Sheila Gunn Reid slams Canada’s Liberals for framing carbon tax skeptics as "arsonists" amid wildfires, despite 61% of Canadians—including 54% of young people—rejecting higher climate taxes. Ipsos polling (Aug 1–4, 2023) shows strong support for oil/gas exports and private energy solutions, yet Liberal policies like net-zero electricity by 2035 (requiring 150+ new plants) and pipeline opposition stifle growth, leaving Canada the slowest-growing industrialized nation by 2040. Gunn Reid contrasts their virtue signaling with Norway’s pragmatic oil-funded green initiatives, calling the Liberals "incompetent" after 55 years in politics while criticizing Premier Kenney’s COVID hypocrisy—like vaccine passports and private gatherings—undermining trust in conservative leadership. [Automatically generated summary]
The North is burning and the mainstream media and the Liberals, but I repeat myself, are taking this terrible opportunity to push their climate religiosity to blame the fires on those who aren't in charge and who aren't making any policies.
And a new poll shows it is going to blow up beautifully in the liberals' faces.
And I can't wait.
It's August 24th, 2023.
I'm Sheila Gunnry, but you're watching the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Former environment minister Catherine McKenna is being slightly unhinged again.
I mean, it's nothing new.
It's just been a while since she's done it quite publicly.
She just called anyone who opposes carbon taxes arsonists.
Look at this bizarre tweet.
Conservative politicians want to fight about a price on carbon pollution.
You want to make it free to pollute while Canadians pay with their lives threatened, homes destroyed, and their communities obliterated.
So what are you going to do?
You are the arsonists.
Real people are being charged with arson in relation to forest fires in this country.
But Catherine McKenna is writing their defense arguments for them.
You see, I'm the problem if I drive an SUV just a little bit too much, and you're the problem if you reject carbon taxes as a means by which to change the weather.
You're the arsonist, but the fire bugs?
Not so much.
And BC, by the way, they've had a carbon tax for over a decade, imposed in 2008, actually.
So when are the fire suppression benefits going to kick in for that thing?
And McKenna, she brought in one of her own carbon taxes not all that long ago.
Well, five years ago in 2018, when she was Trudeau's constantly embarrassing gaffe prone environment minister that I dubbed climate Barbie, much to her horror.
And again, I ask, when are the tithes to McKenna's Church of Climate Change going to satiate an angry weather god so that he stops boiling us alive or burning our villages?
There's no avoiding it.
We must address climate change now to make life in Canada healthier in the future.
Extreme weather is already making us less safe.
Governments must act.
We have to cut pollution and reduce the risk.
One of the most effective climate change solutions is to use more clean electricity to power our lives.
Today, more and more Canadians are using electric vehicles and heat pumps for heating and cooling.
Businesses are switching too, with everyone from steel makers to delivery vehicles going electric.
When we generate our electricity using clean sources like hydro, wind and solar, we're on track to real climate solutions.
In Canada, almost 85% of our electricity already comes from clean generation.
We can build on this success, but that means we need to invest in growing the electricity system.
As demand for electricity grows, we have to make sure supply remains affordable, reliable.
And just how many people, how many Canadians, cash-strapped, struggling to get by Canadians, did Catherine McKenna just call arsonists because they don't think taxes change the weather?
Oh, about 60% of Canadians, at least according to some very recent polling released by Ipsos on behalf of the Montreal Economic Institute.
Now, to be fair, the Montreal Economic Institute, they're a bunch of free market advocates, but let's not confuse Ipsos for a bunch of conservatives, okay?
They have an entire page dedicated to their social credit ESG score.
They're not exactly a bunch of hard blue Tories over there.
But let me show you these poll results because they're really bad for the liberals and good for common sense.
People, even in deep liberal strongholds and traditional left-leaning or liberal voters, like young people, well, they are all being mugged by the reality of Trudeau's inflationary policies, including his carbon taxes and his war on oil and gas.
Let's get into it.
