Ezra Levant exposes Justin Trudeau’s 2021 lie about missing Truth and Reconciliation Day, revealed by government documents showing him surfing in Tofino while staff delayed corrections. CBC’s 949 employees earning over $100K—up 116% since Trudeau took office—highlight media bias, with taxpayer-funded bonuses ($51M) and raises for former executives like Hubert Lacroix ($40K). Levant warns Trudeau’s dishonesty erodes societal trust, while sanctions against Russia fail to cripple its economy, benefiting China. NATO’s ammunition shortages and vague political goals risk escalation, underscoring Trudeau’s broader pattern of deception and geopolitical missteps. [Automatically generated summary]
I'm going to take you through some government documents found in an access to information request, and I will read them, but I want you to see them.
I want you to see these text messages and emails, and I want you to see what it's all about.
It is about Justin Trudeau lying about where he was, hiding, deceiving.
He didn't want to go to the Truth and Reconciliation Day event with Indigenous people, so he had his staff lie while he scooted away to Tofino to surf.
And we've got the documents to prove it.
Boy, do we have a show today?
I'd love it if you saw the video version of it.
Go to RebelNewsPlus.com.
Click subscribe.
It's $8 a month.
Every weeknight I do this show.
You get the video version of it.
Sheila Gunnread also has a show called The Gun Show, Great TV.
And the $8 a month might not sound like a ton to you, but I tell you, it makes a difference to us because we rely on that to pay the bills because Justin Trudeau, well, we would never take his money.
Go to RebelNewsPlus.com.
All right, here's today's program.
Cheers.
Tonight, a glimpse behind the scenes of Trudeau lying to you in real time.
It's February 22nd, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Justin Trudeau is a liar.
He thinks nothing of it because he doesn't respect Canadians as moral equals.
You can see that, as I showed you yesterday, if you disagree with him, he thinks you're evil, not just wrong, evil.
Remember what he said if he regretted calling people a fringe minority?
Here's the clip.
Following today's report, do you have any regrets about calling Ottawa protesters a fringe minority?
Yeah, I wish I had said that differently.
As I look back on that and as I've reflected on it over the past months, not just freshly from this commissioner's report, I wish I had phrased it differently.
The fact is, there is a very small number of people in this country who deliberately spread misinformation and disinformation that led to Canadians' deaths, that led to excessive hardship in people who believed them.
Lies Within Lies00:16:01
I continue to be very, very firm against those individuals.
But that is a small subset of people who were just hurting and worried and wanting to be heard.
And as much as I tried to emphasize throughout the time that of course we're always going to stand up for freedom of speech and freedom to protest peacefully.
I wish I hadn't said something that was able to be spread larger.
If I had chosen my words a bit careful, been more specific, I think things might have been a bit easier.
See, to Trudeau, there are two kinds of people.
Useful people who agree with him and support him, and evil people who disagree with him.
You'll notice that no one is an equal to him.
No one is inherently worthy of his respect.
It's all how do you fit into his own plans?
Now, he can trick people by flattering them or soothing them with clever words, but at his root, I think he's a sociopathic liar.
I mean, imagine a guy who dresses up in blackface so often he lost count, looking you in the eye and calling you a racist.
Oh my God, how did he do that?
Imagine a guy who sexually assaulted journalist Rose Knight in Creston, B.C., telling you you're a sexist, and when asked about his misconduct, says this.
Often a man experiences an interaction as being benign or not inappropriate, and a woman, particularly in a professional context, can experience it differently.
Now, look, I think all politicians are liars to a degree.
And I think sometimes in government there are occasions where a lie is actually necessary.
As Winston Churchill said, in wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
Have you ever heard that phrase, a bodyguard of lies?
But you shouldn't lie casually or frequently.
You shouldn't become at your core a liar.
I think Trudeau is.
And I've got some proof of it for you today.
Now, you shouldn't become a liar because so much of our society depends on honesty and the trust that honesty grows.
Give me a minute on this.
You know, one of the features of our legal system is that it uses Latin phrases where an English phrase would do nicely.
