Ezra Levant highlights Donald Trump’s Truth Social threat to impose 25% tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods unless borders seal by January 20, framing it as a response to Trudeau’s nine-year failures. Pierre Polyev criticizes Trudeau’s carbon tax hike, energy policy rollbacks, and broken immigration system—4.9M temporary residents, including two ISIS terrorists—while linking drug liberalization to a 200% rise in overdose deaths. Former diplomat David Legge warns Canada’s economic and military neglect has strained U.S. trust, citing NATO summit chaos and NORAD funding lapses, urging proactive border security over reactive politics. Trump’s direct approach contrasts with Trudeau’s vague "Team Canada" rhetoric, exposing a leadership gap that risks Canada’s global influence and resource potential, including Alberta’s oil reserves surpassing those of Russia, China, and the U.S. combined. [Automatically generated summary]
I want to talk about Donald Trump's astonishing tweet.
Actually, it was on Truth Social, where he says, if Canada doesn't seal the border to stop illegal immigrants and drugs from coming into America, he's going to whack our economy with a 25% tariff.
That would destroy Canada's economy.
So it's basically saying to Justin Trudeau that these last nine years of atrocious policy, fix it in two months or I will.
Just a total Trump move.
And I don't think Trudeau knows what to do about it.
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All right, here's today's show.
Tonight, Trump tells Canada to fix our border or he will.
And all the smart people freak out.
It's November 26th, and this is the Esther Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Donald Trump announces a lot of things on Twitter.
But remember, he also has his own social media platform called Truth Social.
And here's what he posted.
He said, as everyone is aware, thousands of people are pouring through Mexico and Canada, bringing crime and drugs at levels never seen before.
Right now, a caravan coming from Mexico composed of thousands of people seems to be unstoppable in its quest to come through our currently open border.
On January 20th, as one of my many first executive orders, I will sign all necessary documents to charge Mexico and Canada a 25% tariff on all products coming into the United States and its ridiculous open borders.
This tariff will remain in effect until such time as drugs, in particular fentanyl, and all illegal aliens stop the invasion of our country.
Both Mexico and Canada have the absolute right and power to easily solve this long-simmering problem.
We hereby demand that they use this power.
And until such time that they do, it's time for them to pay a very big price.
It's very interesting, isn't it?
Now, by the way, Mexico's new president almost immediately said, we'll do, no problem, which is sort of shocking when you think about it.
It shows that Mexico could have stopped the border rush anytime they wanted to, but either Biden and Harris sort of told them not to, or they just had such little respect for Biden and Harris and America.
It's amazing that Trump is effectively doing foreign policy by tweet or true social now, even before he's in office, not even by phone call, just by tweets, because he's getting the desired effect.
It's interesting that Trump is putting Canada and Mexico in the same batch.
And I know a lot of dainty Canadian Laurentians are, how dare you?
They're a third world country.
Well, actually, more terrorist suspects have tried to get into America from the northern border than from the southern border.
And by the way, those numbers are ramping up.
And a lot of people get into Canada because we're such a soft touch and then try and make their way to the United States.
The numbers of that are just escalating astonishingly.
And Trump wanted to get our attention.
Here's Trudeau talking about his phone call with Trump yesterday.
Watch it, and then I have a question for you afterwards.
So here's Trudeau talking about how warm the relationship is.
Typical word salad.
We obviously talked about laiding out the facts, talking about how the intense and effective connections between our two countries flow back and forth.
We talked about some of the challenges that we can work on together.
It was a good call.
This is something that we can do.
Laying out the facts, moving forward in constructive ways.
This is a relationship that we know takes a certain amount of working on, and that's what we'll do.
One of the really important things is that we be all pulling together on this.
The Team Canada approach is what works.
That's where putting aside partisanship, that's where I reached out immediately to Doug Ford to agree with him that we would have a first minister's meeting this week to talk about the United States, talked with François Legault and some other premiers as well.
There's work to do, but we know how to do it.
Okay, I got a question for you about that clip.
Did Trump not mention the tariff scheme here in his phone call with Justin Trudeau?
If he mentioned it, why didn't Trudeau refer to it?
Like, it's a shocking, stunning threat, really.
It's a declaration of economic war.
So why didn't Trudeau mention the elephant in the room?
