Ezra Levant examines a suspicious explosion at the Canada-U.S. border near Niagara Falls, dismissed by authorities despite surveillance evidence of high explosives, amid rising infrastructure disruptions—railway blockades and protests—without arrests. Meanwhile, Geert Wilders’ anti-immigration Party for Freedom wins 35 Dutch seats, rejecting EU open borders and multiculturalism, while Argentina’s Javier Millé, a conservative nationalist, faces Trudeau’s silence despite Biden’s congratulations. Canada’s economic woes deepen with Trudeau’s $50B EV battery subsidies favoring imported Korean workers and a $29K/year media bailout, exposing globalist policies under scrutiny as Wilders’ victory sparks hope for broader resistance against unchecked immigration and leftist governance worldwide. [Automatically generated summary]
We start with the news about the big explosion at the Canada-U.S. border near Niagara Falls.
Then we talk about the new president of Argentina.
What a character he is.
And holy mackerel, Kheert Wilders in Holland getting more votes than anyone else.
He's the anti-immigration party leader.
We'll take you through all of those things, but I want to make sure you see the video version of this because I actually interviewed Keert Bohlers at some length a few years ago.
I'll play you a clip of that and I'll also play you clips of this new Argentinian president.
I want you to see that with your own eyes.
He is a character.
Both of them have interesting hair.
I'll say that's the commonality between these two men.
Cool hair.
You got to see it.
Sign up at RebelNewsPlus.com.
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And by the way, we need that money because we don't take any money from Trudeau or we're demonetized by YouTube.
All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, an explosion at the Canada-U.S. border.
Was it terrorism?
And Kheert Wilders wins the Dutch election.
It's November 22nd, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you.
You censorious bug.
There was some breaking news this afternoon.
An explosion at a Canada-U.S. border crossing.
You can see it filmed from a variety of angles.
It looks shocking, explosive.
It looks astonishing.
My first reaction, I think most people was this is obviously terrorism.
That wasn't just a car accident.
It was high explosives.
You can see another version of this incident, the car going at extremely high rates of speed.
The FBI quickly put out a statement, and then Canadian authorities put out a statement retweeting the Americans.
It was clear that the Americans were way ahead of us in terms of figuring out what was going on and investigating him.
Soon, the Ontario police put out this video announcing that a variety of border closings and highways were completely shut down.
Take a look at this.
We have major issues happening right now at the U.S. borders in Niagara region.
Right now, we currently have the Rainbow Bridge closed in both directions in Niagara Falls.
Niagara Regional Police, Barks Police, as well as Canada Border Services are working on an incident in that area.
As a result, we also currently have the Fort Erie Peace Bridge closed at the end of the QW, closed to all crossings coming to or leaving Canada.
We're also in the process right now of closing Highway 405.
We are in the process as well of shutting the Queenston-Lewiston Bridge, and you can expect heavy delays in the Niagara area.
If you are planning on crossing the border, please delay travel until we know those highways and closures have reopened.
I will update you as I get information.
But for now, all border crossings in Niagara region, Fort Erie, Rainbow, and the Queenston-Lewiston Bridge are all closed to traffic coming and going to and from United States into Canada.
We very quickly sent our own Efron Monsanto, our head of video, to the scene to see what was going on.
There wasn't a lot to see when he finally got there.
The place was locked down.
There were plenty of police cars, but of course, the drama was over.
Now, early reports said, I think what was plainly obvious at first impressions, it was terrorism.
It sure seemed that way.
But as of around 5 p.m. today, that explanation has been walked back.
And another theory has been proposed that this was joyriders that were going at a high rate of speed and fishtailing and the car simply went out of control and exploded.
I mean, could be.
It certainly seemed like a high explosive event, but that was based on just observations from surveillance cameras.
We'll see what the investigations find.
But still, we should not ignore the warnings that various intelligence agencies have given.
Here's the United Kingdom official advice to travelers going to Canada.
Let me quote their advice to their own citizens.
Quote, terrorists are very likely to try to carry out attacks in Canada.
And then they give details.
Attacks could be indiscriminate, including in places visited by foreigners.
You should remain aware of your surroundings, keep up to date with local media reports, and follow the advice of local authorities.
That's not particularly helpful advice, is it?
Now, Trudeau scoffed.
He said, oh, there's nothing much to pay attention to here.
It's just those Brits.
It's funny, though, because I remember when Justin Trudeau was trying in some ham-fisted way to lash out at Ron DeSantis in Florida, and Trudeau issued his own travel warning.
Remember that?
Saying that people in Canada should be very careful going to the United States because it was so anti-gay.
That's what Trudeau thinks of security advisories.
In the meantime, the Brits are saying be careful of Canada.
You'll get blown up.
All right.
Well, if that infrastructure explosion was not a terror attack, well, there have been other attacks on infrastructure.
These that happened the other day blocking the railway, invading companies that have anything to do with Israel.
The Saskatchewan legislature was shut down for the first time in over 100 years by pro-Hamas activists shouting.
Here in Toronto, the city's busiest railway station, Union Station, was shut down.
Roads are continuously shut down.
Events involving the prime minister and cabinet ministers are invaded.