Canada and Quebec's energy needs on behalf of the Montreal Economic Institute.
A sample of 1,163 Canadian residents age 18 years and over with an oversample of 408 residents in Quebec was interviewed between the 1st and 4th of August, 2023.
Let's get into some of the results here.
Half, 51% of Quebecers are in favor of extracting Quebec's own oil resources, while 3 in 10, 30% believe the province should continue to import 100% of the oil it needs.
What I find here is fascinating, but not just in this result, but in results throughout this polling data.
Young people, traditional liberal voters, people who are traditionally against fracking and things like that, are actually in support of Quebec developing its own oil resources.
57%.
Actually, it was the young people who are the most in favor, perhaps because they want those well-paying jobs.
Let's keep going.
Over 6 in 10, actually 63% of Canadians, are in favor of increasing incentive measures for carbon sequestration to be equivalent to those offered by the American government, a four-point increase compared to 2022.
Now, I don't even think that people are in favor of carbon sequestration here.
Carbon sequestration, or taking the carbon from the atmosphere and just sort of hiding it in the ground till they figure out what to do with it.
I don't think they're in favor of that.
They are in favor of any alternative that doesn't require Canadians to pay extra money for their carbon emissions because they can't pay any extra money for their carbon emissions.
And we'll get to that polling data further in this video.
And I'll show you.
We're Canadians saying we just can't pay any more money, but I don't think they're in favor of carbon sequestration.
I think they're in favor of saying anything, anything please, but taxing me more.
Let's keep going.
Almost eight in 10 or 78% of Quebecers prefer to import oil from Western Canada, consistent with last year.
This warms my heart, but also makes me sad simultaneously because Justin Trudeau wants us all divided.
He wants us Albertans to think that we are butting heads all the time with everyday Quebecers, and I don't believe we are.
We are butting heads with politicians in Quebec, and we are butting heads with the federal government who wants us to believe that Quebecers have a certain sentiment about us and our oil that they just don't have.
Quebecers want oil from Alberta.
Albertans want to give it to them.
The only thing dividing us is the federal government and their anti-oil policies.
And again, it's younger people, traditional liberal or left-leaning voters.
72% of them want oil from Western Canada.
That's a devastating number for Justin Trudeau and his liberals who continue to block pipelines from Western Canada.
This next polling data demonstrates the wholesale adoption of the concept of ethical oil as an alternative to conflict oil across the world.
In light of the war in Ukraine, six in 10, 63% of Canadians believe their province should extract its own natural gas in order to export some to Europe and reduce its dependency on Russian gas.
So this just isn't about developing our own resources for us.
We see our own resources as a vehicle for freedom.
And I think that is absolutely terrific.
Now, this next number.
These are Catherine McKenna's arsonists.
Those people she accused of being responsible for the fires, even though her friends are still in charge in government, both in BC where the fires are, but also in Ottawa, making climate policy since 2015.
Somehow the people with no power are the ones responsible for the policies of the current government.
Okay, but anyway, I want to show you just how many people she accused of wholesale arson.
Six in 10 Canadians, 61%, can't or don't want to pay more in taxes to fight climate change.
61%.
And it's not that they just don't want to.
They're saying they can't.
They don't have any money left to pay the climate tithe to Catherine McKenna's cult of climate change.
They just don't have the money left.
And again, the young people.
Oh, the young people.
This is such a devastating number for the Liberals.
Over half of young people polled, ages 18 to 34, 54% have gotten off the carbon tax crazy train.
54% say they don't want to or simply can't pay any more money for no benefit with result to climate change.
Six in 10 or 62% of Quebecers believe that independent private producers should be allowed to sell electricity directly to companies to complement Hydro-Quebec's offer.
That's an interesting one.
It indicates a strong adoption of the free market, which everybody loves.
Well, not everybody, but me.
Two-thirds, or 67% of Canadians are in favor of developing new oil and gas infrastructure leading to ports in British Columbia or eastern Canada in order to allow these Canadian resources to reach new markets in Europe and Asia.