Or if Trump did, did Trump not bring it up in the call?
Or if Trump did bring it up in the call, I mean, which is worse?
If Trump didn't bring it up, so Trudeau didn't mention it, or if Trump did or didn't bring it up, Trudeau didn't mention it.
I wonder if the call went so poorly, if the phone call between Trudeau and Trump went so poorly that as a reaction to that, Trump made his online demand.
Isn't that astonishing?
In a moment, we're going to talk about Trudeau's childishness with David Legge, a former diplomat for the province of Alberta.
We'll talk with him in a bit.
One of his interesting points is that while Trump is governing effectively from Mar-a-Lago every day, Justin Trudeau is going to Taylor Swift concerts, even when Montreal is in the middle of a horrific riot.
Yeah, I don't know if you saw it the other day, but Stephen Harper made some comments at a private fundraiser that were leaked.
He said that his fundamental criticism of Justin Trudeau after nine years was how unserious it was, unserious at economics, unserious at foreign policy, just all about show and press release and appearances and trading friendship bracelets at girls' concerts.
Unserious.
And I think he's exactly right.
And we're in serious times.
Literally, everything I said would happen in 2015 has now come to pass.
Let me compare that with Pierre Polyev's serious presentation today.
Here's Pierre.
Let this run for a bit because he says a lot of things.
It's very interesting to watch Pierre Polyev accept Trump's observation that we have big problems with our border and with drugs, but accept it in a way that asserts Canada's rights and puts a Canada first spin, not rolling over for Trump because Trump says so, but doing some of these things because it's in the interests of Canadians.
Take a look at Pierre Polyev.
The United States is the greatest economic and military superpower in the history of the world, and they are our neighbor.
The U.S. is responsible for $1.2 trillion of our trade.
We trade almost twice as much with the Americans as we trade with the rest of the world combined.
Trade with the U.S. is 40% of our economy.
President Trump yesterday made an unjustified threat of a 25% tariff on our already weak and shrinking economy.
Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland were surprised.
Amazingly, everyone else knew something like this could be coming because President Trump had been talking about it for years on the campaign trail.
Yet 20 days ago, Christia Freeland said, don't worry, Canada will be fine.
Apparently, neither she nor Justin Trudeau were following what the incoming president was saying.
And now we must take account and we must be honest with our unprecedented weakness.
After nine years of Prime Minister Trudeau, our GDP is smaller than it was when he took office per capita, is smaller than it was when he took office.
In fact, our per capita GDP has dropped more than any other G7 country since the year before COVID.
We have the most indebted households.
We've had the worst housing inflation.
A quarter of our people are in poverty.
Two million people line up in food banks.
Food prices have risen 37% faster in Canada than in the United States of America.
Our economy is teetering on the brink of collapse.
And now we face this renewed threat.
We need a plan, a plan to put Canada first on the economy and on security.
So to start with, on the economy, I'm calling on Prime Minister Trudeau to put partisanship aside and in the spirit of Team Canada to accept that he cannot go ahead with quadrupling the carbon tax to 61 cents a liter.
This was an irresponsible policy to begin with, but combining this kind of crippling energy tax increase with potential tariffs from Donald Trump would push our economy into a nightmare and a tailspin.
So let's put partisanship aside and axe the tax.
Second, the Prime Minister has to put aside partisanship and in the spirit of Team Canada cancel his energy cap, which would see Alberta and Saskatchewan produce 35% less energy at a time when we need those jobs.
It is our biggest industry and our biggest export.
The incoming American president says he wants to cut gas prices in half.
Well, the only way to do it will be to import more clean Canadian energy, so the Prime Minister has to stop this assault on our biggest industry.
Next, he has to cancel all tax increases, tax increases on work, investment, and making stuff in Canada.
Finally, he needs to renew and restart the commitment to end the Stop with Lumber tariffs and the Buy America policies, just like Stephen Harper was successful in doing, even though Justin Trudeau has not been able to do that under three presidents and nine years.
On security.
About a week ago, Justin Trudeau admitted that he broke our immigration system, and that brings new challenges.
His own published documents show there are 4.9 million people here temporarily that are supposed to leave by December 31st of next year, 13 months from now.
4.9 million people.
We asked what the plan was to track their departures, and yesterday his immigration minister said, we're just going to take people at their word.