Again, it's hard to credit that these are, that happen to succeed, that 100 people can storm an event with the prime minister or senior cabinet ministers.
It's hard to imagine that that actually happened without someone in some way facilitating that.
I should tell you that whether or not these grassroots pro-Hamas protests that are paralyzing our economy and our infrastructure, none of which have been denounced, arrested, or had ride horses dispatched against them, like the peaceful trucker convoy, I should mention.
Whether or not these pro-Hamas protests are formally directed by Hamas is unknown.
But we know it is a crime under the criminal code to participate, facilitate, instruct, or harbor terrorism.
Who is behind these acts I've just described?
Today, I see that hundreds of schoolchildren in Ontario were let out of school to go on a Hitler youth style parade, an anti-Semitic style parade.
This obviously was permitted by Doug Ford's education minister, permitted by school principals.
But was it also instructed, participated, aided by foreign agents from Iran?
And I'm not saying that speculatively.
As you saw last week, Global News, hardly a right-wing outlet, did a major expose on the close to 1,000 agents in Canada operating on behalf of the dictatorship of Iran, whipping up anti-Semitic marches.
Here's a question for you.
Were those schoolchildren exited from class and were they marched through the street at the behest of foreign agents?
Which of these infrastructure attacks were at the behest of foreign agents?
Here's a clip from that global news story.
This BC immigration lawyer has spent a lot of time documenting what he says is the huge number of Iranian regime officials and their associates who are in Canada.
We have about 700 names right now that either have temporary residence, permanent residence, or citizenship that are in Canada and that are somehow regime affiliates.
We're still counting, so it's going to be closer to 1,000.
So we don't know if the explosions today were terrorism, but we know that a softburn style of political persuasion is going on.
If it rises to the level of terrorism, I'm not sure.
I do know that Pastor Arthur Pavlovsky in Alberta was convicted and sentenced to a prison term, although it was time served already, for giving a peaceful sermon to the truckers at the Coots trucker blockade in February 2022.
My point is, a peaceful pastor giving a sermon, not at the actual border itself, but in a saloon nearby, he was convicted of a crime and given a jail sentence, time already served.
And yet you have pro-Hamas extremists doing actual blocking of critical infrastructure and no charges for that.
So that's the Canadian way.
But I don't know if you saw this.
Argentina has a new president, and I can't think of anyone more opposite Trudeau than this guy.
His name is Javier Millé, if I'm pronouncing that right.
And I, frankly, hadn't heard of him until recently when Tucker Carlson had an interview with him.
Here, I want you to watch this clip.
It's only a few minutes long, where he calmly, clearly, but with great precision and great intelligence, outlines the perpetual risk to our free society by the woke left progressive movement.
It was just, this is some of the most interesting three minutes of TV I've seen in a long time.
Take a look at Javier Millé talking to Tucker Carlson a few weeks before his election win.
Socialism has become ascendant really in the United States, as you may have noticed, with the attendant symptoms you described, massive public debt levels, increasing poverty, disorder, crime, filth, and ugliness.
Nitrogen Agenda vs. Farmers00:15:25
Argentina is at the end stage of that.
Argentina is now a poor country because of those policies.
What advice would you give to Americans having lived it?
But that is not prepared and cultural and that has arcuated because they don't have problems in between and applied to the technical application,
artists, social culture, seducing communication, or content of education.
There is many cuidado ah that corrupt financiamento and competitive part and Conscientious to the empresarios that is necessary that more friends who launch social function.
Well, with that, part of the invariant queer investigation in the defensors of the city of Libertad so that the socialists don't have and vanity agenda that will terminate everything that allows you.
So, there we need a full compromise all the creators of the river to relate socialism against the statism and understand that if no secret socialist will be intended because of the masculine work,
that's only because their motif is vivid of the world.
So, that in this mechanism of riqueza y del dinero or de la generación de inglés theotro.
So, thatín que sar dada de manera parmanente no se puede des cancar porque cuando uno de canza el socialismo avanza.
Don't be distracted by the big mutton chops and that astonishing head of hair.
This guy has strong beliefs and he's willing to say them no matter what.
By the way, just a few days before his election, he was waving the Israeli flag.
Now, I'm a fan of the Canadian flag because I'm a Canadian.
I would wave an Italian flag at, I've been to the Columbus Day Parade in New York City.
I'm delighted to hold an Italian flag for that event.
I went to the St. Patrick's Day parade, I was delighted to hold an Irish flag.
So, I don't think it's necessarily a sign of disloyalty to hold a foreign country's flag.
You just want to make it very clear that your heart is with your own nationality.
I'm a Canadian through and through.
I'm sure that Millé is an Argentinian through and through, but for him to make the statement of holding the Israeli flag was such a bold statement against the woke left pro-Hamas blob and mob.
And for him to do that in the final days of his campaign is very bold.
But this guy is bold.
He reminds me a little bit of Yair Bolsonaro, who was elected president in Brazil before he was run out of there by the deep state.
Here's Millé ripping off stickers and denouncing different government agencies.
Take a look at this.
Ministry of Tamácécial!
Afuera!
Ministéría de educación!
Adofinamentos, afuera!
Ministéri à porte, afuera, ministiero esalud, afuera, ministerio de zaroso socialo, afuera.