This is wholesale adoption of pipelines in all directions to export Canadian oil.
And yet, one of the Liberals' flagship policies is a ban on tankers and a ban on pipelines.
This is big, big trouble for the liberals.
And again, look at these numbers from the young people.
68% of young people ages 18 to 34 want to build those pipelines in all directions.
It's a bold strategy for the Liberals as they plummet in the polls to attack Canadian resources when so many Canadians, as evidenced in these poll results, want to see fossil fuels developed and then exported, not only used by Canadians for Canadians, but then exported around the world as a vehicle to combating tyranny.
And yet, our current environment minister, Stephen Gilbo, he's working with the tyrants in China on climate policies.
More on that with Post Media's Lorne Gunter up after the break.
Well, folks, checking the traffic docket, surely some mistake here.
Christia Freeland's Car Conundrum00:11:27
I'm looking at a certain Christia Freeland who proclaims that she gets around by either walking or cycling or taking public transit.
So what was the deputy prime minister doing in Alberta the other day, cruising down the highway in a fossil fuel vehicle doing 142 kilometers in a 100 zone?
Yes, what indeed.
And who better to address this than our friend Lauren Gunter, who just wrote a column entitled, Cruising Christia, just another example of liberal green hypocrisy.
Well, Lauren, thank you so much for joining me here on the Ezra Levant Show.
How you doing?
I'm doing well.
And you?
I'm doing great.
Well, Lauren, does it surprise you, does it surprise anyone that what the liberals say and what they do are two alien things.
They're all about the green agenda, fighting climate change, reducing the carbon footprint.
And forget about Christia Freeland.
Lauren, I've gone to so many pressers where Prime Minister Trudeau shows up, typically eight vehicles, typically Chevy Suburbans and Ford expeditions that also fuel eight-cylinder vehicles.
And whether it's summer for the air conditioning or winter for the heat, they keep those vehicles idling.
You would think if they're professing this green agenda, they would at least get their butts behind, oh, I don't know, an EV or at least a plug-in hybrid, but no, one law for thee and one law for me.
What do you say, my friend?
I know that's that's absolutely what's happening.
And, you know, that was confirmed in another way on the EV side.
About six months ago, Blacklock's reporter had gone through all of the, had done a bunch of access to information, gone through all of the usage logs at the EV plug-ins at Environment Canada buildings across the country.
And most places were going three to six months without a single electric vehicle plugged in to recharge at Environment Canada buildings.
So, I mean, it's all for show.
That's the problem with this government.
It's woke, but it's all about virtue signaling.
They don't care really about doing anything substantial.
It's all about how do we look?
How do we feel about ourselves in these important issues?
And how do others feel about, how do our voters feel about us?
We don't care whether we're crashing the economy.
We don't care whether we're actually reducing emissions and we're not, really.
We just care that we are sending the right signals out to people so that they know we're concerned.
We care.
And that's all there is.
This is with Freeland is the same thing.
So, you know, here she is.
I suggested today in my column that what's missing here with Freeland is not that she was increasing her carbon footprint by driving fat.
The faster you drive, the higher your carbon footprint, the bigger it is.
That's not it.
And I know she had boasted a lot in PEI about a month ago about how I only live 300 meters from a subway in Toronto.
My father is so surprised I don't own a vehicle.
What I wanted one of those reporters in PEI to ask her was, okay, you don't own a vehicle, but is your husband?
And do you drive that?
You know, because it used to be common for families to have one vehicle.
It was the family car.
Do the Freelands have a family car?
I bet you they do.
And I bet you that she says that she walks 300 meters to the subway.
But we know also that she uses a government executive car and a driver an awful lot.
So you and I don't have that luxury.
If we wanted to give up our vehicles, we would really have to change our lifestyles.
She gives up her vehicle, and there really isn't a change.
She's just allowed to boast that she doesn't have a vehicle.