He admits that there have been two ISIS terrorists allowed into our country.
What is the plan to protect our security and reinstate sovereignty over who is in our country?
Military.
Justin Trudeau has demolished our military with poor decisions, botched procurements, and wasted money.
One thing he could do today is announce that his planned billion-dollar cut to the military is cancelled and then present a real plan to reallocate money away from lower priorities towards rebuilding our military and reinforcing our military security over North America.
And finally, on drugs.
I don't want to stop drug overdoses to please Donald Trump.
I want to stop drug overdoses so that there's not one more mother with her face buried in a pillow sobbing that she just lost her kid after 47,000 other Canadians have died.
That's more than we lost in the Second World War.
A 200% annual increase in drug overdose deaths have resulted from Judge Justin Trudeau's radical liberalization of drugs.
Justin Trudeau must put partisanship aside, not just for the sake of Team Canada, but for the sake of our people, and fully reverse his liberalization of drugs.
Ban them, prosecute those who traffic in them, secure our borders against the illegal importation of fentanyl ingredients, put people in treatment and recovery to bring our loved ones home drug-free.
That is necessary now more than ever.
Look, President Trump has the right to put his workers and his nation's security first.
I will put Canada's workers and Canada's security first.
We need a prime minister with the strength and the smarts, the brains and the backbone to stand up for this country, to rebuild our security, our military, and our economy.
That is what I will do.
Pierre Polyev is younger than Justin Trudeau, but doesn't he come across as older?
I mean, he looks a little bit younger, but he sounds so much more sober and serious.
And I think we are in serious times.
You know, I know a little bit about Justin Trudeau.
Canada's Workers First00:06:19
I haven't met him in years.
You might recall that I actually MC'd a boxing match between Trudeau and a conservative senator at the time named Patrick Brazzo.
Do you remember that?
Let me play for you a very quick clip.
I'm going to look so much younger here.
I was wearing a tuxedo.
I was, along with Brian Lilly, I was the announcer at a box.
I just want to show you a reminder of that because that was actually, I think, the last time I had a chit-chat with Justin Trudeau.
look.
You're not the shiny pony, you're the stallion.
From you, Ezzo, that means a lot.
What do you say?
It really eats you up inside, doesn't it?
It's for a good cause.
You proved me wrong.
A lot of doubters.
Is Bob Ray next?
You always gotta go there, don't you?
Listen, good for you.
And he's gonna get a haircut.
Your beautiful hair will remain.
Won't you be happy about that?
Justin Trudeau, congratulations on a fight well caught.
Yeah, I haven't talked to Trudeau since then, and I really don't have a lot of inside information about him, although I do know some people who are one degree or two degrees of separation from him.
But I think from outside observation, you would agree with me that Trudeau is full of pride.
He can never admit that he's wrong.
When he apologizes, it's one of those reverse apologies, like an ironic apology, like, I'm sorry you feel that way.
She experienced the sexual assault differently.
I apologize on behalf of past Canadian government.
Like, he never apologizes for himself.
He never admits anything wrong, and he has a vengeance about him, doesn't he?
I think that's his chief emotional characteristic, is his pride and his narcissism.
So here's what we're going to face.
Will Justin Trudeau bend the knee to Donald Trump?
And I don't mean grovel, and I don't mean humiliate himself.
I think it's possible to work with Trump in a way that doesn't require surrender.
I think Pierre Polyev showed a little bit of that way.
I mean, let me give you the example I mentioned before.
Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister of the UK under the Labour Party, is anti-Trump, and his foreign secretary, David Lamy, is extremely anti-Trump.
Here's David Lamy a few years ago on LBC Radio, just calling Trump every name in the book, including a misogynist Nazi.
Take a look at David Lamy.
Donald Trump has been tearing up all of the accords that we maintained on climate change.
If you care about climate change, you care about the future of this world, then you must stand against Donald Trump.
This is a man that is someone who thinks it's okay to describe women in the most horrendous of ways, their body parts, to speak about them in a misogynistic and deeply offensive fashion.
This is the Donald Trump that we are rolling out the red carpet for.
And you know, we don't always give a state visit to American presidents.
That was afforded to George W. Bush.
It was afforded to the great John Kennedy.
It was afforded to Barack Obama.
But we don't do it for all presidents.