Si acabo el curo de la politica.
Bieba la di varza cra.
I get a kick out of that.
And you know, some reform-oriented politicians use a broom as their symbol.
I'm gonna sweep out change.
This Argentine, he used the chainsaw as a symbol.
Take a look at this guy.
What a character.
And by the way, he is as audacious as Trump is.
He tweets like Trump used to tweet.
I mean, you just can't stop this guy from tweeting.
He's tweeting Trump 2024.
He's tweeting pictures of him in a constellation with other populist conservative leaders.
He really is a phenomenon.
And I find it fascinating.
I think, in a way, he's the pendulum swinging back.
For the last three plus years, we have had Joe Biden, Reese Sunak is the latest Brit, Justin Trudeau, until recently, Jacinda Ardern, until recently, Angela Merkel.
All these sludgy left socialist globalists.
Maybe you're starting to see the pendulum swing back in the form of Javier Millé.
By the way, Joe Biden, who surely disagrees with every single word that Millé says, because he's a grown-up, or at least he works with grown-ups, he made a courtesy call to congratulate the new Argentine president.
Here, this is from the White House website, readout of the call with President-elect Javier Millé of Argentina.
So a readout is basically a summary, not a transcript, but a summary of a phone call.
I'll read it to you.
President Joseph R. Biden Jr. spoke today with President-elect Javier Millé of Argentina to congratulate him on his election.
The president applauded the conduct of the election as a testament to the strength of Argentina's democratic institutions.
The two leaders discussed the importance of continuing to build on the strong relationship between the United States and Argentina on economic issues, on regional and multilateral cooperation, and on shared priorities, including advocating for the protection of human rights, addressing food insecurity, and investing in clean energy.
You know, I'm not sure how much Javier Millé cares about solar panels, but that's not the point.
The point is that Joe Biden was acting like a grown-up.
And even though he probably loathes every cell in the body of this Trump lookalike, he knows he's got to be the bigger man and he's got to call because it's not just about a personal relationship.
It's a country-to-country relationship.
Argentina is a serious country, 45 million people, half a trillion dollar a year GDP.
It's strategically important, and he's clearly a fan of the Western Alliance.
He's not a socialist anti-American, as unfortunately there are many in South America.
So that's Joe Biden.
Now, I spent some time digging around Canadian websites, the prime minister's website, the prime minister's Twitter feed, Melanie Jolie, the foreign minister's Twitter feed.
No communication from Trudeau or Melanie Jolie about Yair Millé.
Just like when Javier Millé, just like when Yair Bolsonaro, the conservative one in Brazil, Trudeau was so petty that he refused to even congratulate Bolsonaro.
He just wouldn't say the words because his personal vendetta was stronger than his desire to have a mutually beneficial relationship.
Can you imagine that?
Trudeau putting his own pettiness ahead of Canada-Brazil relations and now ahead of Canada-Argentine relations.
Is there a country in the world that Trudeau has not ticked off?
And I'm not saying that Trudeau has to be submissive to other countries, the opposite.
Trudeau should carry Canada's national interests with him.
But we're starting to see a pattern here, whether it's China or India or the United Kingdom or Australia or Joe Biden.
Frankly, I ask this question all the time.
Other than Cuba, is there a country in the world with whom Canada doesn't have a weaker relationship now than when Trudeau took over?
So that's very exciting news out of Argentina.
But as I am talking, right now they are finalizing the vote count in another country, in the Netherlands.
And incredibly, Geert Wilders, it's spelled Geert Wilders, but it's pronounced Geirt Wilders, the leader of the Party for Freedom, a party absolutely focused like a laser on stopping mass immigration and particularly Muslim immigration, he has by far won the Dutch elections tonight.
Absolutely incredible.
The polls in recent days gave him a boost, but he exceeded even those polls, winning 35 seats.
And you can see the other party's seats count.
Here's a quick video of, here's a tweet in a video here at Wilders celebrating when he was astonished, winning 35 seats.
Now, I actually know here at Wilders, if you can believe it.
I spoke with him.
I went on a bit of a speaking tour with him about 10 years ago or so, maybe a little longer, across Canada.
And this was when I had published the Danish cartoons of Mohammed, and I was talking about freedom of speech.
And Geert Wilders was in a similar vein.
He was very critical of radical Islam and mass immigration.
And we toured the country and gave speeches together.
And I'm not going to say we became close friends, but we were friendly, that's for sure.
And I tell you, he incurred the wrath of the woke globalist Islamist left.
Here's a headline from The Guardian in the United Kingdom in 2009 that they literally banned him from entering the country.
Imagine that.
He was a member of parliament.
And today he's prime minister.
Or he's not prime minister yet.
He has to do some negotiating with the other parties.
In the end, he might actually not become the prime minister.
He might do a deal with another party that is harsh on immigration.
Perhaps the other party can be the PM and he might be the immigration minister.
I'm just brainstorming.
I don't know enough about Dutch politics to know how it's going to go.
But can you believe that?
The United Kingdom banned him from entering because they didn't like what he had to say about mass immigration.
Now, I should tell you later, they relaxed that ban.
But the man who was disparaged for decades is now in the fast track to become, if not the prime minister.