I'm not sure why it does that other than tradition and custom.
I think maybe it adds some extra oomph to something, as if it's super important when you say it in Latin.
Maybe it actually forces you to remember it as a law student.
I think that worked on me.
Diminimus curat lex.
That was my favorite.
That means the law doesn't care about trivialities.
I always thought of that when I got a speeding ticket for just going a few kilometers an hour faster than the limit.
I don't think saying that Latin phrase ever got me out of a ticket, though.
Mens rea means guilty mind.
Ultravirus means outside the power.
As in the government doesn't have the power to do something.
Maybe all the Latin is just to impress non-lawyers and to justify higher legal fees by making lawyers into some sort of fancy priesthood, like a wizard saying a magic spell in a foreign tongue.
But here's one that came to mind unprompted today when I thought of Trudeau, and it was this.
Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.
You can probably guess what that means.
False in one thing, false in everything.
Or put it another way, once a liar, always a liar.
Isn't that a good one?
And it's true, isn't it?
And it's very useful in a legal system where we depend on people to be honest.
And forget about the law.
What about life?
If you know someone is a liar, you approach them with some caution, right?
I mean, liars can be interesting.
They can be fun.
They can be entertaining.
They can be impressive.
But you can never make yourself vulnerable to them in friendships, in business, in marriage.
The law really does put a premium on telling the truth.
If you lie under oath, for example, it's a crime called perjury.
If you lie in certain contracts, it's called fraud.
We really forget how much of our society depends on everybody telling the truth to each other.
We are a high-trust society.
And I can tell you, it's much better to live in a high-trust society than to live in a low-trust society, which is much, if not most of the world.
It took centuries for us to learn to trust each other, maybe even millennia.
In other places in the world, you can only trust your kin.
I heard this saying once when someone was talking about the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti.
Al-Tikriti means Saddam from Tikrit.
That was the little town he was from.
And that was so much of how he ruled the country because that was his allegiance to his town.
Those are the only people he could trust.
Here's how I heard it said.
I against my brothers.
I and my brothers against my cousins.
I, my brothers, and my cousins against the world.
Have you ever heard that?
That is a low-trust society.
That's how they think in Tikrit, where Hussein came from.
What a dark world that would be, a world where it is hard to make friends, hard to travel, hard to be vulnerable.
You know, I felt it when I went to Iraq a few years ago myself.
Remember when Rebel News went there to observe the Christian refugees being persecuted by ISIS?
And we went there not only to report, but to disperse money that we raised to help the refugees.
And when people detected that we had money, oh, you could feel the change in the air.
Everyone was jockeying to empty our pockets, to say or do anything to liberate the foolish foreigners of their money.
I was told I smiled too much.
I looked like an idiot for smiling for no reason.
I was told I said thank you too easily, and certainly that I said thank you very much for trivial things.
And again, it made me look like an easy mark.
Forgive the detour into the importance of a high trust society, but it is very real.
And it goes to every part of life from trusting the quality of something you buy in a market to trusting the world enough to let young women walk alone on the street at night.
I'm not calling everyone in Iraq a liar, the opposite, actually.
I'm saying they have to be very careful with the truth because it's dangerous to reveal the truth of things in a low-trust society.
We see some of those risks when people come across to Canada from low-trust societies, our welfare system, our food banks even, just for example.
They depend on people being trustworthy and not thinking, oh my God, these idiots are literally giving us free stuff.
I'm almost done, my amateur philosophizing about telling the truth here.
Let me just show you a clip from Jordan Peterson where he talks about this a bit in the context of young women dating men.
There's a lot of women out there who've never had a positive relationship with any male in their life.
And maybe not only not a positive relationship, but really a series of pretty negative relationships.
And so women like that are very leery of any expression of male ability of any sort because they can't distinguish productive competence from arbitrary power.
And one of the tactics that can be used in that situation is just to try to do everything you can to distance yourself as much as you can from any display of male ability because it can't be distinguished from psychopathy.
It takes a sophisticated woman to be able to make that distinction.