Lyndon Johnson, Ford, Carter did not get one.
So why?
Why is Theresa May putting Donald Trump in this position, this pivotal position, having him alongside the Queen and all the great dignitaries across the country and in the corporation of London sitting alongsiding him and lauding him for this shameful behavior on an international stage?
We stand with the American people, but we absolutely say that our democratic values are opposed to the misogyny, opposed to the racism, opposed to Steve Bannon and the horrible white supremacy that he seems to stand for.
Absolutely want to defend the planet, as our great David Attenborough has said.
And for all of those reasons, the Speaker is right.
You cannot address Parliament at your state visit.
Jeremy Corbyn, Vince Cable, Caroline Lucas are right for saying we're having nothing to do with this state banquet.
Yeah, so that's a pretty rough choice for Foreign Secretary.
But they met with Trump.
They had dinner with Trump.
And here's David Lamy afterwards, not repudiating himself, not humiliating himself, but basically saying, I could really work with Trump.
He's actually really nice in person.
Like being diplomatic and putting the country ahead of his own ego.
I don't like David Lammy at all.
And I think what he said about Trump was outrageous.
But listen to him talk about how he gets along with Trump now.
So April 2019, you said, deluded, dishonest, xenophobic, narcissistic, Donald Trump is no friend of Britain.
Have you changed your mind?
Or is that still your view?
Here, Chris, I'm sitting here as Foreign Secretary.
I've had a meal with Donald Trump.
I've met Donald Trump.
Did you talk about this stuff?
Did you apologize?
Did he bring it up?
Not even vaguely.
I've got to say, I found him to be a very gracious host.
Did he offer you a second portion of chicken or something?
He did offer me a second portion of chicken.
He was very generous, very gracious, very keen to make sure that we felt relaxed and comfortable in his surroundings.
He was funny.
He was warm about the UK, very warm about the royal family, I've got to tell you.
Now, you know that David Lamy hates Trump.
He has said so.
And so does Kirsteimer.
But they know that the U.S.-UK relationship is so important that they're going to not necessarily grovel, but swallow their pride and just move on with being grown-ups.
And I think you're going to see them really emphasize that because the UK cannot afford to be offside with the United States.
But if that goes for the UK, it goes twice as much for Canada.
We are much more integrated with the U.S. economy.
We are completely reliant on the U.S. military.
There are so many ways we are inextricably linked to the U.S.
Canada and the NATO Summit00:08:54
So here's the question.
Will Justin Trudeau continue his performative outbursts against Trump?
Will he allow his staff to continue to disparage Trump?
Or will he be a bit of a grown-up and work with Trump to fix the border, to stop the mass migration across the border, and stop the fentanyl trade, much of which comes through from China?
Trump does not want these tariffs.
Of course not.
It would be absurd.
It would devastate Canada and harm America.
Trump wants the tariff threat to get Trudeau cracking so that on January 20th, the border is pretty much in hand already.
It's brilliant from Trump's point of view.
We will see if Trudeau can defy Stephen Harper's criticism and be a serious man.
The Taylor Swift, Justin Trudeau, will use word salad and talk around the issue.
Here's Melanie Jolie being utterly incomprehensible closer to the election when she says we're going to have some difficult conversations.
Trump's not looking for a conversation, is he?
He's looking for a fix of the border.
Here's Melanie Jolie in the word salad.
First and foremost, you know, we've been following the race.
We knew it was a tight race, and we had a plan for both a Harris win, a Trump win.
And so now we're going to make sure that we connect first and develop and nurture the relationship we already had.
So that's our goal.
But Minister, these tariffs, I mean, these are estimated to knock at least half a point off of the country's GDP.
That's enough to put the economy into recession.
So do you have any clarity on whether or not Canada is exempted from this or whether it's going to have to deal with this and maybe retaliate with tariffs of its own?
David, I don't want to speculate.
We've just been, you know, the results were given at 4 o'clock this morning.
The president was talking to the press and to his supporters.
So we're around 12 hours after just basically that historic speech.
It's an historic election.
We know that at least 35 states have as their number one market to export Canada.
We know also that there are many jobs on both sides of the border that depend on our two countries.
And so we'll be ready.
And we are ready.
Right.
But this is a promise that's been around for a while in this campaign.
So it sounds like you don't have the clarity yet.