So yeah, it's exactly hypocrisy.
But she put me in mind of a couple of Western provincial cabinet ministers of the past, a guy in BC in the 50s who was named Fly and Phil Galarty.
He was the first highways minister in BC, and he used to get stopped all the time by the Mounties or by local police forces for speeding.
And he would always tell him, well, you know what?
I'm the highways minister.
We've been paving a lot of roads here.
I'm just out checking to see how the pavement is, if it's any good.
But he got his nickname because he also had a private pilot's license.
And one time, a Mountie stopped him and he showed the Mountie his pilot's license.
And the Mountie was a little puzzled, apparently, but he said, Look, I'm not driving too fast.
I'm just flying too low.
And so he became known as Fly and Phil Galarty.
And in Alberta, we had a cabinet minister in the 80s back in the Getty government who was a doctor in Hinton.
And he would rush into Edmonton for sessions all the time.
And he got so he got stopped so many times, he got known as Speedy Reed.
So I think we have to call her Christia Freeland Cruising Christia or Fast and Furious Freeland or something like that.
She has to have a nickname that goes with this driving record.
Oh, I like the alliteration there with Fast and Furious Freeland.
That's a good one, Lauren.
But you know, something you said earlier, I think it's an example of how these liberals take great license when it comes to telling the truth.
You said she doesn't actually own a car, but her husband evidently owns a car.
That reminds me of John Kerry denying he had a private jet.
It's his wife that owns the private jet.
I don't know if Christia Freeland's husband has a car, but my question, as a reporter standing in that scrum, my question would have been: okay, you don't own a car, but does your husband own one?
And do you ever drive it?
Because that makes it puts a whole different perspective on all of this.
She can claim that she's this climate crusader, this monastic figure on the green front, but she isn't really.
And that's what bothers me most about her.
I mean, remember back in last November, she said, oh, you know, I was looking through my monthly credit card bill.
I know it's hard for Canadians to balance their budgets, but I noticed we were using the Disney streaming service still.
And so I said to the kids, Hey, you're getting older.
Do you really watch Disney anymore?
She had no clue what is on the Disney platform.
Disney platform now is as big as the Netflix platform.
It has Mar-Val, it has National Geographic, it has the Fox, the whole Fox studio archive of movie.
It has hundreds and thousands of movies.
So it is as big on viewership now as Netflix is.
But to her, it was just Mickey Mouse and Little Mermaid or something.
And she was proving how in touch she is with the ordinary Canadian by saying, oh, yes, well, you kids are too old for that now.
You don't watch that.
This is how we can balance our, but, you know, that sort of fake every man, every woman play that she does all the time, it just grates with me.
I don't care she speaks.
I speak.
Would be known, as you know, fast and furious, Lauren.
Uh I, because I do drive with a heavy foot but uh, but for you know Lauren, but I don't pretend to be a green crusader, I don't.
I don't say I don't own a vehicle, I don't, I let, I like to let my suv on a cold day, I like to let my suv idle in the driveway because maybe it'll warm the atmosphere a bit and the temperature will go up.
It won't be minus 35 anymore.
So uh, you know Lauren, i'm an auto aficionado.
If I had my way, we'd have the German autobahn system.
I mean, one of the few good things Doug Ford did was raise the speed limit in certain Ontario highways uh, in the last couple years, to 110 uh, kilometers an hour.
But you know, i'm so happy.
You picked up on the idiocy of Christia Freeland talking about the Disney Plus subscription, as you rightly said.
Um, a lot of the catalog that Disney owns right now it's adult entertainment.
I mean, you know, you know, it's not just Mickey Mouse cartoons.
The mainstream media seem to give her a pass.
But and I could never prove this Lauren, but I would bet the ranch she never canceled that subscription.
I bet you that is still coming in.
I wish there was a way to prove or disprove that, but I got to ask you the nitty-gritty about this speeding ticket in Wild Star Wars, is the whole Star Wars category correct on Disney?