So the other thing you see too is that young women are much more likely to be seduced by psychopaths than older women because the psychopaths mimic competence.
They're confident and women read confidence as a marker of competence and that's reasonable, but it opens up a space for exploitation.
Because if you can mimic confidence, narcissistic false confidence, then you look competent.
I think he's right.
Con men can trick anyone, but I think there's a certain kind of con man that can trick young women who aren't as experienced as detecting liars.
Trudeau is exactly that kind of guy, don't you think?
He bamboozles people, particularly women, particularly young women.
And I think the polls show that too.
He's a liar.
And the thing about liars, especially Trudeau, is that they lie so often about big things and about little things that soon lying is their default state.
They just do it naturally.
It's not a rare exception to get out of a crisis for a higher purpose like Churchill described.
It's just lying is just what they do.
They lubricate every life transaction with a lie.
I remember when I told a lie back when I was in grade school in the 1970s and my grandma made me write lines.
I don't think that's even legal to make a kid write lines in 2023.
But one of the things she said to me that I still remember to this day is, it's a lot easier to remember the truth than to remember a lie.
And she's right.
There's other reasons to tell the truth.
But let me show you a story about Justin Trudeau lying and the tangled web it wove.
And you will marvel at how trivial the lie is, how commonplace it is, how minor the matter was, but that won't excuse it.
It will do the opposite in your mind, I predict.
It will show you that Trudeau's standard operating procedure is to lie and to cover up the lie and to get staff to cover up the lie.
And they will and they do and they have and they will continue to.
And they also learn, learn how it is under Trudeau.
Learn that the only test of morality is, can you get away with that?
So let me tell you about Trudeau's lie going back almost 18 months now.
And it's documented in hundreds of pages of access to information documents that you can see on the website under this video.
We'll post it there.
And the lies are about Trudeau skipping the first Truth and Reconciliation Day holiday and instead going surfing in Tofino, BC.
Do you remember that?
Sir.
They invited you.
I mean, this goes to Trudeau's predatory lies.
He'll be a male feminist until he can get a woman alone in the dark, and then he'll sexually assault her like he did the Rose Knight.
He'll go on TV to tell you how much he deeply cares about Indigenous reconciliation.
And then as soon as he thinks the cameras are off, he'll say, let's get out of here.
I want to go surfing.
Not doing this boring indigenous stuff.
Let's start with the first page of this access to information, which is the press clippings of the Privy Council office.
Just to remind you, the PCO or Privy Council office is the group of civil servants that support Justin Trudeau's office, the PMO, the Prime Minister's office.
So first page, there's a global news story.
Trudeau spends first Truth and Reconciliation Day in Tofino on vacation, contradicting itinerary.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is spending the first National Truth and Reconciliation Day on vacation in Tofino, BC with his family, despite his official itinerary placing him in private meetings in Ottawa.
The Prime Minister's office confirmed the vacation in the statement sent to Global News.
Yes, the PM is spending time in Tofino with family for a few days, Trudeau's spokesperson wrote.
But look at this.
His official itinerary for September 30th, the official day of the Truth and Reconciliation, it was, well, they claimed he was in Ottawa doing private meetings.
But that was a lie.
And it would not have been found out if someone hadn't snapped some pictures of Trudeau on the beach.
And even the normally pro-Trudeau media, like global news, like the Toronto Star, were so grossed out by him that they started to actually report the truth about his lies.
And it was a two-part truth, wasn't it?
Part one was that Trudeau didn't actually care about Truth and Reconciliation Day.
That's just for TV.
And part two is that he tried to hide that.
And he got his entire staff and the civil service to go along with his lie.
And they did.
Turn ahead to page 24 of this access to information document.
This story was blowing up in their faces, but they refused to change the itinerary that they email and facts, if they still do that, to the world every day.
They still wanted to keep the lie as much as they could.
They didn't want people to be alerted to it.
Now, they had to correct things online for the journalists who were snooping and doing the story, but they didn't want to send out emails to alert the world.
Look at this.