You're still waiting to find out whether or not Canada is exempted.
Is that a clear assessment of where things are right now?
I don't think anybody watching us will think that, of course, the decisions have been taken over the past 12 hours.
There's no Secretary of Treasury.
There's no Secretary of State.
You know, let's all make sure that we breathe and we can address what we'll be working on as a country.
If there's more word salad BS like that, if Trudeau and Jolie and Chrysia Freeland can't actually solve a problem, and I don't know if they can, tell me a problem they've actually solved.
Not talked about, but have actually solved.
What's something that Justin Druid has actually accomplished?
I can only name one thing, and that is the mass legalization and decriminalization of drugs.
That's really their big achievement.
Everything else in that has been a mess.
Can they actually fix the borders?
I sort of doubt it.
Will they even try or will they stay in their defiant mode towards Trump?
We'll find out soon enough, won't we?
Stay with us.
Next, we'll talk to someone who knows about Canada-U.S. relations more than most.
David Legge is next.
To any ally, Canada, Britain, Germany, France, if you try to help the ICC, we're going to sanction you.
Well, that means I want every ally.
And you saw a little Justin in Canada and his position.
What should the penalty be?
We should crush your economy because we're next.
NATO is an extremely serious affair these days.
What to do with Russia and Ukraine?
There's a serious division of opinion.
Donald Trump has expressed his interest in wrapping things up immediately.
Joe Biden does not share that view and has, in fact, been sending new sophisticated weapon systems.
The UK has sent their Storm Shadow missile, United States, the Atakums missile system.
Now there's conversations between the UK and France about actually sending ground troops to Ukraine.
All of this happening in a compressed window of time before Trump takes office.
In other words, grave matters, whatever side of those debates you're on.
The world is in a very serious place economically.
The crises of mass immigration, of drugs, of unemployment.
And yet, amongst all of that, Justin Trudeau, an unserious man in serious times, think about it.
Canada was hosting the NATO summit in our country this week.
Well, think of what Trudeau was doing.
I mean, besides the Taylor Swift concert, I came across a brilliant summary of this on Twitter, a long-form tweet by my friend David Knightleg, who has worked in governments across Canada.
He's the boss of Elements Capital Advisors.
And I said, David, I've just got to have you on the show.
And he said, well, I'm traveling through Europe right now.
I said, perfect.
We'll grab you in the taxi.
And he joins me now via Zoom while traveling at night in Europe by taxi.
David, I'm grateful to you for jamming us in.
I wanted to catch you because what you wrote today really shook me awake about how childish Canada is now perceived in the world.
Give me a summary of some of the points you made in your tweet.
Sure, Ezra.
Well, look, you know, we live in an increasingly dangerous world, as you know.
Just out of jail for, you know, taking a picture in a free society like Canada, because there's confusion and there's a lot of concern, and we've got two obvious wars, one in the Middle East and one in Ukraine, and then we've got a host of other security considerations all over the world right now, and Canada is completely unserious about a lot of these things and has been so for a while, and I think that the new U.S.
Administration coming in has made it crystal clear that that can't stand any longer.
Um, you know the the.
I was compelled to write a note about this because when you travel as a Canadian overseas and you see your country through the lens of the press in other countries, sometimes it's just extraordinary how different the perspective is of Canada from an overseas perspective.
And you know that sort of collision of seeing Toronto on fire with, you know, Hamas supporting uh protesters with their face masked rioting.
That did not look like Canada and that was occurring in The context of Canada being the host of a NATO summit.
So as the host country, we showed the world that we can't even keep law and order in our own core cities, even for something as important as a NATO summit, where we're in particularly uh uh sort of tough shape and trying to prove to the world that we can keep our promises to our NATO allies.
We're not going to keep cheating on what it costs to be prepared in a military sense or in terms of security or intelligence sharing, and and yet we dropped the ball on something as simple as hosting a summit.
You know, and then you saw.
The next issue, of course, was the fact that uh, both our prime minister and our minister of foreign affairs sided with a very dubious, absurd judgment by a very dubious ICC judge, instead of aligning with our allies in Israel and obviously our allies in the United States.
That led to Lindsey Graham, John Thune, Tom Cotton a series of of senators that have normally had Canada's back on it on issues in the past, warning us there would be economic sanctions if we persisted in crossing them on security measures as important as the relationship of the U.s and Israel to the ICC.