So you know, i've got a 28 year old son who loves Star Wars.
We have Disney plus.
I'm not getting rid of it just because he doesn't watch uh, Donald Duck anymore, you know, because he's watching Star Wars.
Yeah um, she takes liberty, she does uh, as Yoda might say, with the truth um, but Lauren I um, what are in the nitty-gritty perspective of that speeding ticket?
142 kilometers an hour?
I don't know the um, the Provincial Highway Traffic Act in Alberta, like I do in Ontario.
I can tell you, if that was on an Ontario highway, if she was just going eight kilometers an hour more, that would be classified as stunt driving.
She would have the car impounded.
A serious fine, I think it might be ten thousand dollars uh, huge demerit points.
But I guess she I don't know if that exists in Alberta, but but there is demerit points to this and, and here's the question, evidently she's already paid the fine.
Did she pay it?
Or did the taxpayer pay it?
I, I don't know that she was doing 132 uh in a one.
They bumped it down, didn't they?
10 kilometers?
No, no it there's.
There was some confusion about because part of that highway the speed limit's 110, part of oh, I see okay, she was on the section that was on 100, but she was 32k over in Alberta.
If you are 51k or more over the limit it's a court appearance.
It's impoundment of your vehicle and a court appearance.
So she was getting fairly close to um uh, to having to go to court over this.
But the thing, if it is I I don't know whether we paid for her fine or she did.
She's now been rightly embarrassed.
She walked it back This morning.
She said she's so sorry for what she did.
She's not sorry for what she did.
She had to go somewhere in a hurry.
It happens.
Like, I make a practice in Alberta of looking for oil field service trucks when I'm out on the highway because those guys don't get paid if they aren't on site.
And so lots of times in a 100K zone, they're hitting 145, 150.
I get in right behind them.
They're going to take the ticket.
I'm happy.
I will admit to that.
So that's amazing.
I can't be a hypocrite and say, Christian, you shouldn't have been driving that fast.
High Taxes, Crippling Regulations00:09:01
It's very dangerous here.
You know, we had good highways.
It was great conditions on the weekend.
It was clear.
There's no smoke.
It was sunny.
It was dry.
Go ahead.
You know, somewhere to go.
So I'm with you, Lauren.
And it's not even a safety issue.
The engineers will tell you that these highways are designed for far greater speeds than the speed limit indicates.
But, you know, speaking of car travel and fuel costs and what have you, what I really found offensive was just a couple of days ago during the retreat in Prince Edward Island, I was listening on radio to the media scrum of Miss Freeland, and there were some good, valid questions being asked.
One journalist said PEI is suffering right now.
Their biggest industry is tourism.
And because of the cost of gasoline, people that from other Atlantic Canadian provinces that would come to PEI, they can't afford to, as well as other parts of Canada, for that matter.
I guess the, you know, the innuendo being, what about taking off those carbon taxes and other revenue creating tools in a liter of gasoline?
And her answer, Lauren, and I just found it downright offensive, was we believe in Prince Edward Island.
We believe in Prince Edward Island tourism.
What the hell kind of answer is that?
Yeah.
And you know what their response is going to be?
It's going to be to give more money to promote tourism in Prince Edward Island, not to make tourism more affordable so people will go on their own, which they would do if it was cheaper to live in Canada.
Their point will be they'll find $123 million to add to tourism PEI's budget so they can advertise more widely so that people who aren't paying carbon taxes can fly to Prince Edward Island, you know, from Europe or wherever they are.
But, you know, it's interesting.
The Fraser Institute has a study out this morning, excuse me, that shows of the 141 major metropolitan areas in North America, the highest, the Canadian city with the highest employment income was Ottawa.
And it's only at 53 out of 141.
Edmonton is second at 54, and Calgary is at 73.
Now, the two thing, the things that those top two Canadian cities have in common is big government, big provincial government, big federal government.
And governments pay exceedingly well.
Of course, as we all know, that the average government employee now makes far more than his or her private sector counterpart.
