courts might view that as weak justification for blocking someone.
Well, not just that, but when you have access to someone's Twitter account, you can interact with them, you can reply to them and have a banter with them, a discussion with them.
That's half the fun of Twitter, isn't it?
Zwebel, though, said a 2010 Supreme Court of Canada ruling makes it difficult to argue that merely blocking a person on Twitter breaches their rights if the same information is available elsewhere.
And then if you see on the story there, it's linked to a case.
I clicked on that case.
It's got nothing to do with Twitter.
Now, either Kara's Weebel is wrong, or you just have another dumb error by Tom Blackwell.
Let me read to you, this is a Supreme Court ruling.
This is called a head note, which is a summary of the case written by clerks of the Supreme Court.
So I'm just going to tell you the case that Kara Zweebel allegedly referred to Tom Blackwell.
Tom Blackwell probably got it wrong because this makes no sense.
The trial judge ordered a state of proceedings in a murder trial, finding many instances of abusive conduct by state officials.
The Ontario Provincial Police investigated and exonerated the police of misconduct without giving reasons for their finding.
Concerned about the disparity between the findings of trial and the conclusions of the police investigation, the Criminal Lawyers Association, CLA, made a request under the Ontario Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, FIPA, to the responsible minister for disclosure of records relating to the investigation.
The records at issue were a lengthy police report and two documents containing legal advice.
FIPA exempts various categories of documents from disclosure, some of which may be disclosed pursuant to a discretionary ministerial decision, including law enforcement records under Section 14 and solicitor client privilege records under Section 90.
Sorry, a secret and private legal opinion for a police force is not the same as public tweets.
I'm not asking for some special disclosure of a secret.
I just want access to Stephen Gilbo's public tweets.
I think Kara Zwebel has been on vacation for too long.
Or maybe, just as likely, the reporter, just Tom Blackwell, just absolutely got his facts wrong again.
That case has nothing to do with my access to a public.
I'm not asking the government to divulge a secret legal opinion.
If those are the people who are in charge of our civil liberties and our journalism, we're in trouble in Canada.
All right, let me get back to this shoddy article.
In that Ontario case, the top court said the Charter's Free Expression Section can require governments to release information, but only if denying access to it effectively precludes meaningful public discussion on matters of public interest.
I'm not asking for the government to release any secrets.
What a stupid lawsuit to court case to refer to.
This is a terrible article.
Gilbo's office did not comment on why the rebel founder was blocked, but an affidavit filed by the minister's lawyers contains a number of tweets posted by Levant about Gilbo.
In some, he refers without elaboration to the minister being a convicted criminal, an apparent reference to Gilbo's conviction for public mischief after climbing the CN Tower for a climate change protest while working for Greenpeace.
Well, let me just stop there and say, it is true that I have never been given an actual explanation for why I was banned from Gilbo's Twitter feed.
I don't know if it's something I wrote, if something I said, something I did, or if it's just who I am.
We simply don't know.
And the thing is, I keep saying Gilbo's Twitter account, but it's actually not his, is it?
If it's run by and controlled by and staffed by and paid by civil servants on the taxpayer diamond, it really isn't his, is it?
I'll keep reading.
Levant suggests in other tweets that Gilbo is one of the dumbest ministers, one of the most incompetent, a terribly bad liar, and a perfect thug assigned to silence Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's critics.
In a legal motion decided recently, rebels lawyers urged the courts to toss out the affidavit displaying the tweets, arguing it was prejudicial to their case, but of little evidentiary value.
Justice Alan Diner ruled against Levant, saying prejudice has not been demonstrated and the evidence is not obviously irrelevant.
But like I showed you before, those tweets don't even tag Stephen Gilbo.
But let's say that those tweets were the reason I was banned.
We don't know that because Gilbo has refused to testify so far.
I think that those are terrible reasons to ban me.
Because there's no swearing, there's no threats, it's simply criticism or calling him a convicted criminal, which I don't even know if that's criticism, that's who he is, to ban someone from getting access to a government service, a public Twitter account, simply because he irritates you in a partisan political way.