Then you had the prime minister dancing.
You had Jenny Carignan at the Halifax Security Conference, calling out Jim Rice, a very important senator for Canada in the trade discussions.
It's just been a bonfire of liberal vanities of a country that's kind of lost its way, and I don't know what it's going to take, and you saw what it did take to sort of throw some cold water on our discussion nationally, which was uh, Trump saying, look, i'm going to put 25 tariffs on Canada Mexico, until you secure this northern border, you know, and and that has been a stunning shock to the Canadian system.
Trump's Border Appeal00:12:58
I, I think some people want to feel aggrieved by Trump and it is egregious, a 25 tariff, but to me it's so obviously just his his, not his, desired outcome.
He's saying, seal your border to illegal migrants, including potential terrorists and drugs, and he doesn't want the.
It's not An economic weapon.
He's saying, Can I please have your attention?
Our border is a problem.
Let me give you some encouragement to shake off your dust.
Mexico has already responded.
Their president has said, yeah, okay, message received.
Let's have a productive agreement.
Canada is in a freakout.
And I'm not saying I support putting tariffs on my own country.
I'm just saying Trump is trying to get our attention.
And I think what might happen, given how amateur and immature our government is, is instead of thinking seriously about, well, should we strengthen our border?
Should we stop fentanyl being shipped to America?
We're going to.
I'm worried that the government will take potshots at Trump instead.
Do you think there are any grown-ups at the PMO and the Foreign Policy Office that are trying to do the right thing here, like the Mexican president?
Like, why would Canada die on the hill of illegal immigration and illegal drugs?
It's not even in our interest to do so.
Well, you put your finger on it.
We should be doing that for Canadians.
You know, fentanyl is ripping apart families across Canada.
It's one of the biggest issues that we're dealing with.
Why do we have to be compelled by the American president to do the right thing for Canadian border security?
Immigration is an issue that we know has been metastasizing.
We've got an asylum system that's become completely fraudulent.
We know that organized crime and terror laundering operations use it with impunity.
Why does it take an American president to put his finger on that and say, unless you change these things that are threatening the secure northern border and changing what's been a special relationship for over 100 years?
You know, this is a new thing.
And so is the loss of the confidence of U.S. senators on the Foreign Relations Committee, the intelligence committees that have always had Canada's back.
They've finally said enough.
So, I mean, the question I think that people that are clutching their pearls right now have to ask is: what is Trump supposed to do with this situation?
Tom Hogan, who is his new border czar, said he has a 10x more likelihood of a terrorist incident coming over the northern than southern border right now, which is why they're so focused on it.
It took their intel agencies to tell us about four different terror incidents inside our country.
It took us years to follow the American demand that we named the IRGC a terrorist faction.
We know there's about six or seven hundred IRGC, that's the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp, agents working within Canada.
You know, what is it going to take for Canada to wake up and start to do its part in the security arrangement that has defined the best, closest working economic and military and energy security companionship in diplomatic circles?
The other thing I'd say, Ezra, just quickly is, you know, what Canada, what we have to understand is that the reason the world takes us so much more seriously than our economy, the size of our economy would dictate, or that our military would dictate or that our diplomatic press would dictate is because of our close relationship with the United States.
Western Europe relies on Canada to be the one that can kind of be persuasive with the U.S. when there's a close call to make, because we've always had the back of the Americans.
We've always taken a position that is aligned because our interests are so aligned with theirs and because we've had that long-standing relationship.
You know, this is not meant to be adversarial.
We had 25 U.S. senators from the Democrats and the Republicans send us nice long letters saying you really have to stop being NATO deadbeats.
You're the worst of the 31.
That's got to stop.
U.S. taxpayer can't be expected to pick up the tab all the time for Canada, not doing even its most nominal commitment, making its most nominal commitment in this regard.
So the question for those that are worried is, what would you advise President Trump to do if you were a sitting U.S. senator that knew that that northern border was poor, there was a fundamental problem, and that Americans were tired of paying Canada's bill for military and security?
Yeah.
You know, it just dawned on me two of the things you listed.
You mentioned Canada siding with this radical judge at the International Criminal Court and saying, arrest Benjamin Netanyahu.
