Ezra Levant and Dr. John Robson critique Justin Trudeau’s trade war rhetoric, citing $155B in oil/gas exports and his refusal to engage with critics like Rebel News despite court rulings. They compare Trudeau’s confrontational style—ignored at NATO (no equipment), scolded by China—to Reagan’s diplomatic ruthlessness, warning Canada risks irrelevance under Trump’s presidency. Trudeau’s feminism is exposed as hollow after dismissing Rose Knight’s assault claim ("experienced it differently") and sidelining female cabinet members, while billions fund Ottawa’s renovations and $200M London properties for officials. Levant argues Trudeau’s globalist posturing distracts from domestic failures like porous borders and fentanyl trafficking, urging Canadians to prepare financially with Rocklink Investment Partners. [Automatically generated summary]
We got to have him on more often, my friend Dr. John Robson.
We talk about Justin Trudeau and how he's just mangling our relationship with the United States.
And I put it to you, he's doing that on purpose.
Trudeau would much rather run against Trump than against Pierre Polyev.
And I think Trudeau would like to have Trump beat up the country economically so Trudeau could blame Trump for our problems instead of blaming himself who actually caused our problems.
So it's an interesting conversation.
And I'd like you to get the video version of it because I play a bunch of video clips.
And to see them, you'll need what we call Rebel News Plus.
That's the video version of this podcast.
Just go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe.
It's eight bucks a month, which might not seem like a lot of money to you, but it really adds up for us.
Please go to rebelnewsplus.com.
And by the way, with COVID behind us, who knows what the globalists are planning next?
Maybe it's the expansion of the conflict in Europe or the release of another virus or the undermining of free and fair elections.
Whatever it is, you need to be prepared.
It is essential that you take the time right now to sit down with our friends at Rocklink Investment Partners.
Rocklink will work with you to develop a financial plan for your family to give you security and peace of mind in the midst of so much uncertainty.
Our friends at Rocklink are freedom-loving conservatives who want to help other conservatives be prepared for the future.
Call Rocklink and get your investments working for you.
Call them now at 905-631-5462 or email them at info at rocklink.com.
That's Rocklink with a C. Info at rocklink.com.
Here's today's show.
Wow, Trudeau really is getting us into a trade war with America, isn't he?
It's December 12th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
shame on you you sensorious bug last night i sat down for a feature interview with my friend dr john robson he He's so smart.
I really like talking to him.
He's got a dry sense of humor.
Since that conversation, which I'm about to show you in full, Danielle Smith, the Premier of Alberta, had an amazing press conference where she basically said, all right, I'm not going to wait around for Justin Trudeau.
Retaliatory Tariffs Debate00:04:22
I am going to roll out my plan to crack down on illegal human trafficking and drug trafficking at the Alberta-Montana border.
It was a great press conference, totally solution-oriented, constructive, responsible, thoughtful, sound.
Just the right tone also.
I just want to show you a little bit of that.
And then for contrast, I'll throw to my conversation with John Robson where we see how Trudeau just, I think, deliberately is butchering the situation.
So here's a quick excerpt from Danielle Smith today.
Retaliatory oil and gas tariffs are off the table.
What about other sectors?
Is there anything further that your government would consider?
Well, just think about what retaliatory tariffs look like and who use the examples that the prime minister gave.
Ketchup and playing cards and bourbon and cherries.
So what that would mean is that cherries for Canadian consumers are 25% more expensive.
Playing cards for Canadian consumers are 25% more expensive.
Bourbon for Canadian consumers are 25% more expensive.
So that's what is being contemplated here, is making life more expensive for Canadians.
I don't think that that's the right approach.
When I was down in the U.S. at the Western Governors Conference, what I said is that there is a substantial amount of oil and gas that goes across the border.
In fact, it's somewhere in the order of $133 billion worth of trade on oil and somewhere near $22 billion worth of trade on natural gas and also lubricants and other products that come from petroleum.
If all of those have a 25% tariff, it'll make life more expensive for American consumers.
Some of the analysis we've seen is that a 25% tariff would add a dollar a gallon to every gallon of gasoline that Americans purchase.
And I don't think that when I mentioned that to all of the governors that I spoke with, their eyes went wide.
They know what that would mean.
And so I think that that is the better road is for us to talk about why it is we have such a robust and strong mutual relationship on trade that works very well for both countries.
And that's the approach we're taking.
I would say that what we need to do is address the serious concerns that the U.S. administration has identified, which are our shared concerns, the border, fentanyl in particular, the opioid death crisis as well.
