Ezra Levant’s show dissects CBC’s $14.9M executive bonuses—criticized as hypocritical amid job cuts and 3% primetime ratings—while Chuck Thompson and Leon Maher allegedly lash out at media for "unfair" scrutiny, ignoring a November ethics fine against CEO Catherine Tate. Guest Lauren Gunter links Trudeau’s March 2025 resignation bid to voter backlash over rising crime (44% under Liberals), military decline (food banks, outdated gear), and progressive policies like DEI, predicting a Conservative landslide. Viewers echo outrage: Little Bo Peep 240 calls it a "decade of darkness," CAF members warn against recruiting, and Jocelyn Como’s father’s sacrifice feels betrayed by identity-over-merit hiring. Trudeau’s tenure may collapse under elite mismanagement and public disillusionment. [Automatically generated summary]
New year, new you, same old Johnson Trudeau and the CBC.
Neither one of them care for any more scrutiny.
It's January 2nd, 2025.
I'm Sheila Gunnarid, but you are watching the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Newly revealed emails obtained by Blacklock's reporter show executives at the CBC whining about what they call unfair coverage from other media outlets regarding the CBC's executive bonus program.
Imagine that.
Canada's entitled Billion Dollar Plus taxpayer-funded bloated behemoth of a state broadcaster is upset that their buddies in the media dared to report the truth about their $14.9 million in bonuses.
And let me just stop you right here.
That $14.9 million that they spent in executive bonuses, performance bonuses, if you can imagine that, it's actually more money than the CBC spends on Indigenous language programming.
So next time the CBC tells you that there would be no Indigenous language programming if not for them, well, I mean, even they don't think that.
And when did these bonuses get handed out?
Well, right when the CBC was slashing 346 jobs, crying poor at parliamentary hearings and watching their ad revenue plummet.
Yet somehow they found millions of dollars for executive payouts.
You make about half a million dollars and plus you haven't ruled out bonuses, so maybe more than that.
Would market rates mean that executive vice presidents may be on salary for over a million bucks a year?
I'm sorry, I'm not following your logic here.
If you are competing in the ecosystem as you described it, are you having to pay potentially executive vice presidents a million dollars a year?
I think the deputé Champu raised this question with me last appearance when we talked about the compensation at Belt and at other DVIA and other media companies.
We are not paying anywhere near, as I said, we stay to about 50% of market rates.
Gotcha.
So could you confirm how many CBC employees may be earning in the range of your salary or higher?
I don't believe anybody at CBC Hajio Canada has a base salary higher than mine.
What about if you factored in bonuses?
Would there be salaries that would be comparable to yours?
Yes, there would be at the executive vice president level.
Okay.
So would there be any indicators in your business performance that would cause you to consider that you might be overpaying some of your employees based on the performance of the organization?
Are there any indicators that would cause concern in your mind to overpayment for what the CBC is producing and what the outcomes are?
Absolutely not.
As I've said before, we do an annual review with the board of directors with outside experts to check on that very question.
We're constantly mapping salaries right through the unaffiliated groups to look at that they are, as I said, at a 50 percentile.
Again, performance bonuses.
What is the level of performance that you'd have to hit to not qualify for a performance bonus?
Now, according to these emails, Chuck Thompson, the CBC's chief of staff, had the audacity to complain that outlets like the Canadian press didn't give them, quote, enough time to explain the bonuses.
I think those bonuses explain themselves, don't you?
And Leon Maher, the CBC's director of media relations, griped that CP had the nerve to report the facts based on publicly available records before waiting for CBC's spin doctors.
This isn't just entitlement.
It's a refusal to take accountability for what they're doing with your money.
But let's take a step back for a second.
This isn't the CBC's first scandal, and we know it won't be their last until they are mercifully defunded post-October 2025.
Just two months ago in November of 2024, the ethics commissioner fined Catherine Tate, the CBC's CEO, for conflict of interest violations.
What a liberal thing to do.
It's true, the head of our taxpayer-funded state broadcaster violated ethics rules.
Just like her bosses in the Liberal Party, Tate had undisclosed dealings that created conflicts of interest, all while sitting at the top of an organization that constantly cries about being underfunded.
And let's not forget, Tate isn't exactly scraping by.
The woman's not hard-pressed out there.
She's raking in nearly $500,000 a year.
Best guess.