Well, he's certainly the largest political party in the Dutch parliament.
I should tell you that the predecessor prime minister, Mark Rutte, is out.
He was really a Trudeau mini-me.
He was a World Economic Forum globalist.
He was for all the global warming stuff.
And he was also against the Dutch farmers.
He hated carbon, but he also hated nitrogen.
Wilders, as I mentioned earlier, is very pro-Israel, just like Millay.
And here's a clip of our reporter at the time, Callum Smiles, interviewing Geert Wilders about the war on farming.
Here, take a look.
Mr. Wilders, what do you make of the nitrogen emission reducing policies?
What do you think the real story is?
Well, I think it's leftish rubbish.
The real aim here is to get rid of our farmers for some leftish nitrogen kind of agenda and to make room for even more non-Western immigrants, asylum seekers, and build houses and centers for them and something that is totally different than the current elite is telling the people.
And when speaking to people back in the United Kingdom about this issue, they ask why is this important to them?
Why is the Dutch farmer issue such an important issue worldwide?
Well, I know there would be no Netherlands without our farmers, without our fishermen.
Don't forget also our fishermen who have the same tough deal as the farmers get today.
They are who we are.
They are in our genes.
They are in our history.
And Holland is built on farmers and fishermen.
And everybody has a lot of sympathy for them.
And now we get some leftish liberal coalition, probably also supported by the more extreme left after the elections that say, well, we really don't care about our identity, about our culture, or about our farmers.
We don't care.
We find this nitrogen problem more important.
Besides the fact that nitrogen is not a real problem, it's an invented kind of problem.
It's totally unfair to all those families, all those farmers that have had farms through generations.
So it's not only the sympathy for the farmers and the fishermen, but the Dutch people sense that they are getting to the core of the genes of our identity.
And those parties that hate identity, that only want us to go into some kind of European metro identity, but despise the patriotism, the national identity, and the nation-state, you know, the democracy and the nation-state, they don't care.
And you see today here, those are a lot of people for demonstration in the Netherlands that people are fed up with it.
And I hope that they not only will come today to protest here democratically, but also even more important, next Wednesday when they can vote for the provinces that in our country select the Senate to make sure that the government will have to step down and we have no elections.
So do you think actually that there isn't an issue that the farmers need to compromise on?
You actually think that there is no problem which the farmers have to address?
Well, I don't believe so.
No, I don't think nitrogen is a problem.
I don't think the environmental issue is also the real issue.
But as long as the majority in the politics that believe it, they probably would have to compromise.
But a compromise means that most of them will have to finish their business.
So that's not a real compromise.
That's signing off for having to leave your business and to do something else to sell your ground voluntarily.
But the government already said if it's not working voluntarily, we will make sure that you have to make it compulsory that we sell you out, your whole business, and we buy your ground.
And that is not how a democracy should work.
We see it with the farmers, but we see it also today with the asylum seeking problem.
We see that the government is asking because they are not willing to close our borders for more non-indigenous people.
Compromising Sovereignty00:10:57
95% of them coming from safe countries, our neighboring countries that are not unsafe.
So they are not asylum seekers, but they are migrants.
So they're telling now to the municipalities, please give more room, give us houses to provide for them.
But then they also say that if you don't do that, later this year, we will come with a law to put aside the local democracy and force you to give housing to those people.
So you see on different issues, asylum seekers, farmers, that they are compulsory, going setting aside the democracy, the voice of the people, and getting through what they will not have support on in the government.
And that is something that I believe is totally terrible, has nothing to do with democracy.
You normally see in totally tarian countries that local democracy are putting set aside, and governments make laws to force upon the people what they really do not want to do.
And finally, do you think these policies come from Mark Rutter or Klaus Schwab?
I don't know about Klaus Schwab.
I believe that our government is the one responsible.
They can be influenced by anyone.
But I have to deal.
I cannot, in Holland, I cannot have a debate with Klaus Schwab.
I have a debate with the Dutch Prime Minister.
And I want to get rid of him and his coalition parties.
And if that means that Mr. Schwab would have less influence, that's very good.
But I have to deal as a leader of position with the leader of the government.
And that is fortunately not Mr. Schwab, but someone who is not that much better than Mr. Grote, our Prime Minister.
So now that man is on track to become PM, or at least a senior cabinet minister, senior power broker in the new coalition.
Now, I actually traveled to The Hague, which is the Dutch capital, about six years ago for a half-hour sit-down with Kirt Wilders.
And we covered a lot of subjects.
I'm not going to play all half an hour of that for you now, because we have other things we want to talk about on the show.
But I will embed the full 32-minute video elsewhere on the website if you want to watch it all.
But let me show you about 10 minutes of excerpts from my heart to heart with Kirt Wilders when I visited Holland.
I think it was six years ago now.
Take a look at this and come right back.
Do you think that Dutch people are inspired by the Brexit referendum and the Donald Trump election?
Does that give people more courage to dissent?
Well, you know, it's what I call the patriotic spring.
People, as I said, feel misrepresented by the current political parties, by the current elite, who feel that multiculturalism, mass immigration, Islamization, or the fact that we transferred our national sovereignty to this institution called the European Union and Brussels, and we don't even have the key of our own front door and cannot decide who we let enter into our country, when people should leave.