And now, Benjamin Netanyahu, I don't think has any plans to come to Canada.
So I think the actual likelihood of Trudeau having to arrest him is zero.
I'd be surprised if he even takes his calls anymore now, frankly.
But let me just compare that to one other thing you mentioned, and that was the Canadian senior sailor, who's a woman, I forget her name right now, who chided the United States for not being the U.S., I think the incoming Secretary of Defense, a nominated Secretary of Defense, for having questions about women in combat.
After 39 years of career as a combat arms officer and risking my life in many operations across the world, I can't believe that in 2024, we still have to justify the contribution of women to their defense and to their service in their country.
And all the women sitting here in uniform, stepping in and deciding to get into harm's way and fight for their country need to be recognized for doing so.
So again, and that, folks, is the distraction, not the women themselves.
That was a terrible mistake.
First of all, she wasn't asked about it.
She went out there, I think, to try and score points for something she thought would be an applause line, and it was, because people want to be kind.
But Pete Hegseth, who's the nominee for Secretary of Defense, has said certain things.
And if you read what he's written, he's part of forward operating units.
Those units almost never contain, I can't think of an instance where those have ever contained women.
He was talking about specific combat roles.
He wasn't talking about drone operators or helicopter pilots or other things, right?
It's a relatively non-controversial notion in the context in which he said it.
But worse than that, one of the senators that really has Canada's back, Jim Reich from Idaho, is a great guy.
He's been terrific for us on so many things.
He's somebody that the other senators listened to.
He's a very important guy, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.
He was on the stage commenting in a discussion format on what he thought about the nominee.
And he said, you know, there's a variety of things to consider here.
And he said, I'm not a military guy.
I'm not going to comment on it other than to say, you know, we really appreciate this in combat.
It was very non-committal and thoughtful.
For some reason, our top general wanted to make a point of this with a senator that is extremely important to us and wasn't making a point, a negative point about women in combat at all.
And, you know, it's just one of those things.
I've got a friend who's up potentially to be in the administration from the defense side, who's a former assistant deputy secretary of defense, and he's got a couple of roles they're considering him for now.
You know, I get a call from these guys saying, what are you guys doing?
You know, it's not your fight.
It's not even your discussion.
You're the ones that haven't funded the military.
You're not keeping up with NORAD.
You're not fulfilling your requirements on Arctic security.
And you've got your top general deciding to take a shot at a guy who actually is very kind, very thoughtful on these issues.
So I thought that was a huge mistake within that very small.
I mean, that's obviously something that's not making the headlines in Canada much, but it's important within that military community.
But the similarity between that flippant comment to poke the bear when we have not carried ours.
And I know you're almost have to go.
You're at your destination there.
Thanks for letting us ride along with you.
Is the ICC, my point there is it's not going to actually become a real thing.
Netanyahu's not coming here.
So it was just a performative statement.
And same thing with this shot at the American nominee.
No one asked us.
It wasn't, it's not, it doesn't advance Canada's interests.
It's a childish, flippant remark that might have felt good in both cases, but how is that in Canada's interests?
I think we have to think, well, what is foreign policy for to advance Canada's interests?
Exactly right.
And I don't think Trudeau's in that mindset.
He wants to play to his base, play to the CBC and the Toronto Star, and be a hero poking at Donald Trump.
Last word to you, David.
Can we fix this?
Or are we on course for a disaster?
Well, look, we've got three things going for us.
One, we're the greatest nation in the world.
You know, the Americans are lucky to work with us.
And seriously, Ezra, we've been given every possible advantage in the planet.
We do have the largest, longest undefended border with the great biggest economy in the planet.
We have, you know, natural resources coming out of our ears.
You know, Alberta's got more oil than Russia, China, and the United States put together.
The United States wants to include us in their strategy for global energy security and for military preparedness and for strategic preparedness.
We just have to, in some ways, Ezra, it's like people that have been spoiled by having it so good for so long.
We've allowed these performative options that are purely about domestic politics to take the place of seeing ourselves as serious contenders that need to speak seriously when we're talking about another country.
We haven't earned the right to have a debate.
Well, we would never have earned the right to have cheap shots like that with a country that we care about, want the best for.
You know, the Americans are in a position right now where they're going through a really disruptive change in the way that the government's going to look after a Trump administration.