She won't divulge her salary.
And we know she gets a performance bonus for being the CEO of a failing state broadcaster on top of that.
And yet she has the gall now to go to Parliament and ask for an additional 500 million annually because in her words, the CBC is, quote, not out of the woods.
Minister, when the CEO of CBC, Ms. Tate, and the board appeared before this committee, the board made it clear that they approved of her performance as the CEO of the public broadcaster.
But it was also made clear that it is your call whether or not she gets a bonus.
My question, when the board made clear that they approve of her performance, do you and will you be planning on awarding Ms. Tate a bonus?
For now, I can tell you that the decision has not been made yet.
I'd remind you also that the Privacy Act means that we can't disclose the details of people's pays and contracts.
So the decision has not been taken.
And we'll continue to look at the issue in light of Ms. Tate's performance.
But here's where it gets even better or worse, depending on how much patience you have for this kind of waste.
And I am completely out of it.
Catherine Tate racked up thousands of dollars in expenses for a trip to Paris to attend the Olympics while already on a holiday in France.
Ms. Tate, I just want to clarify a couple of things that I heard today.
So first, did you say that you were on a personal trip to France, decided to extend your vacation, go to the Olympics, and then bill the taxpayer for it?
Is that correct?
I was on a personal trip to France and I did not bill the taxpayer for my flight or travel from Canada.
What did you bill the taxpayer for?
Hotel and the train to get to Paris.
Where does your personal trip end and your taxpayer billing begin?
When I, as part of my job, being at the opening of the Olympics was absolutely expected of me, so I interrupted my holiday and took the four days to go to the Olympics.
Could you understand why that sounds concerning to somebody?
Just because, you know, a bit of a weird situation where you get to go on a trip, you're having your personal time, and then you just unilaterally get to decide what becomes work and what doesn't.
Well, not if I'm not charging the company for the trip.
But you did charge the taxpayer $6,000.
When I was working in Paris, I did, yes.
But could you understand why it would be concerning to make that decision?
It would be concerning if the CEO of CBC Hajio Canada did not attend the opening of the Olympics, given it was one of the most important events of our calendar year.
Yes.
While Canadians are struggling to make ends meet, Tate was whining and dining and flying at the taxpayers' expense to the city of light.
And what was the purpose of this trip?
CBC isn't even the lead broadcaster for the Olympics anymore.
By the way, what woods are the CBC in, Catherine?
Canadians are the ones not out of the woods quite yet.
Canadians are struggling to keep up with the rising cost of living.
Families are tightening their belts.
Businesses are laying off employees.
And our economy is on shaky ground at best.
And those are all due to the Trudeau policies that CBC acts as apologists for.
And while Canadians are forced to make sacrifices, the CBC is padding executive salaries, cruising around first class, and demanding more money, your money, with zero accountability.
Let's not forget that CBC topped the Canadian Taxpayers Federation's naughty list this year.
Why?
Because of their blatant disregard for transparency and their insatiable appetite for taxpayer dollars.
It's not enough that they already receive $1.4 billion a year from us.
They want more, these hungry, hungry hippos.
And let's talk about declining viewership.
Fewer and fewer Canadians are tuning into the CBC.
And honestly, can you blame them with programming that feels more like propaganda than journalism?
Canadians are tuning into other sources for news and entertainment.
But instead of addressing the root of their problems, CBC insists it's the fault of, quote, financial challenges in the media industry.
No, CBC.
The phone call is coming from inside the house.
The problem is you.
And here's another kicker.
Catherine Tate and her executive team expect ordinary Canadians to believe they're running a tight ship over at the CBC.
But of course, while ordinary Canadians are facing layoffs and rising costs, CBC executives are handing out millions in bonuses, charging taxpayers for luxurious trips and then whining about media outlets exposing it.
Now here's a thought.
What if the CBC embraced accountability for once?
What if they acknowledged the trust Canadians have placed in them is broken?
What if they actually delivered on their mandate as a public broadcaster?
What if instead of funneling millions of dollars into executive pockets, they invested in programming that reflected the values and voices of everyday Canadians and not the values and voices of everyday Canadians that vote for Justin Trudeau?
But no, instead of reforming, the CBC doubles down.
Just look at their push for more funding under the Trudeau government.
This is not about serving Canadians.
This is about serving themselves.
Canadians are fed up and rightly so.