How can you possibly allow that with no explanation?
Banning me from getting a service, not from a secret memo, a service.
Anyhow, a very interesting story today, and it caused quite a rut because, like I say, it appeared in a lot of places, very popular.
Now, the comments on the National Post website were a hoot.
I read, I don't know, about 100 of them.
They were knocking post media for taking money from Trudeau.
They were applauding our news coverage and comparing it favorably to the National Post.
They pointed out the truth about Gilbo, how he was, in fact, a criminal.
But then midday, and as the story was getting traction, something happened because all of a sudden, hundreds of liberal bots, robots, or shills and partisans were unleashed, and what a hoot they were.
It was a big argy bargie, a big back and forth.
Here's what you need to know.
This lawsuit is proceeding to trial.
The trial is just a few months away in June in Toronto.
And I think we've got a real chance.
If you put aside the snark and the factual errors in Tom Blackwell's story, and if you strip aside the snide remarks from the liberal robots, you have a case that on the face of it is clearly a violation of my rights as a citizen.
It reminds me a little bit of when Justin Trudeau required any small business that wanted a summer jobs grant to sign an attestation that they agree with Justin Trudeau on moral questions like abortion.
Had absolutely nothing to do with whether or not they should receive a summer jobs grant.
Absolutely punished Trudeau's enemies and had nothing to do with summer jobs.
It was just punitive.
Well, that's what he's doing again here, but he's not even going through the motions of giving an explanation or a rationale or publishing the rules.
He's just taking out his vendetta against one of Trudeau's harshest critics, me.
I don't deny that I'm a harsh critic of the liberal government, and that's my constitutional right.
And one of the ways I can express that right, in fact, some would say it's a duty of a journalist to do that.
One of the ways I can express that is to interact with the government on Twitter.
The tweets I showed you didn't actually interact with Gilbo at all.
I didn't reply there.
I was just speaking in my own right.
It would be quite something if I was talking about Gilbo over here, not even to him, and I was banned from his Twitter account.
I don't think Gilbo will be able to avoid taking the witness stand in his own trial.
That was that little skirmish they talked about at the end there.
Gilbo still has not sworn evidence under oath.
It'll be quite something to see that.
If you think this interesting fight should be supported, well, I should tell you, we need your help.
The government is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars stopping this.
For some reason, they think it's extremely important that I be banned from following Stephen Gilbo on Twitter.
And you might say, what a much ado about nothing.
What a tempest in a teapot.
And this is where I disagree with you if you said that.
Because if the government can ban me from getting a government service, information published by civil servants using a government website, if the government can ban me for any reason or no reason, not give me the reason, not give me any appeal, not communicate with me with me at all, just ban me.
If they can set that precedent, what other things can they ban me from?
Can they ban me from having a bank account?
Can they ban me from getting a tax refund?
Can they ban me from traveling places?
I mean, they're violating my fundamental freedoms of speech and journalism and the media.
What other fundamental freedoms can they ban me for?
This is actually an extremely important case.
Because if we win, it's a message to the Liberal government that no, they cannot use government offices and government projects as their own party projects.
I mean, if the Liberal Party, by the way, the Liberal Party of Canada has not banned me from Twitter, funny enough.
Maybe they should.
I'm a critic of theirs and they're not owned by the government.
But if the government can ban me and block me simply because they don't like me, well, then that's a road that we do not want to go down.
Trudeau's Pressures and Provinces00:15:44
A road where the government is used for private interests, not public interests.
If you want to learn more or help us out, go to twitterlawsuit.ca.
All right.
Here's our next interview with Rachel Emanuel.
If you had the opportunity to shake Justin Trudeau's hand, would you?
Well, if you are a typical rebel viewer, I'm guessing your answer would be no.
You might even do that silly high school move where you put your hand out to shake it and then you brush your hair back.
You would do something sort of silly like that.