We have a great plan in Alberta with rolling out our recovery-oriented system of care that we would love to see rolled out in federal penitentiaries as it's been rolled out in our provincial corrections facilities, as well as more broadly, seeing recovery communities built across the country.
We think those are the kind of things that really get to the heart of addressing it.
I also mentioned to the Prime Minister, I think he should accelerate the efforts to get to 2% of GDP spent on defense, because I think that 2032 is also probably not going to be acceptable to our American friends and allies when it comes to the significant national and international security issues that we face.
But I would say our best strategy would be this, that we recognize that we provide America with a lot of the raw materials and component parts that help to fuel their industry.
We've got various goods that go back and forth across the border, whether it's oil from here that goes to U.S. refineries that comes back into Canada as finished product, or whether it's beef that goes into the U.S. and then comes back into Canada as finished product.
Say the same thing for forestry.
You can say the same thing on component parts for manufacturing.
You can say the same thing on plastics.
That's the education that I think we need to make sure that our American counterparts understand is that this mutual trade relationship is mutual and beneficial.
And so I would be wanting to lead with how we can get more of our product into the United States, particularly on the energy front.
We know that the Americans are going to continue on a growth path and they need to have reliable partners of heavy oil.
The other options are places like Iran and Iraq and Venezuela.
And I think we can make a very good case about why it is that we should be the preferred export partner.
Wants To Get Attention00:14:42
So I'm all in favor of doing whatever we can to eliminate tariffs on all sides.
So both on American goods and Canadian goods.
And let's talk about our shared interests.
I think that's where we need to start.
You know, the other day, Justin Trudeau lamented the fact that Kamala Harris didn't win in the United States, not because she was good, but because she was a woman alone.
To Trudeau, that's the most important thing, but not important enough for him to step down in favor of a woman.
You might recall two women contested the liberal leadership at the same time as him.
I don't know why he didn't take matters into his own hands and step aside for them.
What a hypocrite.
But here we are in Canada.
And in fact, the leader of the country in terms of dealing with Trump's concerns is a woman, Danielle Smith.
It's a coincidence.
It's not because of her gender.
Trudeau should ditch that critical gender theory DEI stuff and just get on with governing the country.
Without further ado, here's my conversation with my friend, Dr. John Robson.
Donald Trump, of course, grew up in the mean streets of New York.
I can't think of any more competitive industry in the world than the cutthroat industry of commercial real estate in Manhattan.
You have to deal with government regulators.
You have to deal with the unions.
You have to deal with the mafia.
And those are just human problems, let alone economics, the price of things, the recessions.
Succeeding in New York real estate means you have to be a deal maker.
You have to be a negotiator.
And in fact, long before Donald Trump was thought of as a politician, he was known as a master negotiator who would typically buy things in a distressed state and turn them around.
And he was actually famous, his book, The Art of the Deal, which I encourage you to read, by the way, is a genuine book of how to negotiate.
It's not just a self-serving book, although it is that as well.
Contrast Donald Trump's entire life of wheeling, dealing, and negotiating.
I mean, for heaven's sake, the guy actually managed to partially solve world peace by getting a peace deal between Israel and several of its Muslim neighbors.
Contrast that with Justin Trudeau, whose entire life has been planned and arranged for him by his father's trust fund, the lawyers and accountants who were always there to mop things up.
You might even recall in his first campaign, Trudeau talking about one of his brothers who got in trouble for, I think it was a marijuana crime, and his dad's lawyers just called up and police made it go away.
Donald Trump is the bruiser on the streets.
Justin Trudeau was the VIP silver spoon kid who never had to do any negotiating.
I think this is going to be like a lion negotiating with a little doe with Bambi.
Joining us now to talk about how this trade war will go is our friend John Robson, Dr. John Robson, an author, journalist, and historian.
John, great to see you again.
Thanks for taking the time.
A pleasure to be here.
You know, I think the very first interesting thing to note is that Justin Trudeau did not bring the deputy prime minister, finance minister Christy Freeland, and did not bring the foreign minister, Melanie Jolie, to his meeting at Mar-a-Lago.
And I think that shows a little bit of self-awareness that those two diversity hires would have not only been torn to shreds, but would have deeply unimpressed Trump and his advisors as unserious people.
What do you think of the choice to leave those two diversity hires at home?
Well, I wouldn't have taken them along, that's for sure.
And of course, I wouldn't have taken Justin Trudeau either.