CBC has become a bloated, unaccountable organization that serves its executives more than the public.
You guys know how I feel.
Canada should have no public broadcaster at all.
And the most successful campaign to defund the CBC is led by Catherine Tate herself every time she opens her mouth.
Sink or swim on your own CBC.
Independent third-party organizations that analyzed this indicate that trust in the CBC fell 17% in just four years.
Viewership is down, less than 3% in primetime markets.
That means during prime time, when Canadians are getting into living rooms to watch what is on TV, 97% of Canadians say no to the CBC, tune it out, and move on to other things.
Based on all of that, Ms. Tate, I just want to say, on behalf of the Conservative Party, I want to thank you for your efforts in helping us promote the campaign to defund the CBC.
Because I think outside of the Conservative caucus, you have been the most successful person in creating the demand to defund the CBC.
$1.4 billion of taxpayers' money doesn't go for an online streaming service, it goes to a whole host of products in which Canadians are choosing other sources of information and entertainment.
So, again, I don't really have a question there.
I just wanted to say thank you for your efforts to help us defund the CBC.
Did you have a comment?
I must say that it really does shock me the extent to which certain members of this committee and SUPSIN or whatever you call it seem to make me the target and throw insults to my tenure at CBC Hajio Canada in order to discredit the organization.
The organization has stood for 90 years, and we know 79% of Canadians say they believe that CBC Hajio Canada should continue.
And so to have this be somehow a proof that we should be defunding the CBC is ridiculous.
You know what else I think?
CBC will get that extra half a billion from Trudeau.
He needs the help from his biggest cheerleaders who will polish his lies and failures like their jobs depend on it.
Because with a Conservative promise to defund the CBC, their jobs do depend on Trudeau getting re-elected.
Canadians should read and watch the CBC with that awareness, with that warning label on it.
Post-media columnist Lauren Gunter joins the show next to discuss Trudeau's fortunes in 2025.
Suggested Successor Missing00:04:48
Stay with us.
You know, it's good friend of the show, Lauren Gunter, columnist for Post Media.
And he's got a really great article detailing just the absolute desperation of the Trudeau Liberals.
His biggest apologists, up until about 30 seconds ago, are turning on him real quick.
Last time I had Lauren on the show, we discussed how I didn't think at the time, and I don't think Lauren thought at the time either that the Liberals were going to call an election because they could lose now or lose later.
Lauren, has your prediction changed?
No.
And despite the fact now that Trudeau's Ontario caucus, his Atlantic caucus, and his Quebec caucus have all suggested that he formally suggested that he resign,
I still think he thinks he can hold on and he alone has the moral authority, the moral oomph and the charisma to turn their fortunes around and prevent that dastardly Pierre Polyev from becoming from becoming prime minister.
I mean, their whole modus operandi right now seems to be that, well, at least we're not Polyev.
And so if we can convince the Canadian public that Polyev is as bad as we know he is, then there is still hope that we can pull this election out of the fire.
But that's pure delusion.
I mean, that goes against what we all witnessed in November in the United States, which was where, you know, all of the mainstream media in the United States, and we can say how bad our media is in Canada and how biased it is.
And lots of times that's true.
I have never seen the kind of cheerleading and bias that we saw for Kamala Harris among ABC, NBC, CBS.
I've never seen that kind of bias.
It was unapologetic.
I mean, they would basically say, yes, well, we're really in the bag for Harris and the Democrats.
And so we're going to just lie through our teeth about how wonderful she is because they actually believed it.
They actually believed that they had found someone who could stop Donald Trump from becoming president for a second time.
And I think we're going to see the same kind of reaction in Canada, where people in a lot of the media outlets are going to say, well, okay, Trudeau's awful.
He's terrible.
But, you know, at the beginning, he was fabulous.
And he could be fabulous again.
And at least he's not polyev.
You expect the CBC to do that from beginning to end, from morning to night, because Polyev has said if he gets elected, their funding is gone, period.
There won't be a CBC unless it can be individually or privately funded.
So yes, I think it's the same thing.
But even though he's been abandoned by most of his caucus, Trudeau, I think, is going to come back from this ski trip, snowboarding trip that he's been on over the holidays and decide he's going to stay.
Yeah, I think so too.
I think the problem might be that there's no real successor that isn't already tainted by Trudeau's nonsense.