That's why the two highest paid cities in Canada are big government cities.
But what it tells me too is even there, we're in the middle of the pack.
We don't even come close to most of the major American cities.
And Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver are all in the bottom 10%, the bottom 10%.
And that's because we have huge government, high taxes, crippling regulations.
We just have stifled economic growth in this country to such a degree that we are now projected to be the slowest growing industrialized country in the world.
Out of 38 industrialized countries, between now and 2040, we will probably have the slowest growth.
And that's all because this government, A, sends the wrong signals that it doesn't like resource development, it doesn't like industrial development.
And B, all of its policies add cost.
to your life, my life, to business decision making.
Everything adds more cost.
And so international investors are now just walking away from it.
And Lauren, does it come as any surprise?
Because to your point, in the last several months, we've seen the leaders of Germany, of Japan coming cap in hand, begging to buy liquefied natural gas from Canada, one third of a trillion dollars worth for each country.
And Prime Minister Blackface says there's no business case.
That's a line of idiocy right up there with the budget will balance itself.
How do you connect the dots there, Lauren?
You know what there's no business case for.
There's no business case for wind or solar energy.
There's no business case for EVs.
So, you know, this government likes to point, and directly to your point about exporting liquid natural gas, this government likes to point to Norway as an example for electric vehicles.
Norway put a lot of money into its charging grid.
You can now drive in the middle of nowhere in Norway and there's a class three charger so that you don't have to go more than 50K without a charging state.
They put a lot of money into subsidizing people's purchases of EVs.
They have a huge EV network now.
And this government says, oh, look, see, see, see, we need to do that too.
Oh, it's so marvelous and wonderful.
You know how the Norwegians pay for that?
By selling more oil to other countries and then taking credit because their oil is fairly clean.
It's cleaner relative to a lot of the other, like burning coal to make electricity.
They sell their oil to coal-burning countries and take credit for the savings on emissions.
Our government in Canada will not do that.
There's such boy scouts on this that they refuse.
So if we were to sell liquid natural gas to China, which is building in the process of building 300 additional coal-fired power plants right now, 300, more than the rest of the world combined.
If we were to sell LNG to China, we wouldn't take the credit for having stopped the construction of coal-fired power plants.
I mean, that's how asinine they are.
But the Norwegians do exactly the same thing.
And then they take the credit for the emissions they saved and the money that they got from selling the oil and they pay for their EVs.
We're trying to do way more than the Norwegians on the environmental front without anywhere near the money because we don't want to sell oil or natural gas.
It's inexplicable, Lauren.
I think we might be the only energy producing nation on the planet that has an anti-energy marketing scheme.
It's absolutely baffling.
But even that example, throwing, you know, looking at Norway, look in the middle of nowhere, there's a charging station.
The point is, we're the second biggest country in the world.
There's a lot more nowhere in Canada.
So, I mean, the idea of putting these charging stations in the middle of nowhere is like, I mean, I'm just thinking of what the investment would be.
And right now, the cupboard is bare, isn't it, Lauren?
Absolutely.
It absolutely is.
You know, they're talking now about this clean electricity regulation.
It will be net zero electric grid by 2035.
The latest estimate from their friends in the environmental movement is that we would have to build the equivalent of another 150 generating stations in Canada powered by wind, solar, bug farts, whatever, you know, whatever thing it is that they're going to use.
And we have to build it 150.
There are about 150 to 200 now.
We'd have to double our capacity at least to get to this net zero.
Do you see any of these places being built?
Do you see any nuclear power plants being discussed for regulatory approval?
No.
So this gets back to my original point about how woke they are, but it's all just virtue signaling.
They bring in these regulations that scare off investors.
People are not coming to Canada now to invest in a natural gas plant because they're afraid the government's going to shut them all down.
But then they don't actually do anything concrete on the other side to live up to their commitments.
And so we're stuck in no man's land where we have these woke, woke promises that are scaring away investment and nothing to replace what's being scared away.