They all rubbed Trump and the kind of people who associate with Donald Trump and vote for him the wrong way.
And so Trudeau had to go down there and somehow play contrary to type, which I don't think he did a very good job of doing.
But again, if you've spent any time listening to Melanie Jolie's words, it's just as well that she wasn't there contributing to the problem.
Well, what is the right answer?
Because, I mean, I'm not sure how sympathetic you are to Trump.
I love the guy, but at the end of the day, I'm a Canadian and I want Canada to succeed.
Now, I think we should fix the border issues for our own sake.
The idea of illegal immigrants crossing either way is something we should fix.
And the idea of drugs being trafficked into America, including from China, passing through Canada, I think is a terrible thing.
I think we should fix the border for its own sake.
If it takes Donald Trump to sort of spark our attention, so be it.
I think there's a way to respect ourselves, to have some dignity, to defend our sovereignty, but also do a deal with this consummate dealmaker.
I think that's what the Mexican president has done.
What would you do if you were in charge of this file for the federal government?
As you say, this is one of the things that should have been fairly easy.
You go down, you meet with Donald Trump when he jokes about us becoming the 51st state.
You say that if things don't work out for you, you could become the 11th province.
And you let that one go with that.
And then you say, Yeah, there are some issues here that we need to deal with.
We're aware that there's too much money laundering in Canada.
We're aware that our National Police Force has trouble dealing with organized crime.
This is a problem for Canada.
It's also a problem for the United States.
And we accept that we didn't deal with it as quickly as we should have, but we're going to deal with it now.
Same thing about not having people crossing the border who shouldn't be.
Either way, we're going to deal with that.
We look forward to working with you.
Finally, we recognize we haven't spent enough on defense and that we've got a lot of work to do there.
And again, we're sorry that it took so long, but we're here to tell you that we're serious about it now.
Because all of these things are very much in Canada's interest.
One of the ironies of our pathetic defense spending, our utterly fouled-up defense procurement at our essential state of complete unreadiness, is that it weakens us in dealing with the Americans as well as with our enemies.
And so for all these reasons, any sensible administration in Canada would already be fixing this stuff.
So it shouldn't have been hard to go down there and say, yeah, we're busted, but we're on it.
And then you'd be fine.
You know, people said, well, what did you do?
I went down and I told the president we understood his concerns.
And in a way, you see, this, you asked about, you know, what do I think about Donald Trump?
I've said all along he is the wrong answer to the right question.
And this seems to me as a classic case in point.
Why did it take Donald Trump to light a fire under us on these issues that we should have lit a fire under ourselves on?
That's rather an embarrassing situation for Canada, but it has happened.
It's too late now to go back and fix these things seven, eight years ago.
But we can respond now by saying, gosh, if even Donald Trump sees a problem, we're certainly not going to miss it.
Let's get on this.
We're not idiots.
And if we don't do that, then we are idiots.
So let's not be.
John, I want to play an extended clip of Trudeau.
I think he was speaking at a conference in Halifax where he was talking about the way Canada would fight against the U.S. economy, which is 10 times as large as ours, by putting tariffs on Heinz ketchup and cherries and playing cards.
I'll play the whole clip here.
There's two things about it.
The first is Trudeau is sounding really tough, which, you know, I think he actually, this don't know if that works when you're dealing with Trump.
I think if you come across as tough and more belligerent, Trump will escalate.
But I think the real thing I take away from this clip, and I'm going to play it in about a second, is that instead of addressing what Trump actually wants, Trudeau is moving straight to, I'll fight back.
Trump actually wants us to close the border to drugs and illegal immigrants.
That's all he said.
That's all his tweet said.
To get our attention, he's saying, or else I'll whack you with a tariff.
Trump doesn't want a tariff.
He doesn't want a tariff on the Auto Pact.
He doesn't want a tariff on oil.
Those are his two big purchases from Canada, by the way.
He just wants to get our attention.
And Trudeau moves immediately towards this trade war.
It gets really detailed in the trade war.
Instead of doing what you said, instead of acknowledging Trump's grievance, and he could even play the Wroxham Road card.
He said, Yeah, Donald, yes, Donald, we'll solve our problem, but can you please stop the human trafficking through Wroxham Road or whatever?
Like, you can play a card against Trump, but he immediately moves away from what Trump actually wants to his delicious daydream of fighting against Trump.
My thesis is he wants to fight against Trump because that's an easier opponent for him than Polyev.
Here, take a look at this.