I mean, you could say, oh, they're lining up Mark Carney, but he sort of left Trudeau holding the bag after Freeland was quit fired.
And Freeland herself, I mean, she thinks she's going to survive this firestorm unscathed.
That's why she's staying on as an MP.
But again, up until about 30 seconds ago, she was Trudeau's biggest enabler.
She was the doer that was inflicting all of the bad policies on us.
And she's not a great candidate.
People who are in the press gallery in Ottawa don't like asking her questions.
They don't like going to her press conferences because she doesn't seem, not only does she not answer questions, all politicians don't answer questions.
They claim she doesn't seem to understand the questions.
So it's very frustrating to interview her.
It's very frustrating to ask her questions in a scrum.
And it's fascinating that she thinks she's going to have the appeal to become leader herself.
I think that's what's the problem with the liberals from top to bottom is that they overestimate their own appeal.
Violent Crime Surge00:03:16
They overestimate their appeal as individuals.
They overestimate their appeal as a party because they've never had to work hard to become the government in Canada.
have been periodically voted out of office so that they would go out and renew and come back a little more in touch with ordinary people.
This time they are so completely out of touch.
One of the examples I gave in the column that you referenced at the beginning about how desperate they are is from a guy named Adam Vaughan, who was a liberal MP for two terms from central Toronto.
And he said, well, you can use crime stats to try and scare people into voting you the way conservatives do.
But we know that crime always went up under conservatives.
And even though they complain about bail and criminal justice, it's up to the people who believe in social justice to solve the crime.
No, we've had nine years where we emphasize social justice to try and reduce the crime rate in Canada.
And the result has been in nine years under the liberals, violent crime has gone up 44%, 44%.
And there's an average of about 200 people a year killed in Canada by someone who is out on bail or some other form of early release because they changed the bail laws in 2019 so that judges cannot keep people in jail.
You can be up for your second or third or fourth violent crime, and judges have real trouble finding any way of keeping you behind bars until your trial.
So you go out and you kill somebody else or you assault someone or you rape somebody.
The crime rate in this country now, according to a study that's coming in the new year from the Fraser Institute, the violent crime rate now is 14% higher on a per capita basis than it is in the United States.
Oh, wow.
And people say to me, well, that can't be possible.
We see about all the crime in the United States.
What you see in the United States are 20 or 30 communities and usually parts of 20 or 30 cities that have very violent, very high violent crime rates.
That's fine.
But most of the United States is actually quite peaceful.
It's funny, of course, the two most heavily armed states in the United States are Georgia and North Dakota, and they have among the lowest crime rates.
When you get outside Atlanta, Georgia's actually quite peaceful.
But I don't know if there's a coincidence there between...
I think there is.
I think there is too.
But we have this idea that, oh, everyone has a gun, so it's always violent.
And everywhere in the United States is bad and it's mean, it's terrible.
It's not.
And the thing is now that among our large cities and the neighborhoods within them that have crime problems, violent crime is now higher than it was when the higher than it is in the United States and much higher than it was when the liberals took over.
And yet the liberals will not believe that their emphasis on social justice over criminal justice has led to more crime.
And you're going to see more and more and more of that, I think, between now and voting day in October, because they really are delusional.
Interim Leader Plot00:02:55
And that's why I think Trudeau will come back from his holiday.
I think they will say to him, look, Justin, the time has come for you to go.
Let's find an honorable exit for you.
Let's not make this look like we've pushed you out.
You'll go in March, maybe sometime.
We will appoint an interim leader and that interim leader will go into the election.
This is actually a plot that was being hatched just before New Year's among the liberals in Ottawa.
Trudeau would come back.
He would resign in March.
They would appoint an interim leader and the interim leader would go into the election and say, you know, I'm not the real leader, but, you know, vote for us.
And after the election, we'll have a leadership race and we'll elect a leader.
And, you know, you're going to like that person.
Like who in heaven's name even comes up with a scenario like that?
That's not going to happen.
They're not going to do that.
I do think they're going to eventually push Trudeau out.
I don't think Trudeau will be their leader in the election, although I think he could hang around for another two or three months.
I hope he does.
I hope he takes them into the election.
They'll be down to where Kim Campbell and the Conservatives were after Mulroney resigned and she led them into election and got two seats.