But what happens if you weren't allowed to be disrespectful?
If you weren't allowed to flip them the bird, as so many Westerners do?
Well, maybe you would do what Alberta premiers do when they come face to face with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, just like a quarter century ago when the Alberta premiers came face to face with Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.
They made it clear that in the name of the office and provincial federal harmony and following the Constitution and respect for the Queen, they would, in fact, meet the Prime Minister and they would, perhaps grudgingly, shake his hand.
Here's Jason Kenney scowling a bit while shaking Justin Trudeau's hand.
Danielle Smith, who is much firmer when it comes to provincial rights and criticizing Justin Trudeau firmer than Jason Kenney, it looks like she didn't even want to shake hands, but Trudeau reached down to her hand and shook it anyways.
Here's how that went down.
Yeah, I think that that was just the right tone.
It reminds me a little bit of when Stephen Harper was at an international summit, and Vladimir Putin came right up to him with his hand out for a handshake.
And Harper said, I will shake your hand, but I'm opposed to what you're doing.
And I thought that was just the right tone.
I'm not comparing Justin Trudeau with Vladimir Putin, although both share similar authoritarian instincts.
But I like the fact that Danielle Smith let it be known through her body language that she was no friend of Justin Trudeau.
And although that was condemned by the Twitterati and the feinty dainties who thought that she embarrassed Alberta, I think the opposite.
I think the fact that she so viscerally rejected Justin Trudeau was probably her finest moment yet, at least in the eyes of Alberta Patriots, which is her base.
Joining us now via Skype from the Wild Rose Province is our friend Rachel Emmanuel, who writes for various outlets, including our friends at True North.
Rachel, great to see you.
You're actually out there.
I'm out here in exile in Toronto, and I was cheering on Danielle Smith when she didn't shake Trudeau's hand.
How did it go over there when Danielle Smith clearly was sort of resisting shaking Trudeau's hand?
I think this type of thing plays very well with Danielle's base.
Of course, in Alberta, you know, they're no friends of the Liberal Party, especially the United Conservative Party.
They hate the Trudeau Liberals.
They hate what Trudeau has done to this province through some federal legislation.
So I think this type of thing plays very well with her base.
Of course, there's going to be the Laurentian elite that have negative things to say about it and want to teach Danielle a lesson on how to shake hands.
But I think it was rather intentional, and I think it's going to play over well for her.
Now, I know that some of this is for public consumption.
Danielle Smith wants to put on the record how she feels, but provincial premiers and federal PMs, they just simply have to work together on so many things.
And when they do so, I presume the goal is to be constructive.
I presume that the kind of squabbles we see in public are probably not there in a business phone call to get through an item of to-dos.
That's what Trudeau was doing.
He had a list of things he wanted to do.
I don't think it was the same as the list of things that Danielle Smith wanted to go through.
Here, let me play a clip for you of Danielle Smith talking with Trudeau looking somewhat uncomfortable.
Now, the audio here is rough, but I understand this is the best audio that exists for this clip.
So do your best to make it out as she talks about stopping Trudeau's often repeated desire to phase out the oil sands and the jobs that go with it.
Here, take a look.
I'm delighted to be able to have an opportunity to talk about some areas of common interest, maybe some areas of diversion, see if we can find some common interest.
We have, I think, a lot of shared goals in addressing issues of Indigenous health care, health, addiction, home care, community-based care as we transform our health care system.
So I'm pleased that we'll be meeting with all of all the other premiers today.
But of course, I did write a letter to the Prime Minister a couple of weeks ago expressing concern about some of the major initiatives that have been announced without much consultation with Alberta that stand to have a huge impact on our province.
The just transition gives me an impression that the energy sector is going to be phased out.
It's not going to be phased out.
We're transforming away from high-intensity emissions to lower emissions.
And I think we have some shared priorities on that.
LNG export to reduce emissions using a green transfer mechanism to get credit here.
That would also help British Columbia working on critical minerals, hydrogen, geothermal.