People are fed up with that arrogance of the political elite.
And indeed, people see that in the United Kingdom, despite all the fear-mongering from the elite from both Brussels and London, that the economy would go down, that the lights would go out, that there probably would be a war in Europe, that it's not happening.
The country is happening.
A strong economy, a free trade deal with the United States, probably even before the European Union will have it.
So it's far better than everybody predicted.
And this, of course, is an incentive.
It's not about Mr. Trump personally or the United Kingdom personally, but people seeing that despite the fear-mongering from the current political leaders, they can take charge and they are stronger and they can put the fate of their own country in their own hands again.
And that indeed, all over the European Union, is very inspiring.
But the forces against us are very strong and growing as well.
I think that the greatest challenge to both Brexit and Donald Trump were not politicians, was not Hillary Clinton, but rather the media establishment, the political establishment, even the legal establishment.
What is it like in the Netherlands?
Are there any establishment forces, any media that are supportive of you, or are they all critical or overwhelmingly critical?
Well, of course, there are few exceptions, but 98% is very strong against.
And the elite, as I call them, is not indeed only the politicians.
It's the media, it's also the top representatives of the Catholic churches or other churches.
It's the intellectuals.
It's all the people who are really lost any touch with the common people and fear for their own position are based and driven only by multiculturalism and don't see that if we continue by, for instance, the Islamization of our society, that they will pay the first price, you know?
I mean, this is what is at stake today.
It's our mere existence that is at stake.
It's not like we are facing an economical crisis that you can beat if you have a good policy like small government or lower taxes.
No, it's the existential problem.
When I go to America or Canada, I always tell my friends there, listen, you are bordering, at least the United States is bordering Mexico.
We are bordering our continent that is bordering Europe is Africa.
It's the Middle East.
And the African inhabitants, the African people, will explode in this century.
You know, they have one billion people living in Africa today.
According to the United Nations, at the end of the century, it will be quadrupled to four billion people.
Where at the same time, the European amount of people will diminish.
So four billion people, one-third of them, even today is planning to emigrate to Europe, which means that what we saw happening with the asylum crisis, with people from Syria and Libya, coming to Europe, that we haven't seen anything yet.
One billion people, mostly from Islamic background, will come to Europe in this century, which means that, and Islam, once again, is not there to assimilate or to integrate.
That is the biggest mistake we made, open borders and no demands on new immigrants to assimilate and to integrate.
We will cease to exist.
And the whole elite is not willing or capable because they invented the concept of multiculturalism and open border policy.
So they are fighting it, but they are fighting against our mere existence.
And the people are finally waking up because they saw in the last few years, both with the European Union and with the asylum crisis, that we only import more terrorism, more intolerance, more violence, and that it should stop.
Just coming in today, we landed at the Amsterdam airport.
We took the train here to The Hague.
You can see visually there's so many Muslim people, women wearing hijabs, things like that.
Is it past the point of no return?
Even if you were to win and you were to stop new immigration, how deep are the roots of Islam and the Islamification?
What is the number?
Is it even possible to win if there's a voter bloc out there that's against you?
Well, in Holland, we have now approximately out of a population of 1717, 17 million people, 1 million Muslims, which is something like 6%.
And I believe it can be stopped.
As Winston Churchill said, never give in, never give up, never, never, never, ever do that.
And it is possible.
If we should, not only for what is happening today, but what I just told you about what will happen with the explosion of the demographics in Africa and the Arab world.
If we should finally close our borders, and as a Dutchman I have to say we cannot do that inside the European Union because we transferred our sovereign right of immigration and our own border policy to Brussels.
So we have to get rid of Brussels as the United Kingdom did to control our own borders again.
And if we would do that, if we would finally decide ourselves who to allow inside our country and who not and how long people can stay, and if we at the same time, for the people who are already in our country, would say the good days are over.
If you adapt and assimilate to our values, our constitution, you are not only equal as anybody else, but you are welcome to stay.
But if you start acting according to Sharia law and try to use violence or terroristic threats or whatever, we will strip you of the Dutch nationality and send you outside our country.
If we would at least start those two things, then a lot of things really would change.
The problem is more that if we don't do it, that we stay into the European Union, and once again, again, the European Union is not only incapable to close this border, but also unwilling.
And I'm not personally blaming all those Muslims coming to Europe.
Perhaps if I was a Muslim from Africa, I would do the same, to ask for a better life for myself and my family.
But I blame the political leaders who allow them to come.
This was the toxic combination of Europe in the last few decades, open border policy with not one single demand of assimilation and integration.
And if you then don't get people from Mexico, but people with an Islamic ideology, it's not only toxic, once again, it's a matter of our existence.
We cease to exist.
Our culture ceased to exist at the end of the century if we don't act now.
And yes, it can be reversed, but we have to start acting today.
Are there Muslim liberals, Muslim reformists who support you?
Well, some are, but they are more formal Muslims.
So apostates, people who left Islam.
And then even there are not too many.
Within the Muslim community, there are some people who are a little bit tough, but the majority is not speaking out.
You know, I always said after any attack both in Holland when Theo Varcoch was murdered, but also in the rest of Europe, where were all those mass demonstrations of Muslims who should say this is not our Islam?