You know, I don't see downtown Toronto, downtown Ottawa, downtown Montreal might still vote big time for the Liberals or solidly for the Liberals.
It's not like the by-elections.
It's not like Toronto, St. Paul back in the summertime, which the Liberals lost even though it was a very safe city, because you cannot concentrate.
The opposition cannot concentrate all of its resources on every riding.
They can concentrate them in one riding.
So for a by-election, they can embarrass you.
But I do think, you know, the Liberals might slip out with 15, 17, 21 seats if Trudeau were leading them.
But if it's the pig in the poke party, vote for us, even though you don't know who our leader is, they could be down in single digit.
Like it's just insane.
And that's how desperate they are.
It's a measure of the fact that they would think through a scenario like that as though it were plausible is a sign of just how desperate they really are.
Well, and the absolute delusion that they think Canadians would vote for a party without actually knowing who the prime minister would be at the end of it all.
Yep.
Well, you know, I saw something the other day from one of the mainstream media types.
They had a commentator on.
So the commentator is not necessarily indicative of the whole, the whole network's thinking, but they had somebody on and say, well, you know, a green NDP coalition is possible after the.
What in heaven's name are you smoking?
People Fed Up00:02:47
Good Lord.
That is not a, that's not, you come up with an idea.
If I type that into a column, I would hope somebody at post media would say, phone Gunter up and tell him that he's got a great future as a barista because he is not writing any more columns for us.
Like that's positively ridiculous.
The conservatives are going to win.
There would have to be some huge scandal.
And even after that, look at all the scandals that Trump survived to win.
He didn't win a landslide.
This is his was not one of the greatest landslides in the history of presidential elections, but it was a decisive victory.
And it was a decisive victory against all of the headwinds that the establishment could blow at him.
And I think the same thing similar is going to happen here.
We are not as conservative and freedom-oriented an electorate as the Americans are.
But I still think that people are just so fed up with the Emergencies Act being invoked on truck drivers who are in the Freedom Convoy.
People saying, oh, you're a bigot if you don't want trans women to compete in female sports.
It's, you know, we understand that all parents are knuckle-dragging Neanderthals.
And so we can't tell them that their children are changing pronouns and names.
I mean, all of this elite overthinking of every issue, I think, has finally caught up with them.
And I think, you know, I hope that Paulie Evan and his team bring up things like Catherine Tate at the CBC asking for another $500 million for the CBC already gets $1.4 billion from taxpayers and people are fed up with that stuff.
They cannot go to the grocery store and buy the kind of, you know, the nice slice of meat that they would like.
They have to settle for B grade tougher.
They're not getting the pasta they would like.
They're not buying all of the fruits and vegetables they would want.
They're compromising on everything in their daily lives.
They're thinking about, can we afford to go on a vacation this year and still drive our son or daughter who's on the rep team in their sport around during the winter season?
They have to make choices like that.
And they're fed up to hear with the kind of attitude that the liberals have been showing and the liberals' friends in the media.
And so I think the liberals are going to get desperate as their poll numbers continue to decline and everything they try, the GST holiday, whatever it is, everything they try blows up in their faces.
Sense Of Desperation00:03:21
Well, and I'm glad you brought up the American election because Kamala Harris really had to campaign against herself being the solution for the problems that her administration has caused.
And I think Trudeau finds himself in the exact same place.
You know, he's got to admit, yes, crime is out of control.
Yes, we've been in charge for the last 10 years.
Yes, maybe there is systemic racism, but guess what?
We're also the system.
How does he become the affordability solution when he's the guy who made life less affordable than ever?
How does he become the guy who deals with the housing crisis when he's the guy with the out-of-control immigration targets driving up the cost of housing?
So I don't know how he gets around that.
Kamala Harris couldn't get around it either.
No.
And granted, he is, I think, a more attractive individual than Kamala Harris was, who is Kamala Harris, I think, one of the sourest candidates to run since 2016.
Since 2016, thank you.
So Hillary Clinton, you know, to me, I'm not a big Trump fan.
And people who've read and seen me talk about this know that to be a fact.
I would have voted for him in a heartbeat over Clinton and over Kamala Harris.
And I'd have been really torn not to vote for anybody in the 2020 election when Biden was the option.
So, you know, but you get a sense for how sour those two candidates were.
And yet there was Trudeau two weeks ago defending both of them and saying it was the inherent misogyny of American voters that kept them from being.