For today's, the update can be made on the web only.
No need to reissue.
And you'll notice that this correction was only made just before 4 p.m. that day.
They let the lie linger as long as they possibly could, and then they corrected it in as small a place as possible.
But even then, they kept lying.
It was like those Russian dolls, you know, where there's a doll within a doll, within a doll.
In this case, it was lies within lies within lies.
Look at this on page 72 of this document.
Attached, you can find for your approval the draft PM itinerary for tomorrow with private meetings only as per previous instructions.
Hang on, hang on, hang on.
He was not in private meetings.
He was surfing.
He was photographed on the beach.
Wasn't in meetings.
Even when he was caught lying about where he was, he still lied about what he was doing, and the whole government lied with him.
The media was outraged.
They actually don't mind when Trudeau lies about himself or about conservatives or about truckers or about taxes, but they actually thought he cared about Indigenous people.
And there he was surfing.
So finally, Trudeau's office finally, under pressure, asked the Privy Council to change the location from Ottawa to BC, but just to BC.
He still wouldn't admit he was in Tofino because everyone knows that's a surfing town and Trudeau's favorite vacation spot.
Look at page 98.
Can we change the location to British Columbia instead of Ottawa for the itineraries until Sunday, please?
Keep them personal and issue at 7 a.m. day of.
Thanks.
BC, yeah, yeah, no.
He still couldn't admit it.
Why wouldn't they say Tofino, the town, when they suddenly made the switch to just saying the province?
Well, look at this text message exchange.
This is Alex from PCO Comms.
We typically include both city and province in the PM's itinerary.
Is there a city in BC we can include from Friday to Saturday?
Please let me know.
Mayor C.
And the reply from Trudeau's staff, have we ever not simply listed province in the past?
And the reply, well, we haven't, but technically it can be done on the website.
If we never have, then let's put Tofino BC.
But then look lower in this text message exchange.
They only want the change on the website.
They don't want any emails alerting people that he's in Tofino.
Look at page 40 here.
And just in case you thought this was a last-minute thing, and maybe they didn't know where Trudeau was going, these access to information documents show you they knew, obviously knew.
They had it all planned.
On page 40 of Document 6, you can see expense reports for various staff who go along at taxpayers' expense to do whatever Trudeau wants them to do.
You can see, for example, Jared Malali went from September 30th to October 4th.
Now, I'm not picking on him.
I'm just showing you that everyone in the government knew exactly where Trudeau was long in advance, and they sent the support staff.
A prime minister does not travel light.
Security, logistics, key personal staff, support staff, they all know, they all knew he was lying about where he was.
And they all went along with the lie until someone spotted the liar on the beach.
Huh?
I guess Trudeau isn't so worried about misinformation and disinformation, is he?
And of course, when Trudeau uses those words, he really just means anyone who has a different opinion on him.
And we already know he thinks they're evil.
When Trudeau says misinformation, he just means people who disagree with him.
But in this case, it wasn't a matter of opinion, was it?
Trudeau was not in Ottawa.
He was not in private meetings.
He was surfing on the beach while misleading Canadians about his presence so he could skip the Truth and Reconciliation Day.
After all, he didn't need to do that, go to that.
CBC Bonuses Amid Pandemic00:11:44
He's very truthful and very reconciled.
I mean, really, wasn't this just a learning opportunity for you, the little people?
What a scoundrel he is.
What a wicked liar.
Stay with us for more.
Well, access to information requests are an important tool for journalists, at least those who aren't in the media party, to find out what's really going on.
Look, I just don't think there's a lot of real journalism going on in Canada anymore.
The media party, with some notable exceptions, asks softballs, process questions.
I want to give credit to the Globe and Mail because they are strong on the China file.
Steve Chase and Bob Fife have done excellent work in the last week or so.
We haven't had a chance to really dig into it.
But first, with the Chinese influence in the last election to get freedom and democracy-oriented candidates replaced by in Canada, replaced by pro-Communist Party candidates.
And then the latest story that there are Chinese listing devices that were discovered in Canada's Arctic.