They are without question in my mind, and I'm now an old man, they are the most incompetent nincum poops in government that I have seen in my lifetime.
And I first started working in politics 55 years ago.
Oh, and I see that criticism coming from even veteran liberal MPs like Dan McTaig, who knows the energy file like the back of his hand.
He says exactly what you say.
You know, and who knows, maybe they're just waiting, Lauren, for the discovery of dilithium crystals to make us, you know.
Viewer Feedback Critique00:02:27
But last question, my friend.
How damaging is the, I don't know if we can call it a scandal, a speeding ticket, but how damaging is this for Christia Freeland?
If I don't know when the next election is going to be called, I think probably next year, not this year and not as far away as 2025 when it must be called.
But at the end of the day, when Christia Freeland runs for re-election in her safe, comfortable downtown liberal riding, is she a shoe-in to get re-elected or does something like this cost her?
No, no, it doesn't cost her at all.
Of course, she's a shoe-in to get re-elected in her riding.
She's also, I think, still, despite this, this is a very minor, this is a very minor scandal.
It'll go away in two days.
But she's also, I still think, the frontrunner to take over from Trudeau.
I know, but I think she is.
All the grown-ups have left the building.
Well, you know what, Lauren?
If your prediction is correct, I am now once again subscribing to Better the Devil You Know.
Lauren, thank you so much.
Your column is great.
I urge our viewers to check it out.
Cruising Christia, just another example of liberal green hypocrisy.
And wow, there really is so much of that.
Lauren, thank you so much for your time.
As always, my friend.
Thank you.
Well, friends, this is the portion of the show where we read your viewer feedback on the work that we do here at Rebel News.
And normally we contain the viewer feedback that we read to the show that you've, you know, given us the feedback on.
So this is Ezra's show.
We would take the viewer feedback from you on Ezra's previous show.
But since I'm pre-recording this because Ezra is on a special mission, and I, if you're watching this, future Sheila, is on a mission to screen her documentary, Church Under Fire, Canada's War on Christianity, somewhere in the beautiful province of Alberta with my friend and filmmaking partner, Kian Simoni.
By the way, if you want details, if you want to come to one of our screenings, if you are here in Alberta, go to churchunderfiremovie.com and you can find out where I am in the future.
Jason Kenney's Vaccine Controversy00:07:49
Not right now.
Anyway, our viewer feedback actually comes from something else that I said while in the course of my work here at Rebel News.
It's from a clip from our live stream the other day.
We have more often than not daily live streams.
It's called the Rebel News Daily Roundup, and it airs at 11 a.m. mountain time.
And we were talking about Alberta's Premier Jason Kenney being a little less than self-aware about why he is no longer premier.
He actually blamed, I think, me, although he described Rebel News as alt-right.
And we're definitely not.
I mean, we're Jewish-owned and operated, and there's a certain connotation that if you are alt-right, that you are sort of playing footsie with neo-Nazis.
It's definitely not us.
I think we're just mainstream conservatives who aren't tribalist in that we believe in holding all politicians to account, but especially our own politicians, Jason Kenney.
And Jason Kenney was doing a bit of whining.
Anyway, here's what he said.
And I think I've been credited through 25 years in elected life, 30 years in public life for being a pretty good communicator, fairly persuasive, but I found it almost impossible to persuade or even speak to some segments of the population in COVID.
You know, there were, and I'll, I'm, I know this is a nonpartisan series, but I'll break this down into more political terms, which is to say there are large segments of the population that have broadly come to distrust mainstream legacy media outlets.
And I think mainstream legacy media are partly have some responsibility for this.
And so what's happened is you've had the rise of alternative media, both on the left and the right, and often their business model is the monetization of anger.
So I found during COVID that if I stood up at a news conference and said, folks, we're going to have to bring in some really difficult and painful restrictions because we're running out of hospital beds.
And we need to make sure that if you get into a car accident or if a loved one has a heart attack, that there's a bed for them.