I'm going to let this clip run for a few minutes, but look at how exhilarated Trudeau is about a trade war.
President-elect Trump got elected on a commitment to make life better and more affordable for Americans.
And I think people south of the border are beginning to wake up to the reality that tariffs on everything from Canada would make life a lot more expensive for Americans.
So that's part of the argument.
The other part is we will, of course, as we did eight years ago, respond to unfair tariffs in a number of ways.
And we're still looking at the right ways to respond.
But our responses to the unfair steel and aluminum tariffs were what ended up lifting those tariffs last time.
It wasn't that Americans were paying more for their steel and aluminum, although that was annoying to some people in the States.
It was the fact that we put tariffs on bourbon and Harley-Davidsons and playing cards and Heinz Ketchup and cherries and a number of other things that were very carefully targeted because they were politically impactful to the president's party and colleagues,
was how we were able to punch back in a way that was actually felt by Americans.
But we know a few things about Donald Trump.
First of all, we know that when he says these things, he means them.
But at the same time, we also know that his approach will often be to challenge people, to destabilize a negotiating partner, to offer uncertainty and even sometimes a bit of chaos into the well-established hallways of democracies and institutions.
And one of the most important things for us to do is not to freak out, not to panic.
Now, knowing that, yes, these would be absolutely devastating means we have to take them seriously, but it does mean we have to be thoughtful and strategic, not go around making our opponents' arguments for him, but making our arguments in a significant and united way.
John, I got to tell you, that was actually a fairly detailed policy answer by Trudeau.
I think he's actually had some briefings on this matter.
Like, for him to know those details is surprising to me.
But I say again, instead of working to solve the problem, he's talking about how he's sort of ready for a fight and America should be ready for him.
I think he wants that fight.
What do you think of my theory?
Is it too far-fetched that Trudeau would love a fight against Trump because A, Trump is less popular in Canada than Polyev.
And B, Trudeau could say, hey, Canadians, the reason why our economy is trashed is not because of me.
It's because of this Trump guy and his tariffs.
Don't blame me.
I'm here to defend you.
What do you think of that thesis?
I think that you're basically right, though.
You may have thought it through more completely than he has.
And I grant it's nice that he was briefed on an issue.
That would be an improvement if that happened more often.
But one of the interesting things about Trudeau is that for all his purported sunny ways, he's actually a very belligerent person.
And you see this whenever he's challenged, he gets that kind of, and then he comes at you and he gets very nasty very quickly.
And that is actually his default mode.
And somebody had to tell him, this isn't the moment.
This isn't the fight to pick.
And you could go in there and you could say, you know, I don't think Donald Trump wants a trade war.
I think Americans understand, as we certainly do in Canada, that the last time the United States turned its back on free trade in the early 1930s, it was disastrous for the world and for them.
And I think what the president is trying to do is get our attention on some issues where, in fact, he's entitled to our attention.
You know, if there's a trade war, there'll be retaliation and we'll all lose.
But we're going to make a point of not going down that road.
We are going to work with the Americans on these issues that they're rightly concerned about, and we're going to ask them to deal with some issues that we're concerned about.
I mean, the border is porous on both sides, you know.
And the Americans are complaining, for instance, about Mexico letting a lot of people in.
Well, the United States has let a lot of people in.
But we're going to deal with this like adults and we're going to find a solution that means everybody better off.
But Trudeau, in fact, it's a funny thing.
You don't maybe think of him naturally this way.
Remember him elbowing people on the floor of the House of Commons.
You look what happens when a cabinet member crosses him.
He escalates very, very quickly.
He doesn't back down.
He throws people under the bus.
And the trouble with trying to throw Donald Trump under the bus is that I think he's probably too heavy to lift.
You just can't do that to an American president.
But Trudeau is a person who he's not very teachable and he has quite a limited skill set.
And so he's in some trouble at this point because his natural reaction isn't the appropriate one and he doesn't adapt well.
I think you're so right.
I mean, his idea of maybe he'll be the global leader against Trump, that feels like a 2016 move.
Because I look around the world and I see every regime, left-wing or right-wing, authoritarian or democratic, saying, okay, Trump is back.
We know what that means.
We've got to deal with him.
And let's just, all the mean things we've said over the past four years, we better sort of memory hold them.
Like to me, to watch the hardcore left-wing government of the UK suck up as hard as possible Donald Trump is all I need to know about how other countries perceive Trump.
The fact that both Zelensky and Putin are vying for Trump's favor.
That's how it is in 2024.