I think Bob Fife and Steve Chase deserve credit for that, and the Globe and Mail does too.
But I've just about gone through the whole list of journalists who are willing to do genuine challenges to the governing party.
And that's why it's so important that independent groups like Rebel News, but like our next guest, are out there asking questions not about, you know, the latest process question or just colorful details about what's going on in Parliament, but substantive questions about where's our money going and how's the country being run.
And I refer to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and their boss, Franco Terrazano, who made an access to information request that I know no journalist would have asked about.
And had a journalist asked this question, they would have been ignored.
I'm talking about asking how many CBC staff make $100,000 or more a year.
That's a great question, isn't it?
Well, the man who asked that question and got the answer is our guest now, Franco Terrazano, joins us via Skype Franco.
Great to see you.
Great question, by the way.
I think there would be a couple of MPs who would ask that question, maybe some independent journalists, but for sure you're not going to see a CBC journalist ask that kind of question.
They're in a conflict of interest, aren't they?
Yeah, well, why would they want to talk about it?
Hey, Ezra.
But we want to talk about it because we know it matters for taxpayers.
I mean, after all, the CBC is taking more than a billion dollars every year from taxpayers.
Okay.
So let me reveal just how many CBC staffers there are with six-figure salaries plus in 2021, 949 CBC employees took home at least more than $100,000 in an annual salary, Ezra.
949 CBC staffers.
That's incredible.
Now, I know a little bit of something about the media business, not just from my experience at Rebel News, but before that at Sun News Network.
I worked before that at the Sun Newspapers, Western Standard, and I know enough journalists to know that $100,000 is the absolute high end.
You know, a very senior journalist, a 30-year journalist at a leading newspaper might make six figures in the private sector.
It is extraordinarily rare.
And I should tell you, Franco, that the young journalists coming right out of J school, a lot of internships are unpaid, if you can believe it.
And a lot of entry-level journalists are making $40,000 a year, maybe.
So the idea that you've got nearly 1,000 journalists making $100,000.
Now, they're not all journalists.
There's lots of bureaucrats at the CBC too, is absolutely stunning.
I saw your numbers.
I saw your research.
And I couldn't help but notice, Franco, that the number is up 30% since the pandemic.
And it's up 116% since Trudeau took office.
What I'm saying is these may be tough times for Canadians, certainly tough times for journalists, though I don't really shed a tear.
But at the CBC, these are the boom years, the golden years.
It's never been better than it is right now to work as a government journalist, Franco.
And you know what?
That's what's so crazy, right?
I mean, just for starters, 949 CBC staffers in 2021 with a six-figure salary, okay?
But let's look at how the numbers have ballooned.
Since Trudeau came to power, since he took the big seat, the prime minister's chair, we have seen the number of CBC staffers increase every single year since the Trudeau government took over and has doubled since 2015.
And I'm glad you brought up the pandemic because it's really eye-popping there too.
There are now 220 more CBC staffers who make more than $100,000 a year in salary alone since the beginning of the pandemic, an extra 220 since the onset of COVID-19.
Now, you bring up some really interesting points here, right?
Because as the CBC, as it is booming with more taxpayers' money, well, what's happening to their competitors in the private sector or independent media?
Well, you hear many stories quite often of newsrooms being cut to the bone.
But an even better comparison is, well, what's happening to the taxpayers who are footing these bills, especially during the pandemic, when so many people took pay cuts in the private sector, when so many people lost their job or their business to know that they are paying more than a billion dollars a year to the CBC, right?
And then you see these numbers, startling numbers, where there's 949 CBC staffers who would be on the sunshine list.
Franco, I want to tell you one more thing.
I want to tell you about the psychology of what's going on.
First of all, the CBC is larger than all the rest of the news journalists combined in the country.
So the CBC, it's not just a player.
It is the dominant player.
It's the sumo wrestler in the room.
And so they are all by nature grateful to be making six figures.
But there's a secondary effect.
You just mentioned how it's difficult in the rest of the economy, including in other media companies.