It's big silence every time again.
So there are a few that might be vocal, but you'll hardly hear them.
Well, that man, and by the way, he's tweeting so boldly against Hamas for Israel.
He has said before that Israel is the canary in the coal mine, and if they go for Israel today, they'll be in Europe tomorrow.
They're actually already in Europe in many ways.
Budget Surprises for Reporters00:14:43
Is there a connection between the Netherlands and Argentina and the other countries in that Javier Millé tweet of Giorgia Maloney of Italy and other conservative-oriented populist leaders?
Is there a pendulum swinging back?
Well, I don't know, but it looks like it.
Like I say, the whole world is in this mania of globalism and this leftist idea, this woke critical theory that Hamas are the good guys and the West are the bad guys and violence is acceptable and hate marches on the streets of the West are something we should listen to.
I think in a way, the fact that proudly pro-Israel, vocally anti-woke, conservative, populist nationalists like Javier Millé and Geert Builders are having such success.
Well, frankly, I find it a sign of hope that maybe the whole world has not gone mad.
Maybe other people like you and I are very worried about what we see and we don't want China and Iran and terrorist groups to be ascendant.
We don't want freedom to recede.
We don't want the end of Pax Americana.
So I'm hopeful for Javier Millé and Geird Builders and I'm very excited about their victories within such a close time period.
And the ouster of Jacinda Ardern and Mark Rutte and the other globalists gives me a little bit of hope for Canada too.
What do you think?
Hey, stay with us.
Next, our friend Chris Sims from the Taxpayers Federation.
News of the day in Canada is what appears to be a terrorist attack at the Canada-U.S. border.
Roads, border crossings all shut down, statements by Ontario police and the FBI.
It's an incredible story that will continue to follow Rebel News as Efron Monsanto was actually the first reporter on the scene.
But there are other things, of course, that we're following around the world.
an incredible result by Builders, the head of the Dutch Party for Freedom, who has an astonishing win in the Dutch parliamentary elections on a platform almost entirely on one issue, namely to stop mass immigration.
He is in first place there.
But we have to talk about other things because we are a full-service news organization.
And one of the things the liberals are particularly bad at is anything regarding money.
And it's not a surprise.
Justin Trudeau himself never had to earn a living.
He was a trust fund baby, never really held down a job.
Substitute drama teacher and snowboarding instructor aren't really jobs.
They're more hobbies.
And so it's no surprise that eight years into Trudeau's administration of our economy, it is a complete disaster.
Joining us now is someone who knows more about this than most because her full-time job is to be a taxpayer advocate.
I'm talking about our friend Chris Sims with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
Chris, great to see you again.
Always good to talk to people from the Taxpayers Federation.
Tell us about the latest economic update that the Liberal government presented.
What did they say?
So at the federal level, Ezra, Prime Minister Christia Freeland usually trots out twice a year and presents a full budget, usually in late February, early March.
And right around now is when they do their economic or budget update.
So twice a year, they have to actually show their math and show their homework.
It looks terrible, as usual.
What's interesting, though, this time around is that they're actually kind of sort of noticing that they have a spending problem.
So all this time, Ezra, every single time, they'll present the budget in March and then they'll blow it by the update.
Present the budget in March, blow it again.
This time they are indeed blowing it, but not as badly as they have in the past.
So it's kind of like, it's kind of like you're in the drunk tank and you're in there because you're drunk, but you're the most sober one in the drunk tank.
Well, you know, I think that's a you got to find the silver lining where you can, I guess.
You know, there's just some astonishing things there.
I want to talk about two particular issues that aren't particularly with the economic update.
They're just news around the same time.
First is the bailout of Trudeau's absolute favorite interest group.
There's a lot of interest groups, but the one that he is most dependent on and the one that is most dependent on him are regime media, the media party, mainstream media, legacy media.
There's a lot of ways of describing it.
I'm talking about CBC, CTV, and the newspapers, 99% of which take subsidies from Trudeau.
And that's not an estimate or a guess.
Over 1,500 different news media organizations in Canada take the bailout, which is actually like 99.8%, 99.7%.
It's really astonishing.
What do you have for us on Trudeau's latest gift to keep the media praising him?
Yeah, actually, this was part of the budget update.
It's mentioned right there in the document released by the finance department.
So surprise, it's now going to be shoved through with that when this goes through parliament.
So in a nutshell, it looks like they're doubling the amount of money that journalists who get the bailout are getting.
So beforehand, on average, if a reporter slash journalist, newsroom employee, whatever you want to call them, was on this bailout money, they'd get around $13,000 per year of their paycheck covered by the Trudeau government.
But it's way worse now because they're more than doubling it.
It's going to be around $29,000 per newsroom employee for the next four years.
So this was all supposed to sunset next year.
It was all supposed to fade away in 2024.
Surprise, it's not.
It's now going to last them well past the next federal election.
So this means that the journalists that are on the federal government payroll just got a huge bump in how much the government covers their paycheck.
And very clearly, this probably doesn't need to be said to your audience, but this is an enormous conflict of interest.
There is no way a journalist should be paid by the government.
Pretty hard to hold the government to account when you're counting on them for your paycheck.