I think there's a lot of opportunity for us to find some common ground.
I'm also concerned about the green electricity regulations.
Our province has 90% of our electricity grid on natural gas.
And so a thorough phase out of natural gas is just simply not going to result in a reliable or affordable option for our province.
And also proposed emissions cap the energy sector.
We've said very clearly that an aggressive emissions cap, such as those initially proposed, would really be a production cap.
Yeah, because there isn't a feasible way for us to achieve that for the main year.
So I thought we'll find some common ground.
Alberta, for all of Canada, that we need to find common ground so that we can continue to move forward on the growth.
Well, Rachel, was this the case of two ships passing in the night that really weren't talking to each other?
Or was there any common ground?
Did they engage on anything?
I wouldn't say it's two ships passing in the night.
I want to say that there was some agreement made.
As you mentioned, the Prime Minister did look extremely uncomfortable while Danielle was making her comments there.
But as she's saying, you know, we're not going to be phasing out the energy sector.
We see Trudeau nodding along, kind of conceding to some comments that she's made.
Later on in her remarks, he looks arguably a bit more uncomfortable.
I'm sure they didn't agree on everything.
But I think it's safe to say we did see some concessions from the prime minister.
And I think the premier is coming back to Alberta with a good message.
And I think she's proud of what she was able to deliver on during her visit to Ottawa.
Tell me what some of those concessions were.
I know that Danielle Smith campaigned on the Sovereignty Act, which got a lot of dramatic coverage from the CBC and others.
But my read of it is just basically applying the Constitution the same way Quebec has, which is to make sure there's no intrusions on provincial jurisdiction by the feds.
Were there any interesting concessions?
I know that there was a recent firearms concession by Trudeau, basically admitting that he was going to tackle hunters, and he backed down from that.
Other than the firearms back down, what else did Trudeau back down on?
Well, I think the interesting thing we see there is that when the Premier is saying we're not going to see a phasing out of the energy sector, we see the Prime Minister nodding along in agreement.
So they've reached some mutual territory there.
Of course, the firearms one was a big piece of drawback that we've seen from the federal liberal government lately.
I was actually really surprised to see that.
It seems that the Trudeau government hasn't been listening to Canadians lately.
No matter how loud the criticism is, they are very loath to withdraw on popular legislation.
So it was interesting to see them withdraw this amendment.
Now, you could say that's a concession for now, although I'm not sure that we won't see it reintroduced at a later date in some other form.
So it'll be interesting to see where we go for that.
And you're absolutely right.
The Sovereignty Act was so controversial when the Premier was first voted in and made actions on that.
But really, her plan is to achieve the same autonomy that the Quebecers have.
Now, there's still some other movements that need to be made.
There needs to be some changes in health care.
And of course, a provincial police force would allow the province to have some more autonomy as Quebec does.
So there's still a lot of work to be done on that.
But I think we're seeing that the Sovereignty Act wasn't as controversial as it was initially pegged to be.
And it's since been passed, and there hasn't been as much conversation about it as we've seen.
Yeah.
It has not escaped my attention that opinion polls, including opinion polls taken by liberal-affiliated pollsters like Abacus, show that Trudeau has a statistically significant shortfall in his popularity, far behind Pierre Polyau's conservatives.
I mean, it's not just a point or two.
It's almost a double-digit lead now.
That's got to be spooking some liberals in marginal seats.
I mean, if you're in downtown Toronto or Montreal, they'll be voting liberal almost no matter what.
But it's in those more marginal areas, the suburbs, even parts of British Columbia, some rural strongholds for the Liberals in Ontario, Manitoba.
Those Liberal MPs are going to lose if these poll numbers stand up.
Do you think that is motivating Trudeau to maybe give up some of his ideological eccentricities?
I think to an extent, I think what we're seeing, if you read media reports, there's been reports in recent weeks of people within the Liberal Party actually turning on Trudeau.
I think within his own party and among his MPs, we're finally seeing him lose support and popularity for the first time since 2015.