No, it wasn't.
It was the inherent sense that American voters had that both of them were sour and they didn't want to have to put up with that for four years.
That's what turned people off.
And, you know, and on top of that, now this time, I think in 2024, there was the added revulsion for everything elite.
And she was an elitist candidate.
I mean, she did herself in when she was on 60 Minutes and she was asked, was there anything during the Biden years when you were vice president that you would have changed?
And she gave that thought.
She said, nope.
No, I don't think there was.
It's the easiest thing in the world.
You maybe really believe that, but it's the easiest thing in the world to say, oh, you know, yeah, there's a few things I think we did wrong.
And I'd like to do this differently on cost of living and I'd like to do that differently.
No, no, I think it's hard to care too much.
Exactly.
You know, and then that whole joy thing.
Oh, this is a campaign about joy.
Yeah.
When you're the sourest candidate in the field, it ain't about joy, honey.
You know, that's just the way it is.
And I think that the liberals have the same misguided sense of themselves, of the electorate, of the issues as the Democrats did.
I think they're worse, actually, but Canada is a more liberal electorate than the United States.
Non-Confidence Bumps00:04:27
And they maybe have some hope of holding on to three cities, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal.
That's it.
I think you get.
more than 10 kilometers away from the CN Tower and people are not voting liberal in the greater Toronto area, that golden horseshoe.
I don't think that's happening.
Northern Ontario is not going to vote.
Southwestern Ontario, Eastern Ontario, those are all going to go conservative.
Sometimes in the past, they have gone NDP, but that's another factor in this election is that the NDP have done themselves absolutely no good by propping up the Liberals for two years.
Their current seat projections based on an agglomeration of all the polls would be at just about the same level they were at last time, probably a little bit lower.
They have 25 seats now.
I think most of the polls show them at 18 to 20 seats.
They've done themselves no good.
If you're going to get the Liberal Party, even if you vote NDP, what's the point of voting NDP?
And so all of the people who are sick and tired of elitism and the progressive agenda are now no longer voting either NDP or liberal.
They have shifted over to the conservatives.
And that's going to have problems for, right?
You know, you end up with a caucus of 250 MPs.
You can't keep them all happy.
You know, there's going to be bozo eruptions.
There's going to be bimbo eruptions.
It's going to be a massive problem for Polyev to keep the lid on that group and keep them all happy.
But they're going to win a staggering majority if everything goes the way it's going now.
I, for one, cannot wait to have Randy Boissino return to his PPE business.
Exactly.
His indigenous own PPE business.
Right, right, right.
He can go examine his cultural heritage.
He'll have all the time in the world for that.
Lauren, predictions for 2025 with the Liberals.
I know we went through a little bit of them.
What do you think?
What's the timeline here?
Will we see Trudeau jettisoned as the leader?
Will we see an early election?
Are we going to go all the way to 2025, October?
I think the Liberals hope they can go all the way to October because they're going to ease Trudeau out.
And that could take as long as, I think March, but it could take as long as May.
If it takes that long, then they're going to have to appoint an interim.
That interim is going to have to have at least three or four months in order to campaign.
And that takes us to October.
I don't think we're going to see an early election because Jagmit Singh will not vote for a non-confidence motion that he does not introduce himself.
I mean, I think that's become obvious, right?
He said, oh, I'll vote to get the liberals out.
And then the conservatives very cleverly found this loophole where they can introduce a non-confidence motion through one of the committees that's meeting during the parliamentary recess this month.
And then by as early as January 30th, there could be a non-confidence motion in the commons.
Well, that's clever.
Singh never expected that.
So he said, oh, no, no.
I only meant I would vote for a non-confidence motion that we, the NDP, had introduced.
They don't have an opposition day because they're the third party.
They get very few of them.
They don't have an opposition day until sometime in March, I think.
So we won't see them bring in a non-conscious motion until March.
My guess is they will by that time see the writing on the wall for Trudeau.
They'll let the liberals go as long as Trudeau is gone and will be limping all the way to October.
I hope I'm wrong.
I hope Trudeau comes back.
You know, we're recording this on January 2nd.
I hope Trudeau comes back on January the 6th and says, hey, folks.
I've really enjoyed what I've done and I think I've accomplished a lot.
I'm out of here.
Bye-bye.
But that would be a, that's my birthday.