And I think Trudeau believes there's some, I don't even know who would applaud him fighting Trump, but I don't know if it's going to work.
Federal Court Ruling00:02:34
As to your point, you're right.
Trudeau does get mean.
We've tasted that at Rebel News.
We poke at him more than most, and he bans us from things.
Let me just play a quick clip of when he banned us from the leaders' debates.
We had a court order us in.
The court said we're journalists.
They can't ban us.
Trudeau didn't care what the court said.
He wouldn't even answer our questions.
He was totally furious and disgusted with us because we hurt his feelings and he went into mean guy mode, not Sonny Waits.
I mean, I just say a quick clip: take a look at how Trudeau deals with it when he doesn't get his way.
The only reason that I'm allowed to ask you this question is because today the federal court ruled that the government doesn't have the right to determine who is or is not a journalist.
This is the second election in a row that the court has been overturning your government.
Do you still insist on being able to make that decision and won?
First of all, questions around accreditation were handled by the press gallery and the consortium of networks who have strong perspectives on quality journalism and the important information that is shared with Canadians.
The reality is, organizations, Organizations like yours that continue to spread misinformation and disinformation on the science around vaccines,
around how we're going to actually get through this pandemic and be there for each other and keep our kids safe, is part of why we're seeing such unfortunate anger and lack of understanding of basic science.
And quite frankly, your I won't call it a media organization, your group of individuals need to take accountability for some of the polarization that we're seeing in this country.
And I think Canadians are cluing into the fact that there is a really important decision we take about the kind of country we want to see.
And I salute all extraordinary, hardworking journalists that put science and facts at the heart of what they do and ask me tough questions every day, but make sure that they are educating and informing Canadians from a broad range of perspectives, which is the last thing that you guys do.
Well, that's him being polite.
Importance Of Canadian Leadership00:15:42
Of course, when he encounters rebel news journalists, his bodyguards beat them up.
Here's David Menzies outside a liberal fundraising event.
Trudeau's entourage literally beat him up, dropped him by the side of the road, didn't charge him with anything.
Remember this outrage?
What are you doing?
Get it!
Get off me!
Hey, I can.
Hey, this is assault.
I'm on a side.
What is this?
I'm on a sidewalk.
I am on a sidewalk.
What is this?
You cannot push me.
No Russian organ.
Hey!
Are you kidding?
Are you kidding?
I told you.
What is this?
You can't.
Am I under arrest?
I'M WHY UNDER ARREST!
John, I'm just making your point.
Yeah, I remember that.
And look, I can understand a politician going, oh, no, it's David Menzies, right?
But then they're meant to know how to deal with that kind of thing.
And interestingly, when you talk about sort of a global resistance to Trump led by the great Trudeau, you remember back in 1983, toward the very end of his prime ministership, Pierre Trudeau tried such a thing.
He didn't like Ronald Reagan, and he went on this peace tour.
And everybody was, who is this Canadian fool?
Nobody was even slightly interested in it.
They were quite concerned about Ronald Reagan.
In the end, I think most of them ended up quite impressed by him.
And again, you look at Donald Trump.
The man isn't even inaugurated yet.
And look what happened in Syria.
Obviously, the fact that Trump is prone to taking drastic and sudden action gets people's attention.
He is a bit unpredictable.
You don't always know if he meant it.
But he certainly has the capacity to act decisively and not to be cowed by people saying, oh, but Mr. Trump, that's not how it's normally done.
And again, Trudeau, I think, is out of his depth here.
I was thinking, does he think he can win a fight with Donald Trump?
I don't think he thinks it through that far.
He's just not that, doesn't have that kind of mind.
But he really, if that's what he's going to do, then the sooner he takes that walk in the snow, the better.
We've got snow.
Go walk in it.
Because, I mean, his party is obviously rock bottom in the poll.
J. Trump's not popular in Canada.
Yeah, well, I know somebody else who isn't popular in Canada.
But again, Justin Trudeau is very, very focused on Justin Trudeau, extraordinarily high opinion of himself based on we know not what.
And so it's very hard for him to recognize when he's not master of a situation.
He doesn't like it and he doesn't react well to it.
And again, not only his reaction to the joke about the 51st state, but the whole Canadian chattering class, the whole political culture, nobody could laugh.
Nobody could look at it and say, okay, yeah, we're not joining the United States.
For one thing, they wouldn't take us because they'd get, you know, they wouldn't get one state, they'd get six or ten, and they'd all be Democratic, except maybe Alberta.