We're seeing that people in the Liberal Party are finally standing up.
They're seeing, as you just pointed out, that their seats are at stake.
And I think they're pointing that out to him.
And I think they're very angry.
And so maybe what we're seeing with the withdrawal on the firearms amendment is Trudeau is under a lot of pressure from within his own party for the first time.
And he's worried for his own position and that he might have to resign if things continue the way that they are now.
I don't know if he's looking and he's actually caring about other MP seats, but I think he's taking a lot of heat from within his own party in a way that he never has before.
You know, I saw a fascinating tweet today by a journalist, I think, for the Epoch Times, an internal PMO document showing the number of letters that the PMO receives by subject matter and hundreds of thousands of letters, but they categorize them.
And I notice that it's all lockdown issues, government mismanagement of COVID, the carbon taxes on there.
All the things that, quote, severely normal people care about, I notice not on the list of issues are global warming, climate change, you know, a just transition off oil and gas, none of the woke transgenderism or feminism.
It's just such an incredible difference between what the Liberal Party wants to do, which is often a cultural war, versus the bread and butter issues that Canadians care about.
And I think more and more, if we head into a recession, it's going to be costs of housing, cost of mortgages, interest rates, inflation, things like that.
I don't know.
I think that for the first time, you know, I mean, it's been eight years since Trudeau was elected.
Maybe he's starting to wear on people's nerves a bit.
It's almost like in Canada, they don't vote prime ministers in.
They sort of chuck the old one out when they get tired of them.
I want to ask you one last question about Alberta, though, before we go.
And by the way, Rachel, it's great to have you here.
We love True North very much.
You're based in Alberta, and for the longest time, the public face of lockdowns, even more than the Premier Jason Kenney at the time, even more than Tyler Chandra, the health minister at the time, was the public health officer.
And that was, I think, a wise strategy by politicians.
Make the unelected bureaucrats the bad guy for everything.
At first, they were treated as heroes, but then as the mood turned, they were the scapegoats.
Dina Hinshaw was Alberta's public health officer.
She was sacked by Danielle Smith.
And maybe I shouldn't be surprised, but she popped up.
She was snatched up by British Columbia.
She went over there and she's the deputy provincial health officer.
I'm not sure how many provincial health officers we need.
There seem to be hundreds of these people across the country.
And I really don't know what they do other than repeat Anthony Fauci's latest press release.
But what do you have to say about Dina Hinshaw moving from Alberta to BC and being welcomed with a six-figure job?
Yeah, I'm not really sure what they do either other than lock down and tell average people in Albertan businesses that they're not allowed to operate while they're collecting a $228,000 COVID bonus.
I think BCR should be asking themselves why they're picking up Alberta's sloppy seconds right now.
Let's not mince word.
Dina Hinshaw was fired for her poor handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
So I think that BCRs are absolutely correct to be outraged that she's now being hired in BC to do who knows what.
I think it's a bit laughable that she's just been able to transfer over to this province after doing such a poor job with Alberta's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
And let's not forget, as I just mentioned, that $228,000 bonus that she pocketed in 2021, the same year that she shut down Alberta businesses, she took home over almost $600,000 in 2021.
That's well over half a million dollars while she was shuttering Albertan businesses.
So it's just laughable that she's been able to take a job in BC so quickly.
I don't know what they were thinking.
I don't know what they were thinking in terms of optics, but it seems that there's some people in the system who have found a way to survive in Justin Trudeau's inflationary Canada.
And, you know, maybe you just have to respect them for doing whatever it takes to find a way to support themselves and have a good life while the rest of Canadians are suffering.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, with those stats, I have them in front of me.
She was earning in 2021 a $363,000 salary, but then she got a bonus, as you mentioned, of $228,000 for a grand total of $591,000.
And I don't know what she did other than read out statistics every week of how many cases there were.
I mean, like I say, every city, every municipality, every province had these public health officers.
It drove me nuts when they were referred to as top doctors, but they didn't have any patients.