That would be a perfect birthday present for me.
But I don't think I'm getting the birthday present I want from Justin Trudeau.
All I wanted for Christmas was a new prime minister.
But here we are.
Lauren, thanks so much for coming on the show and taking the time.
Proud Canadian Writes About Military Breakdown00:06:50
Please, before you go, tell people where they can find your great work.
The best place to start looking is Edmontonson.com.
Everything I write is there.
Great.
Stay with us.
Your letters to Ezra, read by me, up after the break.
One thing that really sets Rebel News apart from our competitors in the mainstream media, as if we can even call them competitors, they're failing and we are not.
Besides the fact that we don't take any money from Justin Trudeau and we allow for the free and liberal exchange of ideas, is that we don't close the comment section.
We want to hear from you because without you, there is no rebel news.
So there are a few different ways to get a hold of Ezra.
You can find them here.
But another great way to get in touch with us is to leave a comment on one of the videos that you see wherever you see it.
Now, today's letters come to me by way of Ezra's interview with Lieutenant Colonel David Redmond on the purposeful destruction of the Canadian military under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
We've all heard the stories, you know, that Canadian soldiers having to share 40-year-old sleeping bags, soldiers deployed to Latvia without proper body armor or helmets,
our servicemen and women forced to go to the food bank because they're not being paid enough to survive in Justin Trudeau's inflationary Canada.
And I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I am a conspiracy realist.
And if you think Canada is a post-national state and that borders shouldn't exist, so why would you need a military to defend your borders?
And if you believe that there are no such thing as shared Canadian ideals to defend at home and abroad, well, of course, why would you think you needed a military, a fully functioning military at all?
On Ezra's interview with Lieutenant Colonel Redmond, Little Bo Peep 240 writes, my family fought in World War I, World War II, and in Korea and Afghanistan.
I'm proud of their sacrifice.
I spoke with American soldiers and they stood by and said they were glad to stand with Canadian soldiers.
Now it seems what they fought for was wiped out in nine years.
Sir, thank you for your service.
We Canadians stand with you.
It seems as though every time there's a liberal in power, the Canadian military is subject to a decade of darkness.
And I think we're there again.
And I'm not sure if the Canadian military will ever be able to crawl its way out of the hole, The hole that Justin Trudeau dug and then shoved it in and then tried to throw dirt on the body.
What's in your head writes as a CAF that the Canadian military has been broken for a very long time.
I would agree with that.
I have many veteran friends who tell me if you know a young person who is interested in going into the military, do not allow them to go into this military because it's broken, unsafe, and does not respect the young men and women who would sign up to wear a Canadian military uniform and then ultimately be willing to die in defense of Canadian ideals.
Jocelyn Como, 6572, writes, My father died for this country, and I'm so sad to see what happened to our military and our country.
There are a lot of families, I think, who feel the exact same way that the sacrifices of the men and women before are just being washed away, disrespected, stuffed in a hole by Justin Trudeau and his woke, crazy DEI policies.
I know a young man who, despite my best efforts to convince him away from it, is joining the military.
He will leave for basic training in just a few short days.
And if he had been gay, they would have taken him sooner.
And this is a young man who works out religiously, runs in a weighted vest just for fun, takes his health and fitness very seriously.
He is an elite specimen of the young Canadian male.
And he was bumped down, down, down because apparently he didn't check the right identity box.
And what does that have to do with being able to defend Canadian ideals?
What does your sexuality have to do with that?
I think when you bring people into the military in a preferential way based on DEI policies, that makes everybody less safe, but especially the people serving.
Gordon Smith, 9369, writes, as a proud Canadian and supporter of our armed forces, that was tough to hear.
We can't get rid of this poisonous liberal government fast enough.
Gordon, from your lips to God's ears, the clock is ticking on the liberals.
The latest, we'd have to wait, of course, as I said several times on the show today, is October 2025.
I don't know if Justin Trudeau can hang on that long.
I mean, he's going to try.
He's got this stranglehold on power.
He feels entitled.
He thinks it's his hereditary right.
It's his inheritance to be the prime minister of Canada.
It's not something he does because he loves this country and wants to serve it.
He thinks we are here to serve him.
So it couldn't end quick enough for all of us.
Well, everybody, that's the show for today.
Thanks for tuning in to the first not pre-recorded Ezra Levant show of 2025.