So that's a huge accountability problem and it's a huge waste of money.
So that's why the Taxpayers Federation, we're fighting this.
Well, that's incredible.
I just want to confirm the numbers because they're so astonishing.
You're saying that under this new regime, $29,000 a year per reporter is what the grant, the subsidy is.
Did I hear you right?
$29,000 per reporter per year.
Is that right?
Yes.
So we follow very closely the work of Dr. Michael Geist on this issue and also our friends over at Blacklocks Reporter.
I'm sure you've spoken with them many times.
They crunch the numbers on this and it's around $29,000 a piece.
Now, keep in mind.
That's an incredible subsidy.
That's just astonishing.
It is so absolutely a bribe, Chris.
There's no other way to say it.
That is stuffing $100 bills in the pockets of journalists who cover Trudeau.
That's incredible.
It is.
And you and I have worked in this industry for a long time, often together, Ezra.
And there was a stat that came out just in the last few months.
Well over 60% of Canadians now think that journalists are purposefully trying to mislead them with statements they know to be false.
Right.
So not just a mistake, a typo here and there.
No, no.
The vast majority of Canadians now think that they're being deliberately misled.
Right.
Well, I mean, if any other sugar daddy were giving reporters 29 grand a year, it would have to be disclosed.
And by the way, you can label it as an ad, like when a car company or I don't, I don't, it's illegal to have cigarette ads, but let's say an alcohol, let's say a beer company, if a beer company was advertising and giving the equivalent of 29 grand per reporter per year, that wouldn't necessarily be a problem if it was marked ad and if they actually got value for money.
By the way, if you had nothing but beer ads and you were doing very pro-beer news reporting, people would naturally say, huh, that seems a little bit, you know, a little bit iffy.
That's why when Pfizer and the other drug companies pour billions into media, people raise an eyebrow.
But the crazy thing about the 29 grand per year per reporter from Trudeau is the government doesn't get ads.
They're buying something else.
They're buying the loyalty of these reporters, but at least the beer company shows that they're paying.
But there is no disclaimer under a journalist after he or she praises Trudeau, saying, disclaimer, this reporter received 29 grand from Trudeau.
It is so unethical.
And we would know that if it was a tobacco company, an alcohol company, a firearms company, an oil company, any other lobbyist would have to disclose it.
Trudeau keeps it a secret.
If you didn't watch this program, or if you didn't, if you weren't a self-educated critic of the system, you would never know because the reporters themselves are not going to tell you.
Yeah, exactly.
It's uh, we've tried filing FOIs on this to find out exactly who's on the payroll, but the most of them look like there are.
And keep in mind, there's two things here: one, this doesn't even touch the CBC.
We're talking about reporters outside of the CBC here.
Also, you're mentioning advertising.
This amount of money doesn't even come close to the amount of advertising that the government is.
Advertising is on top of this.
Holy cow.
So it's even worse and more.
You know, I saw a press release from the government today that they talked about keeping Canadian journalists strong and independent.
You don't make someone independent by paying them a bribe.
That's how you make them dependent.
Yeah.
So the minister responsible yesterday actually said, Ezra, we value a free press.
Like by paying them.
Orwell is rolling in his grave right now.
At the end of the year is not free.
Hey, I want to talk about one more thing because this media stuff, I think it's important because we see the world through media.
So they filter everything and it's a bias.
It's a warped lens.
That's why social media is so important.
And that's why the government wants to cancel, suspend, shape, ban social media because it's our way to get around the regime media to the truth.
That's why they're obsessed with blocking it and shutting down independent gods like us.
But so it's important to talk about the media bribery.
But there is, I think, what's probably the largest corporate welfare in Canadian history.
I'd have to check the stats on that.
It's a plan to build electric vehicle batteries in Canada.
And Trudeau, and one must also acknowledge Doug Ford, the alleged conservative premier of Ontario, are throwing not just billions, but tens of billions of dollars at these foreign companies to build their battery factories in Canada.
That's terrible.
That's an atrocious waste of money.
But it just came out, Chris, that these factories will not be built by Canadians.
They're importing 1,600 workers from Korea to do the, like, at least the rationale was, oh, we're building jobs.
We're building an industry.
They're bringing in Koreans to, I like Koreans, by the way.
God, no beef for the Koreans.
And good for them for getting free money from our idiot prime minister.
I want to play for you a very short clip.
This is a short clip of Francois Champagne, who is just one of the worst cabinet ministers.
It sounds like he didn't bother reading the contract.
Like, I mean, when you buy a house for half a million bucks, you read the contract because it's the largest purchase of your life or whatever.
This guy signed a multi-billion dollar giveaway and he didn't even read what he was signing.
Take a listen to his excuse.
Look at this guy.
You knew there were going to be temporary foreign workers?
No, not in history.
But I'm saying, I'm not surprised that you would have transferred knowledge.
No one has done batteries in North America before.
He literally didn't.
He didn't know that the money would be going to foreign workers, not Canadian workers.
But when asked about this, he said, no, no, that's the transfer of knowledge.
We don't know.
He was explaining.
So his first answer was he didn't know.
Then his second answer was, well, now that you guys told me what's in the contract I signed, I got a new alibi.