But hey, let's think about our federation.
Let's use this as a useful way of asking ourselves: well, if we were to rethink our federal system, if we were to look at the strengths and weaknesses and compare it to the United States, maybe our Senate could work more like theirs.
Maybe we should have more provinces.
This is one of my particular bugbears, that we should split up Ontario and Quebec into five provinces, BC into three, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba into two, even Newfoundland and Labrador.
And then we could have a Senate with six senators from each province.
They could be elected by the provincial legislatures.
There are a lot of things we could do.
So we could have taken Trump's ham-fisted remark.
Like Trump says stuff like that.
You don't take it that seriously.
But we could have then said, okay, but let's talk about the Federation without doing the usual rather stupid Canadian thing of saying, no, we need some bold new ideas that are exactly like all the ideas we already had.
And what if we did want to do things different?
Even I mentioned, extended a documentary on this back in 2016.
The Australian system for dealing with deadlocks between the Senate and the House, which is really ingenious.
If they absolutely get to loggerheads over a piece of legislation, you dissolve them both and have an election.
If they're still stuck, they sit as one body and vote.
And this never happens because everybody can do the math and see where it would end.
So you can have a Senate that represents the territories and the states there, the provinces here, effectively real input, and yet not undermine the fundamental cornerstone position of the House of Commons.
But did we talk about any of that?
Or people go, oh, Trump said we'd become the 51st state.
Well, well, well.
I mean, seriously, are we grown-ups?
You know, anyone who's watched a Trump rally, and by the way, most Trump derangement syndrome folks have not.
If you come, first of all, the first thing you'll see about a Trump rally is that they're long.
He'll talk for 45 minutes, an hour, sometimes 90 minutes.
The second thing is he's a natural storyteller and entertainer.
And many people remark on his comedic timing.
Like, you've just got to realize the guy's a jokester.
And so when he publishes a tweet like he did calling Trudeau the governor of the state of Canada, it's a joke.
And you can be offended by it.
Or you can fairly say, well, that's not that funny, but you've got to know it's a joke.
But here's the thing.
Here's one more thing about Trump, if I may.
And listen, we all have our opinions on the guy, but you tell me if you agree with this, John.
I say that Donald Trump is quick to anger, but quick to forgive.
You might recall when he was in a real war of words with the New York Times, like just going hard at it.
Well, the owner of the New York Times, a Mexican oligarch named Carlos Slim, flew up to the States, you know, bent the knee, they had dinner, and Trump published a photo positively effusive about his new friend, Carlos Slim.
Think of Kim Jong-un.
You know, Trump threatening him, but then they meet and they sort of hug it out.
Trump's a deal maker.
And I think that Trudeau knows how to prickle Trump and poke him, but he doesn't know if there's one word Trudeau has never said, not that Trudeau has to say, I'm sorry, but Trudeau has never actually swallowed his pride in his life.
Let me show you that Trudeau prodding Trump as being stupid and his voters being stupid and thoughtless and sexist.
Take a look at this.
Thank you for your thoughtfulness.
I hope some of the things I said actually pierced through the haze of challenging situations everyone's in.
Canadians are fundamentally thoughtful about the kind of future we want, the kind of solutions we're going to put forward to improve our communities, to improve our neighborhoods, to build a better set of opportunities for our kids.
And every election is about that as we approach what will be an election year next year.
And my only request for everyone is to be really thoughtful and go into the choices you make with eyes wide open.
I think there's a number of folks in different countries, and I won't point out any particular one, where folks are going to be wondering about the choice they may be made in elections.
Let's not be that kind of country in Canada.
Let's be deliberate about the choices we make.
If we want to stop fighting climate change, if we want to re-legalize assault-style weapons, if we want to put back into question women's rights, if we want to scrap $10 a day child care across the country and stop delivering free dental care to vulnerable seniors, and in a democracy, that's a choice people can make.
Get rid of the CBC, too.
That's a choice people can make.
But let's take on the responsibility as electors, as thoughtful agents of change in our communities, to be smart about no matter how much we want change, let's not fall into an easy trap of voting for change for the worse.
Canadians deserve better, and I know they're going to pick it.
So Trudeau's good at angering Trump, and Trudeau's people, Trudeau, Trump's people will be furious with that.
Is Trudeau good at making up after a fight?
John, can you tell me a single person that Trudeau has fought with that he has ever then reconciled with?
And I'm not talking about an absolute groveling apology, although Trudeau makes groveling apologies for Canada all the time.