So we're going to have to slow a viral spread in order to preserve emergency, you know, critical health care capacity.
So if I went out and said that, a lot of people would hear it.
They may not like it, but they would understand at least what the motive was and it was necessary.
We might quibble about the policy, might quibble about the healthcare system, but they would understand what we were trying to do and why.
But I found in COVID, there was a whole segment of the population that had opted out of mainstream institutional legacy media who were only, in one case, listening to alt-right media and who just kept seeing stories about nurses doing TikTok dances in empty hospitals and that COVID was fake or massively exaggerated.
And so those folks never heard what I had to say.
And so they thought that these restrictions were done completely arbitrarily or for malicious reasons.
So, you know, that's an extreme example, but it's one that certainly worries me.
And then I said that he was completely lacking in all self-awareness because all we did was report on his many problems with consistency, wherein he locked people down but had a boozy party on what we call Sky Palace here in Alberta.
It's a private sort of a venue atop a building on the legislature grounds.
All the senior cabinet ministers were there while it was illegal to gather.
And Jason Kenney flip-flopped on so many things.
For example, he said he didn't know what a vaccine passport was, but then when he did know what a vaccine passport was, he knew it was definitely, definitely illegal.
And then he brought in his own.
And he called it the restriction exemptions program so he could be like, see, I didn't bring in a vaccine passport just like when the NDP brought in a carbon tax and then called it a carbon levy.
And they're like, see, we didn't bring in a carbon tax, but it's the same thing.
And so, you know, like, of course, we held Jason Kenney to account.
I expect the liberals to lie to me.
That's all they ever do.
I expect them to have radical leftist ideas and act like tyrants.
That's what their side tends to do.
Ours is supposed to believe in freedom and small government and personal autonomy and the rights of the individual.
But Jason Kenney didn't in practice.
He said he did.
But when he was forced to tangibly support those ideas and those that philosophy when it was necessary, when it really mattered, it's easy to be a civil libertarian when there are no civil liberties bonfires around you.
It's hard to do it in a time of crisis.
And Jason Kenney failed completely and made it my fault for some reason for pointing out that he failed.
Anyway, Joseph Temple, 1667, makes an astute observation here in the YouTube comments.
He says, Jason Kenney never wanted to be premier.
He wanted to be prime minister.
I think you're right.
We were but a stepping stone, weren't we?
He just saw Edmonton as a springboard to launch him back into federal politics.
He was largely seen as the successor for Stephen Harper, it is true.
But I think he blew that up for himself because if you don't have the support of Albertans, you don't get to be the conservative prime minister of this country.
That's how important we are in conservative politics.
As such, all of his decisions were based on what was good for Jason Kenney's long-term political career and not what was best for Albertans.
That's why he's all washed up and extremely bitter too.
Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.
You know what?
I don't know anything about Jason Kenney personally.
I don't dislike him personally.
I know he's got a real problem with consistency and I've got a sneaking suspicion he's got a real problem with introspection because he's still trying to deflect blame outward.
When I wasn't up in Sky Palace, I wasn't locking down churches.
I wasn't fencing off churches.
I wasn't driving churches underground.
I wasn't arresting pastors like they were El Chapel on the street or protesters in front of the legislature.
I wasn't instituting vaccine passports and calling people names for disagreeing with me.
That was Jason Kenney.
He wanted to be the premier of all Albertans, but what he really wanted to do was be the boss of Ottawa.
And Albertans were hurt along the way.
And I didn't do that.
He did.
And maybe he needs more time in the wilderness to figure that out because I don't think we want to hear from him for quite some time.
Follow Daniel Smith's lead.
When you do something stupid and betray Albertans, disappear for five or six years and then come back and say sorry, we might just forgive you, but don't blame us for what you did.
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
Thank you to everybody who works behind the scenes in Toronto and across the country and even around the world to bring you the show whenever you want to see it.
And big thanks to the boss for trusting me with the big show tonight.