They're not the best doctor or the, you know, the smartest.
They are doctors, but they don't have patients.
They're just bureaucrats with an MD.
And the idea of a bonus of 228 grand, it's like she's a stockbroker who made $10 million profits.
So they gave her a quarter mil bonus.
I don't know what bonus, like what did she do so well to give her a bonus of that size?
There were, just like there are profiteers in a military war, Rachel, there absolutely were profiteers doing during the COVID crisis, which was often likened to a war.
And Dina Hinshaw is one of them.
Biden's Balloon Bet00:04:03
Good news for Alberta that she's gone.
I pity the BCers who have to pay for it.
Last word to you, Rachel.
What do you think we should look at in Alberta in the months ahead?
How far away is that provincial election?
It's a fixed date election.
It's not far away now, is it?
Yeah, the provincial election is coming up.
It's scheduled for late May.
I think that's where everyone's eyes are turning right now.
We're already seeing some of the discussion change to that pre-sort of election campaigning.
I think we're going to see the NDP really try to paint Danielle Smith as someone who is crazy, as someone who doesn't know what she's doing in government and who's simply not up for the job.
And we're going to see the Alberta UCP party try to paint the NDP as a party that's closely affiliated with Justin Trudeau by nature of the federal NDP, which currently has an agreement to hold Justin Trudeau and his government in power.
And so we're going to see them make those connections.
It's similar to how Jason Kenney did it when he ran for the leadership and how he won the election.
So we'll see if they're successful in that.
We're already seeing the polls switch in Danielle Smith's favor.
So I'm interested to see if we continue to see that upswing.
Certainly the numbers are looking much better for the UCP than they were under Jason Kenney.
So we'll see if Danielle Smith has what it takes to form government for the first time.
All right, Rachel Emmanuel, great to see you.
We'll follow you at True North.
And it's nice to have you pop by here, Rebel News.
Stay with us.
more ahead.
Welcome back.
Your letters to me.
Mark Beerly says about the balloon.
This report raises some very disturbing questions.
If our Defense Department was not aware of this balloon the minute it launched from China, that indicates a serious flaw in our intelligence gathering.
If the Defense Department was aware of the balloon and chose not to inform the president, that would mean that our military is being compromised by the CCP.
I have not heard a single report as to when Biden, Biden, was informed.
given the fact that he has been certainly been compromised by the CCP and the fact that he is a pathological liar, I would be willing to bet that he was told days in advance by Xi himself that they were going to launch a balloon and that he had better ensured safe passage over the United States.
No, I think you go too far there.
I don't think that Xi Jinping would have informed Biden of sending the balloon over, not at all.
And I don't think it's reasonable to track every weather balloon that's launched over China.
China is a huge country and there are legitimate reasons for launching weather balloons.
Now, as I showed you on the map, it should have been detected when it approached Alaska and as it came down BC.
And it surely was.
I don't know when Biden would have been briefed.
I mean, let's be honest, Biden isn't exactly the decision maker there.
They probably briefed someone else at the White House.
Someone whose nickname is magnetism says it's war, Ezra.
Israel does the same.
Does the same with what?
Are you talking about balloons?
Are you talking about the war between Russia and Ukraine?
I'm not sure what you mean.
Like I said yesterday, I'm generally against war, but there are some things that war is better than.
War to preserve your freedom, war to preserve your independence, war to get your independence or freedom.
Many countries are born in revolution, including the United States.
Canada, we're one of the lucky countries that evolved into our independence.
Israel, unfortunately, has had many wars of survival.
If Israel were to lose even a single war, that would mean its end.
Luckily, it hasn't had a serious war in years, other than the slow-burning terrorist war.
I'm not sure what other analogy you're trying to make there.
I was hopeful and impressed, but then obviously immediately dashed to learn that Israel's PM was involved in negotiating a peace treaty between Russia and Ukraine.
And then I was dashed to hear that it was scuppered by Joe Biden.