Has Trudeau ever, not even bent the knee, because that implies submission.
Has he ever had a reconciliation with anyone?
I can't think of it.
Yeah, I mean, he's very good at apologizing for other people's misdeeds, but he can't do his own.
And one of the things that's a sign of a narcissist, they have a huge discard pile, right?
And so Trudeau, he does not forgive and he does not forget.
And one might say of Trump, you could praise him for his quick to anger, quick to forgive, or you could say he's kind of childlike.
But whatever you think of it, there are ways of taking advantage of the fact that the man is known to be this way.
And I want to, by the way, just bring in as another contrast, mentioning Ronald Reagan again.
Reagan had this bowl of jelly beans in his cabinet meeting.
And if discussions got too heated and people were going to say things that would be hard to take back, Reagan would pass around the jelly beans because he had thought this through.
And he said, it's really hard to be cranky and mad at someone while you're eating a jelly bean.
And so Reagan was, somebody else called Reagan the most warmly ruthless man they'd ever met.
So he knew how to make tough decisions and he knew how to deal with people who weren't getting the job done.
But there was no malice in Reagan or very little.
And in Trudeau, there's a lot of malice and there's very little self-awareness.
And that combination means that you're not good at backing away from things.
And incidentally, you know, when he talks about, oh, he's such a feminist and so on.
But look what happens when a woman in his cabinet defies him.
Under the bus, she goes, strong women do not please Justin Trudeau.
And so the insolence of that, or saying, oh, and some people may regret their electoral choices.
You know who regrets their electoral choices?
Most of the Canadians who voted for the Liberal Party.
So to say that with such a remarkable lack of awareness, that kind of cheap shot, this undergraduate seminar quality that Trudeau always seems to have about him.
He's just, he's not up to the job.
Conservatives warned us about this back in 2015.
And it was true, as someone said, and he never will be.
He's just, personal growth isn't his thing either.
And so we're in a situation with an American president who can be hard to deal with, whose views a lot of people find troubling.
We need somebody who's really good.
Like with the way Brian Mulroney was good at handling Ronald Reagan, it's probably one of the things he did best.
And I'm not a huge Mulroney fan, but he sure was, in that regard, he had the personal skills to get along fine with Ronald Reagan.
Justin Trudeau doesn't get along well with people, as a matter of fact.
He, you know, sort of a charismatic figure up there on the stage by himself, but he's not a Hailfellow well met.
He's not the kind of person who wins the respect of those who have dealings with him over time.
And we need somebody in this country who can represent Canada intelligently in dealing with a somewhat problematic and prickly American president.
And I just better him than the foreign minister, but that's a low bar to clear.
You know, it's so funny everyone talks about Trudeau's emotional IQ or whatever.
Maybe everyone doesn't talk about that, but that was his strength originally.
He could, I mean, he's more emotional than intellectual.
But for all that, he lacks a social IQ in dealing with world leaders.
Like whether it's the leader of India, who basically has declared a diplomatic war against us, or the leader of China who has publicly scolded Trudeau and interferes at will in our democracy, or Georgia Maloney, who can't hide her disgust with Trudeau.
Like I look around the world country by country.
When Trudeau goes to G20 meetings or NATO meetings, no one even cares what he says.
No one even notices if he's there.
No one missed him at the Notre Dame Cathedral.
Canada didn't send a delegation to the large NATO exercises because we don't have the equipment.
I just think that Trudeau has isolated himself.
He's the master of our little domain, and he's a big shot in a small pool.
And I think Trump has such large problems that he intends to resolve.
He's going to try for world peace between Russia and Ukraine.
He's going to try for world peace in the Middle East round two, the Abraham Accords part deux.
He's going to try and, you know, with Elon Musk, tackle the sides of government.
He has huge, enormous files, any one of which would be a miraculous achievement.
Trump's going to try it all.
I don't think he's just going to spend the time or mental energy dealing with our pouty PM who's who is, I don't know, I don't think Trudeau is as clever, as smart, or as powerful as he thinks.
I don't think this is going to end well for Canada.
I think we're going to have a bumpy one year where Trump is going to swipe at Trudeau and hit the rest of us.
And then hopefully Pierre Polyev will save us from Trudeau.
Last word from you, John.
Yeah, this is a situation that is not suited to Trudeau's skills, whatever they are.
I mean, he does have some kind of empathy in the short run.
Narcissists generally do, but it runs dry because they're only in it for themselves.
And we need somebody who's in it for Canada.