And it's no one knows how to make batteries in Canada.
So this was a knowledge transfer.
So it's still a really good deal.
Here, take a look at this clip.
Well, let's face, first of all, let's celebrate what we've achieved.
This is going to be one of the largest battery plants in North America.
We obviously want to maximize Canadian workers.
I mean, this is obvious, and I've been in touch with the CEO of Stellentis yesterday to make sure of that.
But what is even more important, I would say, is the CEO of the company who confirmed yesterday in the press that their commitment to hire 2,500 workers to work at the plant and also to have about 2,000 construction jobs.
So not only am I in touch with Stellentis, I've been in touch also to the CEO of Unifor.
Maximizing Canadian Workers00:04:32
So we're working NNA to make sure that we maximize opportunities for Canadians, as it should be.
Now, we have to understand this is a new technology.
We've never done batteries in North America, really.
So you'll have a few people, a very few people, selected people, who need to come to transfer technology because this is a new industry.
But that being said, after that, it's to maximize the opportunities for Canadians.
And that's why they came to Canada in the first place.
But what guarantees do you have that they are actually going to maximize the opportunities for Canadians and will not continue to draw from temporary foreign workers to do that?
Well, like I said, the CEO said it yesterday.
You don't need to take it from me.
It was on the record to say they confirmed that they'll be hiring 2,500 people.
That's the CEO of the company who said that.
And then they'll have 2,000 construction jobs as we expected.
And in the agreements we have with them, we always maximize local content.
So for me, let's not lose sight of the opportunity.
There'll be a transfer of knowledge, but that knowledge will help us to make sure that this plan is one of the most productive in the industry in North America.
So let's not lose sight of the big picture.
The big picture here is that we landed one of the largest battery plants in North America.
We're going to maximize Canadian workers.
We're going to have a transfer of knowledge, allowing us to be successful for decades to come.
So wow, we're getting all that knowledge for what is it?
Is it $50 billion?
I've seen $15 billion.
I've seen $20 billion.
What's the real number that Canadians are going to be on the hook for that in a contract that the minister didn't even bother to read?
The last numbers we saw was close to 55-0 billion.
So again, that could jump up and down, but that's about it.
And if you work it out, which my friend did, Franco Terrazano, our federal director, it's millions of dollars per job.
Like it's just a draw-dropping amount of corporate welfare.
And this is always the clarion cry for corporate welfare of, oh, well, what about Canadian jobs?
We're saving Canadian jobs.
Oops.
No, they're actually importing foreign temporary workers to do this because they don't know how to actually do this.
Be alarmed, folks, when you see these companies shopping their corporate welfare with their handout like this to all sorts of countries and them getting turned down.
They always come here and Trudeau always says yes, but we are not getting value for money.
Yeah, he's the stupidest world leader and the easiest mark.
You know, $50 billion is such a staggering number.
That's 50,000 times 1 million.
Yeah.
So $50 billion, you could buy 1 million Canadian households a fancy SUV, or you could buy 2 million Canadian households a more modest car, a $25,000 car.
2 million Canadian households, if there's an average of, I don't know, three people per household.
So that would be 6 million Canadians.
You could buy 15% of Canadian families their own brand new vehicle for this, but Trudeau is just pouring it into making batteries for another country's company built by other countries' workers.
I don't think I've heard a deal this stupid since, you know, the old timey trick of selling the Brooklyn Bridge to people.
This has got to be the stupidest thing in Canadian economic history.
I don't know.
I mean, can you think of anything dumber than this, Chris?
It's a heck of a lot of waste.
And every time you hear a government employee or a politician say $1 billion, because that's a really hard number, picture a hospital.
Right.
Picture a brand new, medium-sized, state-of-the-art hospital, because that costs about a billion dollars to build.
Right.
Incredible.
Chris Sims, Canadian Taxpayers Federation, stay on the project because we can't rely on most journalists.
They're bought off.
So we got to rely on you guys because you do not take government money, which is why we like you.
Keep up the fight, Chris.
You too.
Thanks.
All right.
There you have it, Chris Sims from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
Stay with us.
More ahead.
Well, I'm still blown away by that result for Kurt Wilders because I know in the last election, he did very well in the polls, but in the last days, he underperformed.
This, the opposite happened.
Surge in Wilders Support00:01:05
He had a surge in the polls in the last few days, but he exceeded even that.
That tweet of him cheering 35 seats, he was so astonished, so far ahead.
Now, the second party, if I'm not mistaken, are the Greens.
So he'll have to make a coalition with another anti-immigration party.
And again, I don't want to overstate my confidence in my understanding of Dutch parliamentary politics, but there is another Dutch political leader who is succeeding Mark Rutte who is anti-immigration.
In fact, she's a Turkish refugee herself who has a hard line against immigration.
And that was actually the issue that broke Mark Rutte's government, that and the farmers.
So this could be the perfect storm.
And maybe Holland will be the first country to push back against mass immigration.
Of course, the question is, is it too late?
Well, at the very least, it'll serve as an example for other countries from Sweden and other Scandinavian countries to the United Kingdom itself.
Very interesting news.
And I'm pleased to say I spent some time with and interviewed the man before he became the leading politician in his country.