There's a lot of debate about it.
What they need from their best, most reliable ally and partner is considered serious response to the things they've demanded from us.
And so far they haven't got that.
And I think that there are really good people that are nonpartisan.
I'm a partisan.
I'm a conservative, but there are great people in our government and in their government that want to get this right.
And they're going to work hard on getting it right.
So I'm very optimistic that what we're going to see in the next few months is Canada focusing on things that we should have been focusing on the last nine years anyway.
Getting rid of the drug problem, fixing immigration, getting much tougher on crime, and making sure that we take Canada to a place where we can be a reliable ally, not just to the Americans, but to the Europeans as well.
Very thoughtful.
And I don't think I fully introduced you to our guests.
Of course, you were involved with the Canadian, the Alberta government.
One of your jobs was to be sort of a missionary for the oil industry, especially overseas, to convince the world that Alberta was back after its terrible holiday from history with Rachel Notley and the NDP.
So you have your job.
I don't think I properly credentialed you.
Besides being a successful businessman in your own right, your job was promoting Canada's interests, especially Alberta's interests around the world.
So you know what it's like to try and win hearts and minds with the only result being furthering Alberta's interest, not a self-indulgent performance, not taking selfies here.
And so you bring a lot of wisdom and experience.
And even just the fact that you know who's who in the zoo there is impressive.
I hope that when, God willing, Pierre Pollia forms the next government next year, that he will call upon your services to help rebuild Canada's relationships around the world.
But for today, let me just thank you for letting us sneak 20 minutes of your time while you're overseas.
I very much appreciate it.
And I'll refer people to your tweet so they can read your entire essay.
Thanks, Ezra.
Hey, I'm glad you're not in a jail cell somewhere in that great country I was talking about.
You might not be totally feeling like it's the greatest country on earth right now, but we're going to get it back to where it should be.
Right on.
David, great to see you.
Thank you very much.
Okay, great to see you.
Take care, Lara.
Thank You For Not Being Arrested00:02:57
There he is, David Knight Leg.
He is a businessman.
We talked about his role with Elements Capital Advisors, but I think his main credential for our conversation today was his role as an ambassador for the Alberta energy industry.
Stay with us.
More ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me.
Green Leopard says, Ezra, sue the police for saying your presence alone as the reason why they gave for your inciting violence total abuse of international human rights.
Well, I don't know about international human rights, but I know my Canadian rights.
I have the right to be on the public sidewalk.
I have the right to be a journalist.
And I have the right to be a Jew.
And I don't really lead with that all the time.
I mean, it's, I mean, I talk about Jewish things in Israel things from time to time, but most of what I talk about is of general interest.
I was there as a reporter for all Canadians, but it was because I was a Jew that Hamas objected and that the police said, get out of here, which is atrocious.
So that's against my Canadian civil rights.
Cliff Roberts says, I live in Montreal.
I'm sick of the police giving police escorts to terrorists.
Me too.
I think we should arrest terrorists if they're actual terrorists.
They should arrest terrorist supporters because that's against the law.
If someone is breaking another law, trespass, mischief, vandalism, uttering threats, whatever, they should be arrested for that too.
I learned today that there are 4.9 million people in Canada who do not have the legal right here to remain here permanently.
And I think if any of these pro-Hamas extremists, part of this anti-Semitic crime wave, are temporary residents in this country, they should be immediately ejected.
Like get, if you are a privileged visitor to our house and you bring your hatred and your pro-terrorism with you, get the hell out.
Fergus from Walking says, same thing in the Netherlands.
I was arrested for the same reason.
This is a global sickness.
Thank you, Ezra.
Sorry you were arrested.
Things are pretty bad over there.
I think they're further progressed than they are here in Canada.
I think the UK is the furthest gone.
Sweden is very far gone.
France is pretty far gone.
The UK is probably next in the pecking order.
And Canada and then the U.S., this is happening to the U.S., but it's not as far gone.
But it's happening all across the West.
There's going to be an election in Ireland.
I had meant to go to Ireland, but I'd just been traveling too much.
I thought I would take a day off.
I wind up getting arrested and thrown in jail on my day off.
I had actually meant to go to Ireland to cover their election.
I think immigration is one of the big issues over there.
Unfortunately, none of the parties running were taking a stand on that issue.