And we need somebody who's good at a lot of things he's not good at.
So, yeah, when it comes to buyers' remorse over a politician, we're in for a bout of it.
Great to see you again, Dr. John Robson.
Really good to catch up with you and look forward to talking to you again.
Oh, it was a pleasure.
Right on.
Well, stay with us.
letters to me next.
Oh, hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me.
Metzler Jane Jay says, why would it be bad for Canadians to join the U.S.?
Taxes would be lower, prices cheaper, freedom to live and work in a warmer place and access to a larger market for business.
Why exactly would it be bad for Canadians?
I hear what you're saying.
There are a lot of reasons to love America, and no two countries that I can think of are closer friends.
But we have our own history.
We have a slightly different culture.
I think the things you're talking about we can get without merging countries.
We can vacation there.
I think there would be a lot of benefits.
We would have the stronger First Amendment protections for our freedom of speech.
We would have a stronger economy.
We would have a stronger defense.
We would probably have smaller government.
Those are a lot of good things.
It's sort of a failure of Canada that we haven't been able to compete with those quality of life issues on our own.
And I tell you, there's a lot of people in Alberta who would absolutely want to join America because, again, Alberta is the source of so much American oil imports.
And I think Albertans have that freedom mentality.
And I think if Alberta went, well, Saskatchewan would probably go.
And does Vancouver have more in common, let's say, with Seattle and LA and San Francisco than with Ottawa and Montreal?
Benefits Of Joining America00:02:19
Probably.
I think that Canada has to get its act together.
You might recall that the whole purpose of building the Canadian Pacific Railway was to join the country together with two bands of steel because the Americans were eyeing what they call manifest destiny.
You had Alaska up there.
America was eyeing the whole North American continent.
We can't take for granted our independent country.
And some people would say, Ezra, how come you're not more pro-American?
I am pro-American.
I like being Canadian, though.
I just think Canada has been failing the last nine years under Trudeau, and Trump's about to make America even more awesome.
Joelle Hode says, I wonder if Trudeau would still be a feminist if instead of Pierre being the leader of the conservatives, it was a woman instead.
Well, that's an interesting point because the Trudeau liberals have never had a woman as a leader.
I look around the world and there have been women leaders of various conservative parties.
I think that Trudeau is not actually a feminist, though.
It's something he says to pretend he's progressive and deserves the vote of the left.
And I actually think the main reason, if you ask me, what is the real reason Trudeau talks about being a male feminist?
I think it is a preemptive strike because I think as a young man, he had a lot of sexual harassment and sexual assault complaints against him.
We've all heard the rumors of why he had to leave that private school in Vancouver midterm.
Since when do teachers leave in the middle of a school year?
He's never answered questions about that.
We know for a fact that he sexually assaulted Rose Knight in Creston, B.C.
And he, as you remember, just said, well, she experienced it differently.
So if you've got a lifetime of treating women as property, which is what he learned from his own father, Pierre Trudeau, how do you defend against that?
How do you get out ahead of that?
Well, you claim you're a feminist and you go through all this feminist mumbo-jumbo, hoping that when someone comes forward, you have built up enough goodwill.
It's like Bill Clinton.
Bill Clinton, who treated women in his private life as trash, claimed to be a feminist and the feminist movement forgave him.
Chris Cross says, how much is it costing taxpayers to upgrade the Capitol in Ottawa?
Why Multi-Million Dollar Homes?00:01:20
No wonder we are taxed to death.
Pierre is going to have fun selling all these properties.
You mean Pierre Polyev?
Well, yeah, they're renovating the center block of parliament right now.
You know, the main parliamentary building with the peace tower that is so famous?
That is not being used for sitting the House of Commons right now.
They turned the train station across the street into the parliament while they reno, and that's got to be a multi-billion dollar job.
It's an incredible amount of money.
But I was astonished to learn from Franco Terrazzano that there's $200 million worth of buildings that Canada owns in London.
Like, what was it, 50 or 60 residences?
I mean, there may be some cases where you have an official residence.
I don't know why people can't just pay for their own rent like the rest of us do.
But if there's some reason, why are we putting them in multi-million dollar homes?
I know London is an expensive city.
I understand that.
But the average price of those properties is like two and a half, three and a half million dollars per home.
Why don't they just live a little further away?
London, I'll tell you one thing about London.
They've got a great train system, a great subway system.
You don't have to live right at your workplace.
I'm glad Franco's on the file.
Well, that's our show for today.
Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, see you at home.