Post Media, the largest private sector media company, even though they're on the government teat, they are still laying off.
All the private media are laying off.
So put yourself in the mindset for a second, Franco.
You're working for the Toronto Star.
You're working for the Globe and Mail.
You're working for the Sun, whatever your local newspaper is, and you're maybe making 50 grand a year.
And you're thinking, not only am I not making a lot of money, but I might well get laid off.
The only place that I can have a secure future is being a government journalist at the CBC.
So I'm going to start my CBC-style journalism now at the Regina Leader Post, at the Saskatoon Star Phoenix, at the Calgary Herald, at the Eminence Journal, at the Vancouver Sun.
I want to start putting together a portfolio of pro-government journalism now so that when I'm laid off here at my private newspaper, I can get a gig with the CBC, who will be the last man standing.
Franco, it's not just that they're so well paid.
It's that every other journalist in the country is thinking, geez, if I want to stay in the industry, I'm going to have to look at moving over there.
So in that way, I put it to you, the CBC actually shapes the coverage of the private media in Canada, too.
Well, that's really interesting, Ezra.
And I think we can agree for sure that there is no shortage of reasons to defund the CBC.
Isn't that right?
But hey, I got another access to information request that will make your viewers' blood boil even more.
And it's this, okay?
During the pandemic years, the CBC handed out $51 million in bonuses and pay raises to its employees.
You hear that?
$51 million in bonuses and raises to the CBC's employees during the pandemic.
So, Ezra, if they have all this cash just lying around where they can hand out millions and millions of dollars in bonuses and raises during a pandemic, I'm pretty sure they don't need to be taking all this cash from taxpayers.
And oh, by the way, the recent fiscal update from the Trudeau government gave the CBC another $42 million to recover from the pandemic after they just handed out $51 million in bonuses and raises.
Does that make sense to you?
No, it doesn't.
And by the way.
The pandemic and the lockdowns, which were atrocious on the civil liberties side and atrocious on the public health side, but they were a benefit to one thing, people who serve you when you're locked in your house.
So Netflix and Disney Plus and all these companies boomed during the lockdown.
In fact, now that the lockdowns are over, these companies are not meeting their same earnings targets.
But during 2020, 2021, 2022, that was the golden age for Amazon, for anything internet-ish, anything downloadable-ish.
And the CBC should have been making money and sending it back to the taxpayer.
But not only were they not making money, they were handing out bonuses like crazy.
And I understand they actually shut down some of their TV broadcasts during the pandemic just because.
So only the CBC would waste a like.
How do you lose money when every one of your citizens is locked in their home and forced to watch TV all day?
The CBC will find a way and then they'll ask for a bigger bailout and then they'll ask for a raise.
It's crazy time, Franco.
It's unbelievable.
Hey, there's only one other industry that you forgot to mention that was booming during the pandemic, the government.
The industry that is the government was booming, right?
While the constituents, the people they're supposed to work for, just felt so much pain, whether it was job losses or even business losses.
Let's not forget that the government at large was taking pay raises, bonuses to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, all paid for by the taxpayer that has been taking it on the chin, whether it's through these different types of regulations or the restrictions or just the tax increases that we've seen.
You know, I'll never forget the fact that Destination Canada, another crown corporation, which is supposed to promote Canadian tourism abroad, while people were illegally or legally prevented from coming into Canada while the restaurant industry was shut down, when the tourism industry was shut down, Destination Canada still handed out bonuses and raises to its employees.
Unbelievable.
So frustrating now that I'm thinking about that.
You know, I list, I often list institutions that failed us during the lockdowns.
Chambers Of Commerce Silence00:03:55
I mention the media.
I mentioned the opposition parties.
I mentioned so many groups, but you're reminding me of the chambers of commerce, like the Canadian Food and Restaurant Association, all the retail associations.
They were silent as their members were slaughtered by these government lockdowns.
I'm reminded of that painful fact.
Hey, let me throw one more thing at you because it, and I don't know if it was your access to information or some other way this came to light.
But a few years ago, some viewers might recall that the president of the CBC was named Hubert Lacroix.
And he got a huge six-figure salary as the, but he's no longer the president.
Catherine Tate is.
Bizarrely, so weirdly, Justin Trudeau personally requested that Hubert Lacroix's salary retroactively be given a $40,000 raise.
I don't know if you saw that story in the news today.
I haven't.
No, I don't have that.
That's crazy.
How do you even do that?
He's gone.
He no longer works for the CBC.
He is retired.
They have a new president.
But according to cabinet records, Trudeau himself, or how do you do that?
Can I get a raise at my last job, Franco?
Only the CBC and Trudeau, but that sends a message, doesn't it?
It says, hey, journalists, Justin Trudeau will take good care of you, so you better take good care of him.
That's a crazy, crazy story.
Well, I'm so proud of the work you're doing.
And as I started this segment, I said there's very few independent-minded, skeptical, curious, accountability-oriented people in the country.
Very few journalists.
And I'm so glad you guys did this access to information requests.
Tell our viewers where the best place to go is to get the latest on the Taxpayers Federation.
Hey, well, thanks so much for having us on today to talk about this.
Please check out taxpayer.com.
Check out our newsroom.
Check out our petition.
And again, just thanks so much for letting us come on to talk on the show today.
Well, it's our pleasure, and you're doing great work.
And folks, if you're not already a supporter of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, you really got to be for the same reason that Rebel needs your support.
We don't take government money and neither do they.
And that is 100% why they are able to speak truth to power.
So go to taxpayer.com and become a supporter.
I mean, you can count on one hand the number of independent groups like the Taxpayers Federation who hold the government to account.
And I tell you, if we had 100 guys like Franco Terrazano in this country, we would be free.
If we had 10 guys, we'd have a fighting chance.
So go to taxpayer.com.
I know most of our viewers already are supporters, Frankie Oba.
You're doing a great job.
And thanks for being with us today.
Thank you, Ezra.
All right.
Stay with us, folks.
your letters to me next.
Your letters to me.
Joe B. says, Ezra, thanks for the great interview with Andrew Lawton.
I think he is one of the most intelligent and perceptive people you have as a conservative voice.
You are the other one.
Andrew is spot on.
You two guys are among the best in our country for honest news.
I truly appreciate both of you.
Hey, thanks very much.
I really appreciate the compliments.
And I share your feelings about Andrew.
And you know what?
He's also a genuinely nice guy, I got to tell you, hardworking guy, smart guy, very strong work ethic.
And I enjoy seeing him occasionally, even around the world.
When you're far away, like we went to the World Economic Forum in Davos, you get a little lonely.
You know, I got a family here in Canada, so to be away for a week, I sort of miss them.
Obviously, it's not the same to be with a friend than with family, but it sure was nice to be with other Canadian conservatives.
We met up with him at the World Economic Forum, so he really is one of my favorite guys, and I share your thoughts about him completely.
So thank you for that kind letter.
Energy Scarcity and Cities00:02:14
Marita P says, Ezra, please just think about this.
You know about the mega cities World Economic Forum is planning, e.g. Holland, I think it is.
Farmers are protesting the confiscation of their farmland.
So it has been a fight.
But consider an easier approach, perhaps.
Toxic land, people begging government assistance, eventual government buyout.
What better plan for a mega-city soft approach, perhaps?
Not a conspiracy theory, just thinking, always interesting, look below the surface.
Thanks for taking the time to read.
I, you know, okay, I hear your interesting ideas there, but I don't think I'm convinced that the war on farmers is about creating a mega city.
I don't think so.
I think it is about the same thing that the war on energy is, the war on fossil fuels, the just transition off of energy.
It is to make energy expensive and scarce and to create energy poverty.
And you might be thinking, why on earth would anyone do that?
to make renewables, solar, wind, other schemes like that, suddenly economically palatable by comparison, and to line the pockets of those who are in those industries and to make it tough for life on earth.
I mean, all these people are depopulationists.
Same thing with food.
Make food scarce, expensive.
Make, you know, I mean, the price of eggs these days, the price of meat these days, drive them up to make life harder so the ordinary person has to reduce their life, lives in energy poverty and food poverty.
And by contrast, you know, beyond meat, burgers, and synthetic meat and crickets and insects become more affordable by comparison.
And maybe if you're too poor to buy eggs and meat, maybe you'll eat the crickets.
You'll eat the insects.
I don't think it's about making bigger cities.
I think it's about making energy and food expensive and scarce.
And I think that that's an atrocious anti-human agenda.
Should the West Profit?00:04:39
Matthias W says, hi, Ezra, I'm having difficulties understanding two things from your Ukraine discussion.
What is wrong with pulling Western commerce out of Russia and leaving China to fill the void?
Isn't it better not to profit from the evil of a government?
Should the West profit in Russia while it is attacking Ukraine?
Otherwise, how can you criticize the military corporations from wanting to profit from a war?
Or George Soros from choosing to participate in the confiscation of Hungarian Jewish property?
And what is wrong with Ukraine wanting to recapture all of its territory pre-2014?
Didn't Israel capture territory lost by its attackers in the 50s and 60s?
I can understand not wanting to escalate the war by launching an attack deep into Russia.
That should be avoided.
Okay, interesting letter.
Thank you for that.
And I would answer two points of it.
The first is, you know, sanctions are often designed to hurt the government.
In many cases, they wind up hurting ordinary people.
But in this case, all that's happened is you have, you know, Chinese automakers instead of Ford, Chrysler, other Western automakers.
You have Huawei phones instead of Apple or Android phones.
So I don't know if you've accomplished anything economically.
I don't think you've punished anyone.
I think you have just given China a huge market and fused those two countries together.
I think there's a big moral difference between selling a Big Mac or a Starbucks coffee or an Apple phone to a citizen in Moscow versus selling a missile or a bomb to be shot one side or the other, by the way.
But my main point yesterday was Russia and China are forming an alliance again, which is something that the West fought very hard to break.
Now, the second point you made was about reclaiming Crimea or other parts of Ukraine that Russia seized eight or so years ago.
And the thing is, that's just not going to happen in my admittedly amateur layman's view because Russia has nuclear weapons.
That's the point here, is that you're not fighting in Yemen or Rwanda or even Vietnam.
At the end of the day, if the bad guy is on the edge of defeat, he may well push that button.
I mean, the total war and total unconditional surrender of the Axis powers in World War II was precisely because they didn't have nukes.
Well, Russia does.
And I'm not sure, by the way, that the West can beat Russia in a conventional war in Ukraine.
Maybe it can, but I'm not sure about that.
You saw Jan Stoltenberg saying NATO's running out of ammunition.
But if you were actually to break into Crimea, which has been formally and legally under Russia's parliament annexed into Russia and try and liberate that and recapture that by Ukraine, Russia would most likely resort to unconventional weapons.
And my point is, is that worth World War III?
In whose possible calculations is that worth a nuclear confrontation?
And that last video I played yesterday of Claire Daly, she's a socialist from Ireland.
I can't think of someone in the world I would have less in common with.
But my God, I'm glad some human somewhere, some politician somewhere is saying, can we please define what a victory is besides burning up $100 billion, grinding Ukraine into powder, and risking nuclear war?
What exactly is a victory?
I saw our own Melanie Jolie, perhaps the least accomplished, least wise foreign minister in Canadian history, saying that they're going to fight for Ukrainian victory no matter what.
Can I please ask what that victory looks like?
I don't think Trudeau knows, and I don't think Biden knows.
And yeah, I don't want to go on much longer about Ukraine, but I think things are very troubling.
And the closer union between Russia and China is something that I think will haunt the West for decades.
And for what?
On that terrible note, let me say goodbye to you.
I hope you enjoyed our chat with my favorite guy, Franco Terrazano.
And wow, to see Trudeau lying in real time and his staff working with, there must have been 100 different people on those different documents who were aware of Trudeau's lies and worked with them to cover up his lies.